Paolo Troilo

Paolo Troilo is an Italian artist who specializes in paining and drawing. He is self-taught, and commonly works with his fingers instead of brushes. 

I really love black and white, especially when the artist has the ability to use color, but chooses not to. These contrasting colors can be very powerful and beautiful to look at. I feel that black and white has just as much potential as any sort of piece that uses a wide array of colors. I believe that it truly does take skill and creativity to make these two colors work and execute them in artistic manner.

Many of his paintings are of men who appear to be in some sort of pain going through trauma of some sort. These drawn out lines, or paint splatters add to this effect and make it look even more painful. In this piece above, the splatters almost look like needles piercing through his arms.

There's no shortage of emotion in his works. He really does create these strong, dramatic paintings that seem to depict rage, pain, fear, power... and countless others. 

I feel like he chooses to use men as subjects in his paintings for a reason. Possibly because they might be self-portraits. I also think that for some reason its easier to connect or understand the emotion of male body than a female. At least for me. 

I think his medium empowers his work. I don't think some of these pieces would be quite as impactful if they were an illustration, or even a photograph that was altered. The blending and very dark tones of the muscles are very beautiful and I feel like it would not look the same otherwise. 

Troilo is incredibly talented and I find his work to be inspiring. I personally love drawing and sculpting men in these contorted and uncomortable emotions and positions and these paintings are very good at creating a dramatic and tense moment. 

http://www.troilo54.com/

Well Written Artist Statement

Shintaro Ohata

Shintaro Ohata is an artist who depicts little things in everyday life like scenes of a movie and captures all sorts of light in his work with a unique touch: convenience stores at night, city roads on rainy day and fast-food shops at dawn etc. His paintings show us ordinary sceneries as dramas. He is also known for his characteristic style; placing sculptures in front of paintings, and shows them as one work, a combination of 2-D and 3-D world. He says that it all started from when he wondered “I could bring the atmosphere or dynamism of my paintings with a more different way if I place sculptures in front of paintings”. Many viewers tend to assume that there is a light source set into his work itself because of the strong expression of lights in his sculpture. His further steps have been noticed as he has been featured by lots of media from overseas, including a cultural magazine from the USA that featured him on their front cover and a long interview.

I did an entry on this artist, and when we were given this assignment I thought of his statement on his website.

His statement says that he "depicts little things in everyday life...and captures all sorts of light in his work..." That stood out the most to me, because I see it in all of his works. He shows these scenes that you would normally just see and look away without seeing the potential or already existing beauty. 

In his statement he also says that he creates these little scenes and makes them dramatic. I think he does this by using lighting. The lighting is what gives his sculptures and paintings this dramatic and beautiful feel. 

I think his artist statement is successful because he very simply describes what he is trying to portray and show through his work. I also feel that he doesn't just say these things, he actually wants to put emotion into his work and it isn't just about making it look pretty. He does create these very dramatic and emotional paintings and sculptures that fit with what he has to say about them. Overall, he didn't go too in-depth about what he wants his pieces to be, he just describes his inspiration and how he wants to highlight these little moments.

Skeleton/Skin Artist Statement

The Price We Pay

This piece was a challenge for me. The materials used were extremely unusual for me, so it was pretty much an experiment. This piece originally was supposed to be more oval/egg-shaped, but it is harder to support than a wider shape. The frame is really fragile, and hard to keep its shape, so it kind of morphed into a more horizontal shape, unlike the original idea. A lot of this piece was trial and error and finding different ways to put this piece together. It is really frustrating to work with fragile materials like this, so adjustments were made and the material for the skin was changed. This piece was incredibly time consuming, since things didn't go exactly as planned. The materials work together well, since they are all pretty fragile. Even though the materials are pretty delicate, this piece looks somewhat sturdy. Thread was chosen as a material to show breakage, and repair. Black watercolors were used on the tissue paper so it could look darker, creepier, and create contrast. After applying the tissue paper and thread, the frame warped and became asymmetrical. Although it wasn’t supposed to happen, it sort of fits into the creepiness by not being perfectly symmetrical. It also contrasts the straightness of the lines in the threads. The thinness of the tissue also lets parts of the wire frame show through which creates these sharp edges and makes the form look even more distorted.

Bricolage and Braconnage

Bricolage and Braconnage are tactical methods of creating and thinking. They are ideas that are made up as you go, not planned beforehand. It's more of a day-to-day method rather than careful thinking ahead.

