Frida Kahlo
I wanted to post at least one more blog before my show, Everything
AND Nothing, opens next week. There are so many great artists who've inspired and influence me over the years. It would be impossible to list them all.
I've made the distinction between influence and inspiration. There are artists who have impacted the way I work. Seeing their work changed or influenced the way I make art. There are other artists who inspire me. Their style or themes haven't necessarily impacted the way I work but they feed my imagination, excite me, inspire me.
What I like about Frida's work is the emotional honesty, combined with sardonic humour, cooked up in a cauldron of magic realism. Seeing her work recently at the AGO in Toronto, I was struck by the delicacy and subtly of her brush work. That's not something that comes through in photographs. I've always thought of her work as stiff and a bit primitive in execution. Photos just don't do them justice. Healing and transformation have been important themes for me, and Frida's work has it in spades.
AND Nothing, opens next week. There are so many great artists who've inspired and influence me over the years. It would be impossible to list them all.
I've made the distinction between influence and inspiration. There are artists who have impacted the way I work. Seeing their work changed or influenced the way I make art. There are other artists who inspire me. Their style or themes haven't necessarily impacted the way I work but they feed my imagination, excite me, inspire me.
What I like about Frida's work is the emotional honesty, combined with sardonic humour, cooked up in a cauldron of magic realism. Seeing her work recently at the AGO in Toronto, I was struck by the delicacy and subtly of her brush work. That's not something that comes through in photographs. I've always thought of her work as stiff and a bit primitive in execution. Photos just don't do them justice. Healing and transformation have been important themes for me, and Frida's work has it in spades.
Stanley Spencer
This is one of my favourite Stanley Spence paintings. About twelve years ago I began work on a series of dream-like narrative paintings called Manifest Density. Along with Steven Campbell, Stanley Spencer was one of my biggest influences. The light in this painting is so perfect, so intoxicating. The composition, in my opinion, is also perfect. Your eye enters along the edge of the fence up into the centre of the scene, touches upon the various characters, out along the ridge of trees and escapes out through that little smidge of blue along the horizon. I love Spencer's large crazy narratives as well. I love the fact that he's re-staged famous biblical scenes in the neighbourhoods he lived in. I'm not so fond of his quirky sausage-shaped people, but at the time, was inspired by his attempts to go beyond classical figuration to create something personal and eccentric.
Paula Rego
I was first attracted to Paula Rego's abstract work. Especially the acrylic collaged paintings from the 1960s and early 70's, then her loose expressive figure work in the 1980's. At first I wasn't so keen on her pastel drawings of figures. I appreciated their masterful execution but wasn't drawn to them (pun intended). Nowadays, though, I find myself returning to those amazing pastel drawings like the one above. I'm a real sucker for large scale, multi-figure narratives and this one fits the bill.
Julie Heffernan
I don't know much about Julie Heffernan but have been seeing a lot of her amazing surrealistic narratives lately, on the internet and in magazines. I love the combination of traditional renaissance painting with modern, utopian/apocalyptic themes.
Joe Coleman is one of the most famous and celebrated "outsider" artists in the world. His whacked out fever dreams are wild and extreme. They can be autobiographical, about historic figures such as Sigmund Freud, Charles Manson or Hank Williams, or horror movie scenes. While his themes don't always speak to me, I find his fearlessness inspiring. A painting can be about anything and everything.