Amanda Sage is an American Artist living in Los Angeles and Vienna Austria. She grew up in Boulder Colorado and attended a school that allowed her to follow the arts early on and provided her with mentorships with established visionary artists. She studied the old masters and through her connections she met Michael Fuchs the son of Ernst Fuchs and eventually completed an intensive 2 year study with the famous artist. She studied the Mische-Technique, using both oils and acrylics in a wet medium and now teaches courses for other artist to come to Vienna and learn them.

http://www.amandasage.com

“She who works with her hands is a laborer… She who works with her hands and her head is a craftswoman…
She who works with her hands and her head and her heart is an artist”

 - St Francis of Assisi (masculine and feminine reversed from original version by Amanda Sage)

This'll look nice when it's framed.

Banksy is a British Street Artist, whose work in known all over the world. His highly skilled stencils convey a political point of view. Anyone can see a Banksy because he paints outdoors in the urban environment and only recently has entered the world of museums and galleries. Much of his work is ironic like the pieces seen below.

Powerwashing the Cave Painting

Maid

Painting on the Israeli Wall

This painting on the Israeli Palestine border is one of his political commentaries on what is happening in the world right now.  It draws upon traditional Trompe L’Oeil styles of mural painting to show what the reality is. Also the context is very important, the child walking past may get a glimpse at a better possible life and may be inspired in the face of this insane 30 foot tall barrier.

Stop and Search

This work, Stop and Search, was actually cut out of the cement wall in Bethlehem to be displayed in a gallery in England. It is unclear whether he approved the removal of his work from the public, though he has gone on record discouraging this type of behavior. Surely, after the removal of the art the wall was patched up to maintain the purpose of isolating communities from their resources.

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/banksy-palestinian-works.asp

Quote by Banksy

“When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.” – Banksy

“If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal” -Banksy

Daniel Burnham

Daniel Burnham had a plan, and being part of the City Beautiful movement, he felt that beauty could increase quality of life. He imagined that San Francisco could be designed to compete with the world as the Paris of the west. His vision was an overall plan that would create a unity in design for the entire city. From the region of the civic center, he envisioned a wide artery that lead from Market Street to the top of Twin Peaks. A grand staircase would be accessible to all, culminating in a beautifully protected natural amphitheater at the top on the eastern side.

Burnham's Plan for San Francisco

On the eastern side of the highest peaks of San Francisco he observed a stunning valley with water ways running to the Pacific Ocean, by way of Lake Merced. Today the Muni Train “M”  cuts through these peaks and travels through this valley as it exits the West Portal Tunnel and continues to San Francisco State located near the lake. He dreamed of preserving the vale with its sparkling streams and uninterupted views.

The view that inspired Burnham to save this area of SF

He had proved his talent in design by being the Director of Works for the World’s Fair in Chicago, known as the World’s Colombian Exposition, or “White City.” He also designed the Grand Central Station in NYC, the Rookery Building in Chicago and other large scale innovative projects around the world. He was an advisor for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where he got to revisit his vision for SF after most of his ideas were scrapped after the earthquake of 1906. Unfortunately, this natural disaster stalled his plans and shook up the city. This could have been an opportunity to invest full force into the plan but the scale of the destruction was too large.

The Rookery Chicago, where he held his office with partner Root.

To hear a great account of his style and determination the historical novel “The Devil in the White City,” is highly recommended. The book gives a great sense of what life was like at the time of his life during the turn of the century. Many people today look back to that time and wish to return to that era of innovation by imagining “Steampunk” style dress and inventions. The wonder and accomplishment of that time has left a lasting impression.

The Fuller Flatiron Building, 1902

Union Station, New York

He also envisions Chicago to he the “Paris on the Prairie,” and was able to use some of his plans for the exposition to make that happen. Still in Chicago, not all of his ideas were realized it is fun to imagine where you would be walking if his plans had been completed. His classical forms would have been inspiring and one can imagine being in a Maxfield Parrish painting with its greek columns and unified design.

Daniel Burnham

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. ”

“Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die. ”

Daniel Burnham 1846-1912

Skinner is a California Artist from Sacramento. He has been very successful with commercial art including toys and other merchandise. His art has been featured on record covers and band posters, including the stage decoration for last year’s “Outside Lands Concert” in Golden Gate Park.

Outside Lands 2011

White Walls Gallery

Detail

Detail

Battle Under a False God

Primus Poster

Fear You May Know

I need to get a quote from Mr. Skinner

Check out his website at: www.theartofskinner.com

The Sky Becomes Sediment 2008

Leslie Shows is a local Bay Area artist whose paintings have titles like “ The Arrangement of Salts and Metals by Properties,” where she succeeds in melding elemental natural tones with moody pychedelic lightning and rainbow crystals.  The vibrant colors and the explosive use of paint in Leslie Shows work, balanced with the subtle greys and stone.  Her paintings reunite the rift between science and art by utilizing color and form to explain what is happening in our real world sometimes on such a grand scale that we are usually unable to notice.  The first image is detail of her painting called “The Nitrogen Cycle.” She magically displays working concepts on thge working of our physical world by combining elements to create something as basic as the air we breathe. Everything is located on a grand Geologic Time Scale which surpasses our normal experience of the world by millions of years and can destroy our reality with one shift.