In the article, bricolage is defined as "do-it-yourself" and braconnage as "poaching". Bricolage is also defined as "looking backward and forward, like the clicking back and forth of Friedman's metronome, as well as the formal strategies it entails, persists today in much contemporary work" and "a contradiction, a hodgepodge, a stitching together or distinct cultural forms." 
Braconnage is spoken about in the article as, "braconnage relies not on established modes of reading, in which readers passively absorb the text before them, but is, rather, a dynamic process in which the readers as braconneurs establish their own routes through the given material with what de Certeau calls an 'artisan-like inventiveness." 

From what I understood, bricolage is basically creating a sculpture from items that are readily available, like pencils in Friedman's work. It can also be something that is produced in bulk (like pencils) or something that most would simple throw away (Such as Friedman's masking tape sculpture). It can also be spontaneous, or not pre-planned. This idea reminded me of Andy Goldsworthy when he was creating his pieces in the video we watched. Most of his materials are common and its not difficult to gather many of the same object (like the flowers or sticks).

Transformation

Transformation Journal Exercise

1. Skin-colored, tan, peach-colored, rectangular, elliptical, symmetrical, bendable, flexible, fabric, smooth, fine, soft.

2. Used to fix, or repair, heal, cover, protect, hide, cure, health, healing, guarding. I think the time and place could effect the meaning of a bandage. If you saw one in a doctor's office, or a hospital, you might think of health, or healing. But if you saw it on some person who was clearly hurt and bleeding and had bandages on, I don't think I would automatically see it as healing or healthy, but damaged and trying to protect. Though it doesn't change its ultimate function, the way you see it can change depending on the context. Also, the amount of bandages could be seen in a different way. I feel like if there are a lot of bandages it would seem like they were trying to cover or hide something more than they wanted to protect it or heal it. 

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade is an American artist who creates very realistic paintings. Though her canvas is not canvas- it's a human being. 

At first when I saw one of her works, I did not know it was an actual person. I just thought it was a painting. I was impressed by her skills, but it wasn't anything incredibly special. I do love her style though. I then started looking more into it and discovered that these are people who are acting as subjects in a real-life painting. It made me wonder what that would look like to see that painted subject walking around with everybody else and see how surreal that would look.

She did this. It's really fascinating to see this. It looks so real, yet it looks fake against other people and unpainted subjects. It kind of makes you think how real you can make something look but it doesn't look entirely real next to other objects. 

Even though these are real, proportional humans, it can still not look completely real. I love how she transforms this "perfect" canvas into a painting. 

She also does self-portraits. I can't imagine trying to do this on your own body, but she somehow manages to accomplish it and make it look good. I kind of wonder if she uses this to her advantage to modify parts of her body like fixing any physical flaws she may see that she has. I feel like she could go pretty far with this idea of changing someone's body. Or even just integrating more surreal ideas into her work. She has a lot of potential and I'd really love to see her experiment more with other things.

http://www.alexameade.com/index.html

Carne Griffiths

Carne Griffiths is a British artist who can be seen as an illustrator/painter. He uses inks and tea with graphite. It's a very strange combination but it lets her create these very beautiful and detailed drawings/paintings. 

He tends to create these faces that almost look like they are either decaying or growing. It's very abstract but it I feel like it can be taken either way. Though it is abstract, it's also geometric yet organic at the same time. It doesn't really seem like the shapes are forced or anything, it just looks very natural. 

He tends to use a lot of natural colors and blues. Even though the shapes and designs are very natural looking, the blue looks somewhat artificial. It creates a very distinct contrast, I think. This electric blue color conflicts with the neutral colors he uses for everything else, but he executes it very nicely. I feel that the details pull everything together. 

I really love the way he creates these expressions and ties in the details with them. It adds to the emotion and intensity of the drawing. I also noticed that he tends to use these feather-like details. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I think that it adds more depth to it. 

I also really like this piece that has a dark background and more color. I love contrast, so to me, this is very beautiful.

I think the materials she uses works well together. The watercolor-type paint she uses looks very soft in comparison with the ink and the details. The ink creates very sharp lines and lets her make these very small and thin details. 

http://www.carnegriffiths.com/

Agnes-Cecile

Silvia Pelissero, or bette known as Agnes-Cecile is an Italian painter who studied art in Rome, and continued her career self-taught. 

