Archive for September 16, 2012

Artist of the moment…….Contemporary landscape artist Kim Jongsook….

{ September 16, 2012 @ 11:21 am } · { Uncategorized }
{ Leave a Comment }

This artist makes futuristic images of cities and incorporates swarovski crystal elements into her work. The most publicized artist working with the crystals would be Mickalane Thomas. She creates fantastic paintings mainly of African American women and she uses many crystals mainly in her backgrounds. This adds a very modern feeling when you consider some wealthy youngsters spend thousands of dollars to get a grille!  A mouth piece full of diamonds you might were on your birthday or when you are showing off your status.

Fab Five Freddy, the ex MTV Raps host also works using the crystals. His works don’t incorporate drawing however. Just an enlarged photograph with crystals on it.

Jongsook is the first artist I have seen to incorporate crytals but in the landscape setting. The crystal adds a great deal of depth to the work as well as reflection of light. I have never seen a work done with crystals in person, but can imagine its like looking  at a  movie as the sources of light and their reflections change constantly as the viewer moves.  When I first saw her works I thought of the movie, ” Avatar.”  She paints on a large scale with many works around 50 inches in height and width.

Jongsook was born in South Korea. She is very well educated in art receiving a bachelors of fine art, masters of fine art, and a doctorate degree from the University of Hongkik located in Seoul, South Korea.

A great clip featuring a show by the artist given in 2011. The title was the artificial landscape.  Its great to see how the works hang in a gallery. Notice the great perspective used in her style of landscape. The artist paints mainly with acrylics.

The artist was heavily influenced by her father who ran a mother of pearl craft store. He used traditional eastern artwork in his sketches and for the objects he designed. Simply put the eastern influence of painting the landscape was part of her every day life. It came as no surprise that she favors working with the landscape rather than wit the figure.

High price range: $15,000 for a mixed media piece done in acrylics with the crystal elements.

Low price range:  $10,000

In some works the artist makes appropriations or studies of master artists she admires such as Korean painter Geomjae. Its another way she mixes traditional landscape with  modern objects that represent the  young, modern, and materialistic generations around the globe. I would love to see other cities painted in this style.

Try a work of art in mixed media. Add a new medium to your work!

Artist of the moment……Arthur Wardle…

{ September 16, 2012 @ 3:08 am } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: , , , , } · { Leave a Comment }

Wardle was born in London, England in the year 1860.

Arthur Wardle was best known for his wonderful canine paintings. He was known for his paintings of wild life, if I had to compare him to a more modern painter I would pick Bob Kuhn.

A great montage of the artist’s work. The paintings start at 22 seconds into the video. You get a great feeling of his compositional skills. The dogs he paints are interacting happily with their owners. Very serene and peaceful works.

The artist was supposedly entirely self taught. At the age of sixteen Wardle was able to have a painting included in the Royal Gallery annual exhibition. It was a study of cows alongside the Thames river. It was not until eleven years later when the artist was to include the genre or animals and the sporting life as the major theme in his arwork.

The artist was included in more than one hundred shows at the Royal Gallery. He was quite prolific in the number of paintings he produced each year.

Even his animal works can divided among domestic and exotic animals. Occasionally he mixed the two ideas and came up with some fantastic results such as the lady with the leopard in the picture gallery. The artist used a great deal of mythology in his artwork. For his mediums he worked in crayon, pencil, chalk, oils, charcoal, and watercolor.

Part of Museum Collections including the National Wildlife Museum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Also has work in the McCord Museum of Canadian History. Also has work in the dog museum just outside of St. Louis, Missouri and the Kennel Club in London, England. The Kennel Club has what many consider his most famous work, The Totteridge XI. A collection of the eleven smooth fox terrier show dogs owned by Francis Redmong. The dogs are painted towards the ideal purebred standard, not as they appeared in real life. If one had to choose a certain type of the dog that Wardle loved to paint it would be the fox terrier.

When World War II came about the artist was called upon to create a poster to help get Canadians to go along with their brothers from the United Kingdom. The poster helped to draw in some 32,000 recruits!

I love this artist and consider him my favorite BK painter, before Bob Kuhn! My favorite animal painter.

High price range: Oil painting of two lionesses for $72,000.

Low price range:

Wardle died in 1949 at the age of 75.