BEAUTY: Art--Susan Siegel

New York artist Susan Siegel knows how to get to my heart. Long time readers of "Oh, By The Way" will have deduced by now that I am a sucker for animals behaving and dressing as humans. I love fables, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and anything that shows an anthropomorphized view of creatures great and small. Siegel paints bucolic scenes of barnyard or farm animals, but in 18th century French country or court dress, à la Fragonard (she even has a cow on a swing!). In the 80s, there was a fantastic store in San Francisco called La Ville du Soleil which sold French housewares and objets, and every nook and corner of the store had life size mannequins with farm animal heads, all dressed like characters from a Mozart opera, just like a Siegel painting!

Her work reminds me of another artist I love, Sarah Higdon, previously here. Higdon's work is fairly clean, but I also love Siegel's very painterly, softly romantic, nearly Impressionistic style.

Top to bottom: Cow Swing; Family of Three; In Pink; Solitary Goat (Blue); untitled

More delightful images at her website:
http://susanlsiegel.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Trevor Young

Trevor Young's ode to empty urban spaces is reminiscent of other artists like Edward Hopper and Ed Ruscha who have been hypnotized by the inexplicable lure of these void-like places. His minimalist-realist approach to portraying these spots adds to the blandness of each landscape...

Top to bottom: Automated Convenience; Automatic Cut-Off; Beautiful Erection; Buttress 3; Caress; Claim Etiquette; Full Pump; Hire; Man In A Box

Watch Trevor Young explain "non-places" in this video interview... I think I have a new art crush: that hair, those sideburns, that smile, those eyes... that stubble! *swoon*

http://www.trevoryoung.net/home

BEAUTY: Art--Aaron Smith

I can't believe I have never posted anything about Aaron Smith or his art... until now. He is all over the blogosphere for reasons other than his art (his tattoos, his nostalgic waxed moustache, his general masculine woofiness), but it is his images of Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen rendered in glorious, glowing gobs of paint, thickly applied with a palette knife thus looking more like cake frosting, that interest us here...

Top to bottom: 2 Beards (Czar Nicholas II and George V); Buck; Ginger; Kicker (Roger Casement); Left Handed Likely; Shirkster (Prince Albert Victor); Zhooshy (Prince Albert Victor)

And here is the man himself, along with his sexy tats and stache...down boys, he has a husband.

http://aaronsmithart.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Jeremy Mangan

Painter Jeremy Mangan's simplified, surreal, rural narratives are full of wonder and humor. There's a do-it-yourself, cobbled-together, country idea in nearly every piece below. But the titles are the punch lines, and are necessary to see after taking in the image.
I love his use of glowing lights, whether electric or from some mysterious source...

Top to bottom: Dancefloor; Good A Place As Any; Harbor Crossing; Just Right; Occasionally One Or Two Get Out, But They Never Go Far; Visitation

It is always fascinating to see what artists become fixated on, obsessed with, and to see how they work through a particular idea that has captured them, snagged them. And Mangan seems to be working on and through the idea of rural barns, sheds, and morphing, dream-like permutations of such structures. Just look at the absolutely massive barn structures that make up the feed and tack super mall (like a big box store on steroids for the Mid-West) in the last image entitled The Gettin' Place...

Top to bottom: Life On The Cornice; Crossroads; Oak Head; Every Effort Made To Preserve The Original Structure; Second Story Addition; Pier 29; Seine Shed; The Gettin' Place

http://www.jeremymangan.com/index.html

BEAUTY: Art--Nicolas Kuligowski

I have been struggling to summarize Nicolas Kuligowski's work. There is clearly an urban reference in his images (scaffolding, heaps of tires, a cellphone tower) as well as the addition of a classic urban art tool: spray paint. Yet his imagery also seems to include a sense of the suburbs and interior domesticity. Interesting juxtaposition. Whatever is going on his head, it is clear that he focuses on a single object whether a chair, a house, or an embracing couple. In this way, he is almost using a kind of semaphore language with each of these objects acting as a signifier. The feeling of encountering a language one cannot possibly understand (in this case a personal visual language) can sometimes be deliciously satisfying: one is forced to live with an enigma. And that is a nice reminder...

http://www.nicolaskuligowski.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Andy Dixon

Cute Canadian Andy Dixon is somewhat of a cross-disciplinary artist, having started in music (he has made punk music, as well as experimental electronic music under the nom de musique Secret Mommy) but then he moved into the visual arts. He says he has used naïve outsider art techniques to create outsider content but now he wants to "join the Great Conversation," by which he means a tradition of creating art in the context of art history. The following pieces utilize his marvelous naïve style and riotous color palette to explore a more traditional form of classical portraiture.

Top to bottom: Fox Hunter 1; Matador; Portrait of a Lord 1; Portrait of a Lord 3; Portrait of a Schoolteacher; Woman On Horse

But his abstract work, often featuring text, is quite compelling as well. I love the Cy Twombly-esque scribbling mixed with unexpected words and phrases.

Top to bottom: Countless Things, One Of Them Burning; Everything That Has Ever Happened Up To And Including Today; 17 Things Burning; One Of Many Places To Hide; Such Events Have Led Us Here; Mt. Career; The Patron Saint Of The Hoax; The Place Next To Where I Was Born

Take a look at this charming, whimsical presentation Dixon did at an event in Vancouver called Pecha Kucha in which presenters are allowed to talk while 20 slides of their choosing are shown for 20 seconds each.

Check out his website and his shop where you can purchase music and prints!
http://www.andydixon.net/