You’ve probably never heard of Ebru, but it’s an amazing artform that everyone should be made aware of. The opposite of traditional water colors, this technique involves applying paint to water and then adding more water or paint to upset the water’s surface and thus, change the art design. While the finished result is gorgeous, this is one of the handful of art techniques that is actually even more fascinating to watch being created than it is to examine the final product.
That’s because the artist can change the design over and over again until she feels it is just right. At that point, she just drops a piece of paper onto the surface of the water, sealing in the design for eternity. See a video of the process and more examples by clicking through.
We all remember how mysterious life was back when we were children. It makes sense — when you don’t understand how things work, it’s only natural to make up your own explanations. That’s why Pierette Diaz’s art is just so fun.
While we love her style, it’s the perfect way that she captures the imagination of a child that make her artwork so wonderful. From baby apartments in a mother’s belly to dragons heating the food in the oven, Diaz’s art helps us remember how we thought the world worked when we were too young to know any better.
Toronto-based artist Amy Shackleton creates detailed paintings, combining urban and natural landscapes, without any paintbrushes at all. Instead, she allows the paint to drip naturally — sometimes guiding it with a string, or by changing the direction of her canvas. And these aren’t the “drips” your art school professors always told you were cliché. You can check out her entire process sped up 800x (it took her about 30 hours) to see how she finished her newest work, Terraced City.
Artist and graphic designer Stefan Da Costa Gomez, whose work we first spotted over at Colossal, paints classic portraits of Hollywood stars — with a twist. Though each painting hints at the vices that would ultimately kill their subjects, Gomez means to bring them “back to life” by rendering them in such a way as to become 3D when viewed with traditional anaglyph 3D glasses, an attempt to “combine the classic analog craft of painting with the contemporary technology and today’s hype of digital 3D film to create a new way of viewing and experiencing a painting.” Though we certainly don’t wish for every painting to wind up in 3D, we love this idea and Gomez’s flawless execution. Click through to see his work, and head over to his website for even more.
Roman Opałka was a French-born Polish painter whose medium was numbers and specifically, infinity. In 1965 he began painting the process of counting – from one to infinity. While we often think of art as the expression of emotion, there’s something startling, something starkly beautiful about the expression of process. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and working to the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers were painted in horizontal rows. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.
Opalka painted white numbers on a grey background and in 1972 he decided he would lighten the background so that one day he would be painting white numbers on a white background. ” My objective is to get up to the white on white and still be alive,” he said. The artist lived until August of this year, unfortunately, he never reached his goal of infinity or white on white. Check out some of his paintings after the jump and let us know if you think this constitutes art.
Zurich-based artist Andy Denzler’s work, which we spotted over at Booooooom, is a fuzzy, semi-surreal reminder of the times we live in. The paintings feel like paused VHS tapes, harsh analog moments captured on scratchy film, a now obsolete textural visual quality. Up close, you can see the softness of the oils and the haze of the brushstrokes, which lend the paintings a satisfying internal contradiction. Light against dark, hard against soft, new against old, we think (if you’ll forgive us for the impending pun) they’re worth pausing for. Click through to see some of our favorite pieces of Denzler’s, and for even more, visit his website.
The folks over at Colossal clued us in to some new work by detail-oriented painter Amy Casey, who creates minute worlds bound up in twine. Her paintings are fascinating and surreal, a visual representation of the way our cities, towns and countries are bound up together, for better or for worse, sometimes in what looks like roads and rope, and sometimes in what feels much more like neurons and tendons. Perhaps fitting then, that one of her paintings references the town of Twin Peaks — just imagine a million more Twin Peaks with stories to follow. Click through to see our gallery of our favorites from Casey’s new work, see even more of Casey’s work here, and if you happen to be in or around Chicago, make sure to check out her solo show at Zg Gallery until August 6!
Joseph Arthur is a creative dynamo. Since being discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-’90s, the extremely prolific singer/songwriter has delivered eight albums and ten EPs, staged gallery shows and released a book of his visual artwork, and even opened a museum. Last year, he debuted Fistful of Mercy, a side project that featured three-way collaborations with Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison, and this year brings the release of his newest album, The Graduation Ceremony. We caught up with the artist in the midst of a ten-show run at NYC’s Living Room to talk about the record, learn about his favorite collaborations, discuss his painting career, and discover his most surreal moment (hint: it involves Lou Reed and Dolly Parton).
Pakayla Biehn’s beautiful paintings are delicate confections of dreams and spun sugar, her subjects swathed in petals or soft cloth, her signature double exposure effect lending a gentle sense of unreality. The double exposure effect, usually limited to photographic work, for obvious reasons, shows her mastery at deciphering the space in which she places her subjects and sheds light on the way they relate to one another. Check out more of Biehn’s work here, or if you happen to be in the LA area, check out her work at thinkspace gallery in Culver City beginning on May 21st.
In an ongoing art project entitled Involuntary Collaborations, an anonymous artist buys mediocre landscape paintings from thrift stores and yard sales and incorporates monsters into the scenes. Obviously, this makes them exponentially better. What’s next? The “invol-collab” renaissance, full of renegade artists who draw moustaches and unicorns on everything? You heard it here first, folks. But for now, click through to see some super ferocious monsters marking their territory all over some boring waiting room art.
. We caught up with the artist in the midst of a ten-show run at NYC’s Living Room to talk about the record, learn about his favorite collaborations, discuss his painting career, and discover his most surreal moment (hint: it involves Lou Reed and Dolly Parton).
