Michelle Grabner is an American painter and print maker renown for her abstract style based on basic geometric shapes. Michelle Grabner was born in the year 1962.
Grabner received an excellent collegiate education earning M.A. and a B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin located at Milwaukee. Grabner also earned a M.F.A. from Northwestern University.
Here we visit a show featuring Grabner from 2013:
Grabner has held solo exhibitions of her work in the United States and Europe.
Price range information: Sorry none available. The artist works in oils or enamels.
Hadieh Shafie is an Iranian artist renown her mixed media works that involve small circles of Farsi text and are rolled and put together to form some incredible works of art.
Hadieh Shafie was born in Tehran, Iran in the year 1969. The artist earned a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Shafie went on to post graduate studies earning a M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute located in New York City. In 2004 Shafie earned a M.F.A. in digital art from University of Maryland located in Baltimore.
The artist is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the British Museum of London, England.
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $70,000.
Below a great short documentary on Hadieh Shafie:
The artist has certain themes in her work that she likes to focus on which are time, repetition, and process.
What I enjoy most about this artist is how she brings about her own personal experiences to the art world. Some certain texts were prohibited in her country so that now in her work she enjoys using the text, often writing it herself, and rolling it up and making a great work out of art out of her political thoughts. What a unique idea!
The end result of her work reminds me of American artist Amelia Caruso, whose basis of art is also the shape of the circle.
Tadasky, also known as Tadasuke Kawayama is a fantastic Japanese artist renown for his paintings using the circle and a great use of color. His works are a blend of Op- Art and color field painting.
Tadasky was born in Nagoya, Japan in the year 1935.
In this very brief clip a view of the studio of the artist. Its a great to see the very large size of many of Tadasky’s work:
The artist paints with oils and acrylics.
price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $70,000.
Some influence on Tadasky include Josef Albers and the Bauhaus School.
What a great use of the circle! Another artist who works with circles is Amelia Caruso. Her work is not Op-Art based, but her freehand drawing and painting of circles and patterns of circles led her to receive some great commercial design contracts.
Bill Jensen is an abstract painter known for his use of spirals, circles, and bold colour. Bill Jensen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the year 1945. For his artistic education Jensen attended the University of Minnesota earning a bachelors and masters degree in art.
Winner of an Endowment from the National Gallery of Art.
Currently based out of New York City.
Jensen also enjoys having fun with the surface of his paintings. Many times he paints, scrapes, and repaints again giving his work a very unique feeling of movement. Some works remind of the Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
Brew a cup of coffee and sit back as our fellow art loving friend James Kalm takes us on a gallery show in Chelsea for an exhibition by Bill Jensen.
Jensen’s work is best shown in the video as you can see the light moving across the picture plane. The artist uses expensive pigments with colors most artists don’t use.
A fan of the New York Abstract Expressionist School.
price range information: Most works range from $2,000 to $10,000.
In this clip we hear from the artist Bill Jensen as he talks about the art he made for the Cheim & Read show.
Barbara Takenaga is a wonderful abstract artist born in North Platte, Nebraska in the year 1949. She is renown for her works which use the circle as a main shape, that are organized in sweeping shapes that give movement to her work as it goes across the picture plane. I find her work to remind me of many artists profiled here already. Yayoi Kusama for the use of the circle or dot.
price range information: Sorry none available.
For her artistic education Takenaga attended the University of Colorado at Boulder earning both a bachelors and masters degree in art.
The artist has been in the teaching side of the art world for many years. Takenaga taught at the Univeristy of Denver and currently teaches at Williams College.
Another artist I am reminded of is Fred Tomaselli. This artist uses items like pills and makes swirling and action lines with them much in the same manner that Takenaga uses dots. A great example of Fred Tomaslli’s artwork is below.
Currently based out of New York City.
For her wonderful abstract works she uses a combination of oil and acrylic paint.
You may think that this form or abstract expressionism doesn’t have a meaning, but it isn’t just playful. The artist switched from a bright palette to more somber and muted tones after her mother passed.
Mounir Fatmi is a contemporary artist born in Tangiers, Morocco in the year 1970. Fatmi is renown for using circles in his work. Sometimes the circles might be circular saws. Fatmi not only makes sculptures from found materials, but also includes Arabic writing in his work, adding an extra sense of culture to the work. ( I don’t speak Arabic but have studied calligraphy and find much of the line work extraordinary).
The artist is currently based out of Paris, France.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Some other materials the artist uses are coaxial television cable, video cassette tapes, and records.
In this clip we see the artist using circles to invent some wildly creative machinery.
Mourni Fatmi’s most acclaimed work is a series done with the skyline of Manhattan, New York. The title of the series is “Save Manhattan.” The 911 attacks had a large impact on the artist and he made these works as a tribute to Manhattan using books and another using videotapes, and another using sound machines.
In this clip we see the version of the Manhattan skyline that used sound machines. Check out the shadows, very cool!
Subjects explored by Fatmi include religion and the consumer economy.
In this 40 second clip get a great grasp of the many works and moving installations the artist has created. Some of the circles he has worked on are records and when they are spinning its a new type of Op-Art illusion!
Gary Lang was born in New York city in the year 1950. He is known for his abstract works. He often works in a grid method taking months to finish a piece. Lang grew up in California and studied at many schools known for producing great artists such as the Chouinard School of Art. The Whitney School of Art and he finally earned a bachelors degree from the California Art Institute in Valencia, California. Lang also went on to earn a masters degree from Yale University.
Below is a great interview with Gary Lang at Edward Cellar Art and Architecture.
With his circles the artist reminds me of the great artist Amelia Caruso. I have done an entry on Caruso for her smart business sense. She has done public art, decorating public utility boxes. She recently moved into commercial art design using her keen artistic designs on various fabrics. Below is a clip of Caruso painting. She mainly paints circles, all freehand, with vibrant colors and patterns.
Caruso has done put her work in public places in Fort Collins. Below is a utility box by Caruso. She paints all of her circles freehand by the way! I love her use of color and the movement of shapes in her work.
Gary Lang is also married to an artist specializing in minimalist paintings using acrylics. Her name is Ruth Pastine. Below is an example of her work. Pastine was born in 1964 in New York city. Her work is very minimalist in color, but these works have thousands of brush strokes.
Here we see an interview with Ruth Pastine from a public installation done in Los Angeles, California.
Price range information: Lang works in oils and acrylics. Acrylics range from $1,000 to $8,000. Oils range from $500 to $1,000.
Lang became enthusiastic about art whilst a very young age. He loved to draw bugs and flowers. To this day he enjoys the process of creating art. Art keeps him young. Lang talks about feeling most alive when he is painting art.
Lang is part of many museum collections including the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of art to name a few.
I enjoy art families and love to look and compare the works of this husband and wife artist duo. Both use vivid color in their works and hopefully we can see the couple work on a canvas together similar to the realist painters the Ivanovs.
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