Jena Thomas

Paint is great. I love paint. But there's paint, and then there's paint. And Jena Thomas's paint is decadent. I just stumbled on her work the other day and just had to share. I wish I could see these in person in order to experience the density of the material on the canvas: the paint is thick which gives the already rich colors a real depth. They defy categorizing, really, as they seem to straddle a blurry line between abstract and traditional landscapes. I love the boldness, the unusual shapes and new vantage points on everyday scenes like backyard pools and camping tents. This is the sort of painting I have an almost visceral reaction to: the rawness of the paint itself adds an amazing amount of depth to what is ostensibly just the surface of the canvas. Check out her website -- her portfolio is consistently wonderful. I'm putting Jena Thomas on my list of artists to keep tabs on...

Night Swimming, 2013, oil on canvas

Tent II, 2012, oil on canvas

Against the Grid, 2013, oil on canvas

Fire Island, 2013, oil on canvas

All images via the artist's website.

Cheers!

Kate xx

Kate MccGwire

I think Kate MccGwire might be so high on my list of favorite contemporary artists that... she might be on top. And there she's among good company. ;) I love her work, and I've been following her for a couple of years now. The first image I ever saw of her work was this one:

Slick, 2010, Mixed media with magpie and crow feathers 

and antique fire basket, 50 x 250 x 250cm

Retch, 2007, Mixed media with pigeon feathers, 200 x 120 x 70cm approx.

Vex, 2008, Mixed media with pigeon feathers

in an antique museum cabinet, 183 x 110 x 83cm

FINE (Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional), 2012, 

Mixed media with crow feathers in antique cabinet, 158 x 155 x 57cm

Shroud, 2013, Mixed media with mallard feathers and quills 

in antique dome, 35 x 35 x 30cm

Call me enthralled. Her work just puts me in a different place. From her large installations to her more recent smaller works, there's something so mysterious about her forms. Using natural materials, mostly feathers, and putting them into antique display cases and glass domes gives them a sort of natural history museum or curiosity cabinet feel. And although the feathers appear soft and the colors understatedly beautiful, the shapes take on a menacing quality, like a coiled-up snake. The quills add a sharpness as if there's something alive and hidden inside those feathers, that if you got too close it would be unleashed. I love the juxtaposition of beauty and gentleness with the uncertainty of a possible threat or sharpness. Her large installations are creepy and beautiful at the same time, where the luxurious iridescent luster of the feathers only momentarily distracts from the way the unknown shape seems to slither out of the fireplace.

Lately her scale has become a bit smaller, but I'm really interested to see how she continues to explore scale and materials as she moves forward.

All images via katemccgwire.com - please, please go check out her fantastic site!

Cheers!

Kate xx

Alex Roulette

Waiting, 2012, Oil on panel, 28in x 35.5in

Smoke Bomb, 2012, Oil on panel, 33in x 44in

Installation view of 'Freeway's Reach' 

at George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011

I'd like this post to kick off what I hope will be a weekly post on an artist, or a collection of works, or a show, or something arty going on in the world... that I'd like to share. Since I'm an art history major, it sometimes feels like all I think about is art. But within the world of art, focus can vary so much. I bounce between ancient and modern, middle ages and contemporary. It's all over the place, and I like so much of what I see, here in Edinburgh, abroad, and online. I just want to carve out a tiny space on this blog to highlight artists and work that really speak to me -- for whatever reason. They may be big-timey artists or they may be illustrators, or they may just be showing their first work. I'm all for it, and if I like it, I'd like to share. :D

Firstly, I just came across this artist Alex Roulette, a young painter who just earned his MFA in 2013 from Columbia University. His artist website is wonderful, so it's worth checking out. He paints rather uncanny, photographic images that give the impression of a dream or a memory that seem realistic, but with a twist. The perspective is sometimes a little skewed, like a camera's wide angle, the color a little strange. There's drama roiling just beneath the almost apparently calm surface. The places are recognizably everyday sorts of places--motels, neighborhoods, roads--but the solitary figures, saturated hues and photographic perspective make us think twice about what's really going on.

I love the texture and the way he handles the paint. In some places it looks thin, in others dabbed, and sometimes textured, but always solid. The colors pop and play against one another. In Waiting, the blue doors and yellow ceiling jar with the bright red, and frame the neutral grey parking lot where a figure rises as if something has just drawn his attention. Perhaps someone or something he was waiting for is arriving? In Smoke Bomb, the smoke is a bright turquoise that complements the Pepto-Bismol pink of the houses against a neutral, wall-like forest in the background.

I'll definitely be following Roulette's bright future. (All images via alexroulette.com - please check out for wonderful hi-res images and details, plus past work!)

Cheers!

Kate xx