I especially love the displays of lightening in her art. She is using the paint as a medium often without use of a brush to create gradients and layers like the sedimentary layers of the earth.  There are many textures created by metals and remnants of the manufacturing process being scratched through the painted surface. The fractal physics of liquid dynamics is visible on a smaller scale.

Here is a brillant installation which suits her work on a grand scale at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. She brings a timeless element to a world that is always changing and we are just a passing moment in it.

Leslie Shows from bartolos.com

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón de Rivera

July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954

Frida Kahlo has intrigued me since I was a child. She was the second female artist I recognized, after Georgia O’Keefe, when I saw her work in a museum in Fort Worth, Texas. It was her poignant portrayal of pain that shocked me and made me aware of a new aspect of life I hadn’t considered. Of course this was a very marked aspect of herself that she dealt with through out her life.  As a teenager she was in a streetcar accident that fractured her spine, pelvis, collarbones and forced her to wear full torso body casts and be in bed for much of her life. She also suffered in a relationship with Diego Rivera, a famous muralist that was 20 years older that her and was know for his filandering. They were in love and overcome many obstacles, but not without sadness that you see expressed in her art.

Kahlo in Deigo Rivera Mural, "Panamerican Unity

Frida Kahlo was painted in this mural in 1940 by Diego Rivera. The couple had recently divorced when he came up to San Francisco to participate in Art in Action. During the World Faire held on Treasure Island that year, he painted this fresco which was later transferred to San Francisco City College.  The couple remarried shortly afterwards and they lived in a specially designed house with a bridge between the two separate parts.

This is a painting of Frida’s father who took many pictures of her growing up and encouraged her as an artist. She had a multicultural background. Her father was a Hungarian Jew and her mother was of Mexican and Native Indian decent.

Frida is most famous for her self portraits which give us a glimpse of what her life may have been like at the time. While she didn’t recieve much fame during her life, she is now the subject of a major movie and her image is found everywhere in gift shops and museums around the world.

I especially appreciate her visceral images of nature and was struck by this painting I orginally saw in the Kimball Museum at age 8.

She and Diego were very political and actually housed the soviet refugee Leon Trotsky. They actively held communist party meetings in there home and had a very lively social life In 1953 she had her first and only Solo Exposition in Mexico. Doctors orders were to stay in bed so she had her bed delivered in an ambulance so she could attend the opening.

“I suffered two grave accidents in my life…One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego.

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

-Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

Leonora Carrington is a Mexican Surrealist Artist who was born in Britian in 1917 and died this year, 2011. She met artist Max Ernst in London and escaped the NAZI occupation of Paris she fled to Mexico City. She is one of the top three female surrealist artists of all time and remained in Mexico for the rest of her life.

Her paintings are very detailed and they portray a secret or obscured aspect of the world. She uses many symbols and ritual shapes to express the mystical order and activities in the universe that most people do not notice. She was very well educated in europe but left it all to pursue art and express her point of view.

She wrote and illustrated this children’s book in 1977 and she also made sculptures and masks for theatre.

“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name.”
-Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet

Born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga

Remedios Varo was born in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War she escaped to Paris with her husband Benjamin Peret a Surrealist Poet. However she again escaped to live in Mexico as a politcal exile and she stayed there the rest of her life. There she met other the artist Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leona Carrington.

She developed a unique style all her own which was influenced by psychology, mystic traditions, pre-colombian art and surrealists like Breton, Picasso and el Greco. She often includes architecture, nature, and detailed line work in her paintings which critique science, culture and women’s roles in society and art. Ultimately she brings a deep curiosity and intrigue into the transformation from within.

Celestial Pablum 1958

Transito en Espiral

Still life reviving 1963

Woman leaving the psychiatrist's office

Visit to the Plastic Surgeon

Reflejo Lunar

Varo in mask made by Leona Carrington

“On second thought, I think I am more crazy than my goat.”

-Remedios Varo

Pour Painting

Watch the Painting Process:           http://wimp.com/groovypainting/

Pour Painting

Pour Painting

Blur Painting

Jackson Crouching over a Painting

This post on Pollock has almost as many pictures of him painting in his studio then actual paintings. I think his work has to be appreciated close up because it is all about texture, layering and colors. They way he paints is an important aspect of his style because he broke conventions about what a painting is supposed to be and was harshly criticized for it. I like to see the progression of how his paintings changed and what eventually held his focus was the more abstract.

Pollock Painting

Easter Totem

1950

She Wolf

The Motion