Agnes-Cecile has a very distinct way of painting- her signature look tends to be the usage of the watercolors dripping and running down the canvas to create these beautiful lines that work beautifully with the rest of the painting. 

She creates contrast with saturated colors mixed with the whites and pastel colors of the skin of the models. I also find that he use of water colors very interesting. She uses them to her advantage by letting them drip down the canvas. I feel like she utilizes her material very well and she understands it. She clearly is an expert in watercolors and paints in general. 

I feel like a lot of her pieces are very emotional and hold a lot of personal meaning. I don't always feel an immediate connection to her pieces but I can tell there is something behind each painting she does. 

I really love the expressions she gives the people in her paintings. They look very distressed or tired, and it for some reason just fits very well with her painting style. If she had changes the faces to look more happy or something I don't think it would fit as well, or look as beautiful. I don't really feel like happiness or joy is as strong as other emotions, or that happiness is as easily described as other emotions like sadness or frustration. 

Even with these beautiful bursts of colors she adds to her paintings, the faces still remain these neutral or listless look.

I personally love this contrast she gives some of her paintings. I feel like that contrast can create an even stronger feeling that if there was only very muted colors. Of course there doesn't necessarily have to be contrast to create a strong piece, but I do think it can help in certain situations. 

She also does these ink paintings which are equally as stunning as the rest of her work. 

I really love black and white, and the way she uses it makes me love it even more. She creates these very emotional pieces that seem to show a lot of negative emotions- anger, confusion, guilt, or sadness. 

I feel that these pieces are more personal for her than the rest of her paintings. I don't know why, but I feel like these pieces just hold a lot more meaning. 

http://agnes-cecile.cleanfolio.com/

Ellen Jewett

Ellen Jewett is a Canadian artist who specializes in sculpting. She creates these beautiful sculptures of animals with enormous amounts of detail. 

Many of her pieces convey this image of growth, change or movement. The animals evolve and form into different things and is done in a very elegant and metaphorical way. I feel like a lot of her pieces hold some sort of meaning, or the ideas behind what she does. What I first thought was that she is transforming these animals maybe most would see as frightening or hostile, into something that is very natural and gentle. 

Though that probably isn't accurate, it still feels like she is transforming these animals into something very beautiful and giving them different meanings. 

The colors she uses also help the sculptures. I feel that if this sculpture shown above was a different color it would create a very different feeling and it wouldn't be quite as beautiful. 

I'm not really sure what materials she uses, but  it works very well with the pieces. It looks very realistic and gives he the ability to make delicate pieces and details that other material may not let you do well. The fact that these sculptures are not very big at all (usually not much taller or wider than a foot) makes it very impressive that she can work with the material this well to create such detail and accuracy in terms of animal anatomy. 

She doesn't give a lot of information on what specifically she makes her sculptures out of, but she mentions that she uses wire bases and creates many thin layers of light-weight clay on top to create her sculptures. 

However she makes them, she has an insane amount of talent and creativity.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/creaturesfromel

http://creaturesfromel.ca/

Shintato Ohata

Shintaro Ohata is a Japanese artist who combines sculpture and painting to create stunning pieces of art.

The first piece I saw of his, I could not believe it was not only a painting but a sculpture as well. He uses these elements to create a sense of depth and dimension to what otherwise would be simply two dimensional.

The colors he uses are very beautiful and often create a certain feeling. The colors are necessarily used just for the look, but how it makes you feel. These reddish colors give this feeling of warmth and security, while the first image shown is more green and feels very cold and lonely. This piece is the first one I every saw from Ohata and it's probably my favorite. Until you start moving around the piece, it probably looks completely flat, just like a painting.

I love how he captures these little moments that you normally might skip over or not even notice at all.

"Shintaro Ohata is an artist who depicts little things in everyday life like scenes of a movie and captures all sorts of light in his work with a unique touch: convenience stores at night, city roads on rainy day and fast-food shops at dawn etc. His paintings show us ordinary sceneries as dramas." (Statement from Shintaro Ohata's official site)

Little things like that is what I really enjoy. Just seeing something that seems so common, yet you can see it in a very beautiful and memorable way.

The way he paints the two dimensional parts is very stunning as well. He creates this feeling of depth by making the backgrounds sort of blurry. Also, looking at the colors close-up is very beautiful. You don't notice each little panel on the sculptures, but close up you see them, yet it still looks very realistic. I don't know what it is, but his pieces are very emotional.

http://yukari-art.jp/en/shintaro_ohata_en