Arielle Sandler

I think I might start to work with some themes and try to do posts about a few artists in a row who have similar themes. So, I'll start out with what I would call NeoImpressionism...maybe there is an official word for this term, but that's what I'll call it until I know a better term. Impressionism, as a lot of people know, was an art movement that started in the mid 19th century and continued until around the turn of the century. While a lot of people today think impressionism is kind of bland and old, it was a completely new style at the time, very radical and revolutionary.

 
Impressionist painters were accused of painting like children and kicked out of artshows and rejected from galleries. They were considered garish and simplistic. Today, I think there is a new form of impressionism emerging in all different mediums. Contemporary artists are taking what impressionism did, and abstracting everything even further until you just see shapes of colors or even better blurs...but there is just enough form left to let you know that it is something, not just an entirely abstract work of art. I think theses artists let us see how impressionist painters would have been seen in the mid 1800's. The first artist working in this kind of style that I'll feature is Arielle Sandler.

You may be thinking, oh I've seen paintings like this before, but if you look at Arielle's paintings for more than a couple of seconds, you'll start to feel that they're different. I think the difference is that she is painting something rather than just an abstract conglomeration of colors. All of her paintings are landscapes, and for me, they really feel like landscapes. Some of them seem urban, some seem like groves deep in the forest, others seem like canyons in the desert, but they all really do seem to capture a place.

Arielle also really pays attention to color. A lot of paintings that look a little like hers are just odd colors put together. But I think, maybe because she is painting a landscape, she gets all of these incredible shades, that seem to create light and mood rather that just a flat canvas. I love the few points of contrasting colors that are just enough to make the rest of the paintings seem even more vibrant.

Something that you can't see too well from these pictures is that Arielle really lays on the paint, some of her paintings are up to an inch thick. That's incredibly expensive and time consuming to do, but I love how it looks. You can kind of see the effect a little bit in the painting below. If you're in the market for one of Arielle's paintings, you might think they're a little expensive, but it's not a bad price for original artwork, especially when you consider the cost of the paint going into each painting.

Arielle grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and got her BFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Despite her young age, her artwork has been featured in many exhibitions, magazines, and books, and has even been part of the set design of several prime-time t.v. shows. You can see much more of her work at her website and you can buy her work by contacting her or at Beholder. 

P.S. If you go to Arielle's website, check out her collages. They're kind of like the collages I've been working on lately, at first I was kind of upset because I haven't seen anyone else working with collages in the same way, but they're really great. Every artist has moments, of "Ahh! I thought I was the only one!" :o) I love the idea of abstract collages that are more about shape and color than about layers of images. After a few posts of New Impressionists I might start a new theme about abstract collages.

Alexa Meade...things aren't always what they seem

While I was in school part of what I studied was how art reflects society...we can tell so much about a culture from it's art. I also looked at how we are shaped by art, both as individuals and as societies. Alexa Meade takes that concept to it's most literal extent, by physically turning people into art. Alexa paints her subjects...directly on her subjects...so if she were to paint your portrait, she would paint you, life size, directly on your own skin. Her work is partly a performance piece, very temporary because each painting will be washed away by it's subject, and the whole work is archived only by a photograph.

Alexa's paintings ask us to look at how we perceive people, and how we perceive the world around us...are we looking at people or just an external mask of people? Since she is based in Washing D.C. I think her paintings have even more meaning, because everything in D.C. is always so diplomatic and layered and nuanced and not quite what it seems.

Alexa's work also seems to ask one of the perpetual questions in aesthetics...what is art? Is the process of painting art? Is the photograph that documents the performance the art? If we consider a person who is painted to be art, what about the person underneath the paint...are they still art when you wash away the paint? Is it the materials, the artist, the process, or the subject that makes something art? I think it's probably a combination of all of those things.

From an art history perspective it's interesting to look at Alexa's paintings in the context of Trompe-L'Oeil paintings that were popular in the late 1800's. They were supposed to be so life like that they tricked you into thinking something was actually there instead of just a painting. Alexa's paintings trick you into thinking a painting is there, which I think is really smart and funny in the context of art history.

Alexa studied political science at Vassar, worked for the Obama Campaign, and interned on capital hill before turning to art. She is based in Washington D.C. and has a show coming up on June 12th at the Irvine Contemporary. Check her out if you're in the area! You can see more of her work online at her portfolio.

Danna Ray

Waking up after camping, when the morning is brand new and full of the kind of light that you can't experience at any other time of day is one of the best things you can experience. It's nice to feel excited about being awake at 7:00 in the morning, to stretch out into the cold and wrap your jacket and scarf around yourself, to feel that the ground has straightened your spine after months of sleeping on a mattress, to zip open the door of your tent, if you have one, and look out and see mountains a thousand times taller than you...that is when you know life is great. How lucky are we to live on a planet that happens to have mountains and trees and rivers and clean air and tufted eared squirrels? Danna Ray's painting, Morning, reminded me instantly of that feeling...even though her painting is a little more misty than sun dappled, it made me want to ditch everything and head out west.

