art Archives - Page 17 of 18

Charlotte Mei

This year, one of my goals is to be more fluid and to embrace outcomes – whatever it may be.

While I am getting there, there’s still a part of me (the subconscious bit) that inevitably wants order amongst the chaos. Sometimes it feels like I’m at the edge of a cliff and my back is pressed up against hard rocks, and I can feel my hair blowing in the wind. Every inch of my body wants to yell “HURL YOURSELF OVER THE EDGE!” and yet my fingers – my fingers are my undoing: they still claw and cling to the safety of familiarity.

So understandably, I was drawn to these illustrations on ceramic by Charlotte Mei, a freelance illustrator, potter and editor based in London, UK; whose lines and unbridled, uncomplicated brush strokes are pure genius in my eyes.

Here’s to a year of learning!

Marta Slawinska

Berlin-based illustrator Marta Slawinska narrowly escaped going to law school and instead went on to study illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Thank goodness she did because her illustrations and paintings are amazing. I am most intrigued by her portraits and hand series that seem to reveal so much, and yet are canvases in itself.

Creative mash-ups: Art x humans

[quote]Remix: To combine or edit existing materials to produce something new.[/quote]

I’m a big believer in Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix in which we do not live in a creative vacuum – and that we’re unconsciously deriving inspiration from all around us on a daily basis.

And I’m simply inspired whenever I see creative remixes (in this case, it was the remix of functionality) – like Olaf Breuning’s series, the Art Freaks. What makes his collection different is that he used the human body as canvas instead – exhibiting them as life-sized works of art. Now if the paintings were done on normal canvases, my bet is that it wouldn’t have elicited a second look. But put them onto something new and our perceptions shift.

I’m familiar with the works of body painters. With body painting, there is always an element of familiarity, much like adding details like shirts and shorts to produce optical illusions – illusions that are usually grounded in reality or familiar forms (like details on animals, etc). But Olaf’s work takes it up a notch with abstracts and the treatment of body as canvas in its entirety.

Click here to see more of his artwork (some of it is NSFW!)