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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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In Chains, Chromogenic Photogram 71''x40''
Exciting young Toronto-based artist Ryan Van Der Hout began his career revitalizing an early experimental photography genre, the Photogram. Created without cameras, this technique involves placing variously translucent objects directly on photographic paper, and exposing them to different kinds and colors of light to tint and stylize the often otherworldly results. Van Der Hout’s tinted images of light filtered through fruits make familiar items thoroughly bizarre and unreal, sliced food resembling the surface of some alien planet.
Throughout his works, Van Der Hout’s foremost concern is memory. Several Photogram series use objects and human figures to create a game of silhouettes where Van Der Hout manipulates familiar paradigms like still lives and figure studies into playful, colorful vignettes. Another series manipulates iconic family photo album scenes with colors and patterns that evoke the weathering of old age and distant reminiscences. Throughout, Van Der Hout straddles a fruitful opposition between depicting actual events and recording artistic gestures. www.ryanvanderhout.com
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Ryan_Van_Der_Hout.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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The Old Fisherman 2, Digital Handmande Painting 33''x22'
For literally thousands of years painting was created only by the physical application of paint to a surface. But technology often necessitates reinterpretation. The works of Sanfront, for example, clearly are paintings in the spirit of the art form, but ones in which the concepts of "paint" and "canvas" have been broadened. Sanfront creates "freehand digital paintings," where traditional techniques of fine art are imbued with greater versatility—digital color, instead of paint as an actual applied element, 500 brush types and overlays of color impossible in the physical realm.
Sanfront utilizes this computing power not to take shortcuts on his path to creation, but to take the reins over every inch and aspect of his canvas. He looks to perfect every brush stroke, every inch of space and is able to adjust each textural moment to bring it in tune with his overall vision. The resulting pieces are luminescent bands of color that cohere into quasi-impressionistic renderings of clearly defined subjects, as if photographs of an oil-paint world. www.sanfront.com.br
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Sanfront.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Decent in the Hells, Digital Print on Canvas 12''x16''
The world of Shelley Vouga’s digital prints zaps the viewer into a mostly monochromatic matrix. Circuitries of lines crackle across dark atmospheres representative of hell, insomnia, and storms. It is as if the artist has crawled into the computers of our brains to photograph the impending apocalypse of our fast-paced modern age.
Black consumes each and every canvas that passes through Shelley’s hands. Abstract shapes fill this fathomless void. Rectangles and concentric circles that would otherwise be simple shapes together form intricate patterns. They become mesmerizing conceptual landscapes steeped in virtual surrealism. Occasional bursts of color act as electricity, lighting the otherwise bleak scenes. The pops of blue and green, simmering red, and rainbow arcs all variously reflect the glow of computer screens, the warmth of fire and lightening bolts, and the beauty of outer space.
Shelley spent her girlhood in Switzerland exploring art museums before studying computers. Her digital prints on canvas are an amalgamation of both her passions. http://svouga.cortaillod.net/
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Shelley_Vouga.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Maharees Pier, Acrylic on Canvas 42''x52''
Artist Shaun Johnson’s paintings of the Irish countryside and coastline recall the tradition of American folk art in their semi-realist style and painterly surfaces. Working primarily with acrylic paints on canvas or linen, Johnson employs short, energetic brushstrokes of richly saturated colors. Admittedly influenced by a wide range of sources including the post-Impressionists of France and Irish Impressionist painters from the 1850’s, the artist also studied with seminal American painter Jacob Lawrence, whose simplified figures, flattened areas of color, and cultural narrative can be seen taking on a different form in Johnson’s own work. While the homespun quality of Johnson’s paintings evokes a sense of nostalgia, it equally conveys the artist’s strong respect and deep roots in a place he calls home.
Born in Paterson New Jersey, Johnson lives and works between Abbeyfeale and Listowel bordering both County Kerry and County Limerick. www.shaunjohnson.net
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Shaun_Johnson.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Pecking Order III, Mixed Media 12''x12''
Teresa Poole’s mixed-media creations are that rara avis standing steadily with feet planted firmly in disparate traditions, resulting in artwork seemingly familiar and yet heretofore unseen. One is reminded of the high-quality, hand-crafted panels adorning the pages of those first editions of books when the printing press was relatively new and book-publishing was as genuine an artistic trade as the writing itself. Simultaneously, Poole’s pieces bring to mind the art of the Japanese shoji and fusuma, whose designs appear to emerge into the third dimension, lifted from their flat surfaces merely by the force of Poole’s vivid characterization. Floral and fauna alike are depicted sans photorealism while seeming no less living for the choice, but simply inhabiting a realm of the real that comes into being only when an artist’s vision is both unified and perfectly effected.
Teresa Poole has been a full-time decorative artist since 1981. Her professional training in paint-finishing and trompe l’oeil serve her in good stead with her current works on canvas. She currently resides in Stroud in the countryside of Gloucestershire. www.teresapoole.co.uk
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Teresa_Poole.aspx |
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