I love any artwork that combines some kind of element of human existance with nature, whether it's ancient architecture being overgrown by a jungle, sculptures like Yoko Ono's Wishing Trees, or gauche and pastel paintings like Dana's. Recently I've been really interested, especially, in melding modern man-made things with nature...what is nature? what is artificial? are humans part of nature shaping itself, or are we seperate? Dana's painting, Departures, brings up a lot of those themes. The suitcase with the constellations is a manmade object, but looks like part of the sky sitting on the ground...at the same time constellations, rather than stars, are a human construct. In any case I love the idea of a bus stop bench in the woods. Do these chairs and the suitcase represent traveling between the natural world and the man-made world...or between nature in it's purest sense and the myths we create about it?

I really like Dana's painting of a girl crossing a log too...it reminds me of when I was little and used to run through the forest, jumping over gullies, crossing logs, and hoping across rocks in streams. When I was little I could ruuuuuuun(!) while doing all of those things. Now, I have to be more careful, maybe because I'm not doing it as often, maybe because my center of gravity is higher, or maybe just because kids still contain an element of wildness that I think lets them move through the forest like squirrels.

Dana Ray studied illustration at Virginia Commonwealth University (Probably the best art school in Virginia). In her work she is exploring "the inherent transience and connectedness of all things." You can check out more of her work at her website, and you can buy her work at her online shop. 

P.S. I love her postcards as well as her paintings. I think it's interesting that my generation is taking up postcards with projects like Post Secret and The Post Card Exchange. I think it's an attempt to feel something solid and real, instead of virtual, but the postcard, rather than a letter, fits with our generation's visual and high speed/sound blip/you tube clip kind of nature. A postcard is fast, and half of it is an image, unlike a letter that just takes too long. And with that, I'll stop writing.  

Ryan Kapp

When I was growing up I always lived in bizarre suburbs in the middle of nowhere. The neighborhoods my family lived in were bordered by farms filled with cows or corn. We never walked on sidewalks or stopped at stop lights. There were never any street lamps...the upside of which was that the sky was left open to the stars. My brother and I generally had a couple of friends who lived in our neighborhood, but we were surrounded by people who were either long since retired, or single adults without any kids. At the time, I wanted to live in a "normal" suburban neighborhood, like the ones described in Beverly Cleary novels, or featured on the show Pete and Pete, where there were lots of kids who all got together every day to play games and create elaborate schemes.

When I went to college I found a neighborhood that adjoined the backside of the campus that was exactly like the places I had imagined as a child. There were big oak and maple trees, little mid-century houses, yards with little gardens, quirky old ladies peering out from behind rose bushes, and people walking their dogs. I used to walk around the neighborhood when I wanted a break from campus life, and particularly liked walking around at night so that I could see how people decorated their homes, which maybe is a little odd, but I thought it was interesting to see how differently people could make the same houses feel, with different design sensibilities.

I'm happy to say that I wasn't disillusioned by the neighborhood. We all learn about the downsides of suburbia, the tedium and boredom, the cookie cutter nature of everything from houses to cars, the disfunctionalism covered up by conformity. While I think the critique of the suburbs if generally right, I didn't see that disturbing discontent in the neighborhood behind my school, I just saw relatively happy families and the interesting things they placed along their windowsills.

Ryan Kapp's paintings remind me of that neighborhood. He paints houses lit up from the inside, so that we can see their interiors and furnishings. His paintings have amazing colors, great moods, and a graphic sensibility. They remind me of the simplicity of Charlie Harper combined with the moody voyeurism of Edward Hopper...which all turns out to be nostalgic but modern and hip at the same time.

I think it's interesting that Ryan's paintings of houses never have people in them. They almost seem a little haunted, and make me feel like I'm more concerned with furniture than people...which maybe our culture is to a point. On the other hand, when I was walking around the neighborhood behind my college at night, I rarely saw people in the front rooms that lined the street, people seemed to be tucked away towards the backs of their homes, so Ryan's paintings seem realistic in that way.

Ryan grew up in Ohio and got his MFA at Northwestern University, and I can feel the Midwest in his paintings. He's currently teaching at Harrington College of Design in Chicago. You can check out more of his work at his website, and buy his paintings at Beholder.

P.S. I also love Ryan's paintings of skateboarders...they remind me of my little brother learning to skate on our wooden back porch, and hearing the wheels go clunkclunkclunkclunkityclunk for hours on end, and later being able to distinguish skaters coming up behind me on city streets from the distinctive clunk of wheels running over cracks in the sidewalk.