random illustrations

portrait of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

pastel drawings from the V&A japan room

oil pastel drawings for Murakami Project

Portrait of Haruki Murakami

painter: susan lichtman

Susan Lichtman's paintings are derived mainly from memory, sketches and some photo reference. I've been really interested recently in how to successfully integrate figures into interiors without having the figure as the focal point. Lichtman's painting have hints of narrative in painted domestic scenes and generally several characters at once. Her colour palette and way oflight arrangement is the most exhilarating aspects of the compositions.

Family Cleaning
2002

Times on the Porch
2004
Cinderella
2003
Step Mother
2004
The Diligent Mother
2006
Fabric
2008

painting: The Orientalist

RB Kitaj

The Orientalist 1976-7

'The Orientalist' belongs to Kitaj's portraits, including 'The Jew' and 'The Greek' that relate to the theme of the expatriate. Kitaj is himself an expatriate. He was born in Ohio and has spent most of his life living between America and Britain, caught between two cultures. His stepfather, a Viennese research chemist, was a refugee from Nazi Europe. 'The Orientalist' was an invention, but for Kitaj he represents a real character, evoking the expatriate's sense of displacement. The artist has written: 'Some people live out their lives in places they don't come from, assigning themselves to a strange race of men and an alien sense of land and city... The real subject here is un-at-homeness'.

painter: Sarah Dougherty

Found these paintings on this site, I believe it's an exhibition called Room Paintings for the UCLA department of art MFA 2012. These are all by Sarah Dougherty. She is a gardener, teacher and painter who has a very interesting agenda:

Growing non-capitalistic creativity by tending the wild and relishing in moments where function determines spontaneous form through ingenuity in limited resources and the tenacious will to thrive.

Let's dismantle whitestream culture's grip on education, law, art and agriculture by giving space for female & plant knowledges to emerge through theory and practice.

Dougherty is based in LA and paints intimate interiors and spaces with that sense of wonky mundanity I find so pleasing. They're confortable images that are site specific. For my final project I'm quite interested in exploring the spaces where images of interiors can inhabit and I'm curious about the scale and purpose of these images.

more images after the jump

printer: Cressida Campbell

Cressida Campbell is an artist I came across recently as well, I've posted her work after Erik Mattijssen because I feel there's a dialogue between both their interests in still life, interiors, colour and pattern. What is really extraordinary about this Astralian artist's work is the laborious woodblock process that drives it:

Most artists see print-making as a means of making their work accessible to a wider audience by producing large editions. Not Cressida Campbell: her prints are made in editions of one. She begins with a sheet of plywood on which a design is carefully drawn. "If the drawing is wrong, then everything goes wrong", she says; so this part of the process absorbs a great deal of time and concentration. Next, she carves out each line with a small engraving tool, and uses small brushes to apply watercolours to the separate segments. After several coats of paint, she freshens up the image with a spray of water and takes a single impression. The end result is one coloured block, and one print - its mirror image.

The effect her process has is both the graphic benefits of traditional woodcuts and a painterly aesthetic that is not overwrought. Her interiors feel elaborate rather than decorative.

painter. Erik Matijssen

via here

Erik Matijssen

(b.1957) is an artist currently working in the netherlends. He falls squarely into the 'beat me to it' category of awesomeness. His spectacular use of colour and construction of spaces, light and still life is almost impeccable in my view. I believe most of the work displayed below is from the last couple of years. Matijssen is also a teacher and tutor in his native Netherlands and has appeared in numerous group and one-man shows. I'm surprised I haven;t seen his work before as he's incredibly prolific. What I really enjoy about his compositions is the slightly off perspective of someone who's just walked into a room slightly tipsy, there's a palpable uneasiness but it's one worth savouring.

BBC: Frozen Planet part two

Screengrabs of part two of BBC's Frozen Planet!