figurative art – Page 5

September 27, 2021September 27, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Lauren Whearty: Slippage between Abstraction and Image

*Lauren Whearty in her Philadelphia Studio, August 2021, photo courtesy of the artist*

Lauren Whearty paints mostly still life from observation and preliminary sketches. Occasionally she takes photos of things which serve in her painting process as cues to spark a sense of memory rather than a source for likeness. She builds her compositions with a collage-like construction, adding and removing objects from both the paintings and the still life set ups. She loves the process of fitting things into the grid of the canvas, playing between representing objects and maintaining a close sense of the flat painted surface. “Color for me is expressive, connects to memory and play in the studio. In using repeated objects, the excitement in experimentation comes from how an object is painted, from their color to their expression and what I can get paint to do,” she says.

September 13, 2021August 2, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Becky Yazdan: Finding the Edge of Experience

A person sitting in a chair

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Becky Yazdan in studio, 2021

Becky Yazdan’s paintings are based on things she encounters in her daily life as well as her memory of events, feelings, and colors. For her the painting process is an active dialogue with the nature of things around her. “The paintings are like dreams—the events of the day reorganized and combined with other events and memories until a new, often surprising reality has taken shape,” she says.

April 12, 2021July 22, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Sue McNally: Learning how to Find

A picture containing text, linedrawing

Description automatically generated — Jockey for Postition

Sue McNally lives and works in Rhode Island and when life permits, as she puts it, in rural southeast Utah. Her landscape paintings and her self portraits encompass everything in between — the views of nature she has encountered, and her shifting states of being. Sue McNally reflects on her art making and shares ideas on her new body of work.

March 8, 2021March 8, 2021, by Jen Pepper

Shari Urquhart: Selections from the Fuzzy Museum and other warm worlds

Suspended Judgement, 1983, Persian wool, satin, rattail, metallic, mohair, angora fibers, 78 x 107 inches

Shari Urquhart produced visual narratives from candy-like yarns that seem to glow. Each piece presents sensual fields that we can easily get lost in, absorbing each story as it slowly unfurls. The colorful works are made from fibers of wools, rayons, angoras, mohairs, metallics, fake fur, plastic and even Urquhart’s own dog’s hair. Each of her tapestries exhibits a brevity of controlled execution, awareness of composition that is meticulously constructed, making each piece monumental.

February 28, 2021March 1, 2021, by Patricia Miranda

Alexander Rutsch, The Voluptuous Eye at Kenise Barnes Fine Art

Sunset, mixed media on board, 36 x 44 inches, 1990s

My first encounter with the work of the artist Alexander Rutsch was through his daughter, the artist Alexandra Rutsch Brock (Alexi), a friend and one of my fellow co-founders of the London Calling Collective. I visited the Rutsch family home in Pelham where she grew up and where her mother still lives. The home, an eccentric, polymathic cacophony of hand-hewn art and embodied life, reflects my experience of Alexi as a passionate and energetic artist, teacher, and friend. A labyrinthine artist’s house- the type that real estate brokers abhor, is brim-full of paintings, sculptures, built-in furniture, object d’art, hand-tiled stone walls, curved nooks, hallways to a warren of rooms, and Alexander Rutsch’s overflowing attic studio, where the work from this exhibition came. I marvel at the fecundity of imagination a childhood in that house must have fostered. This history makes it a special honor to step back and review the exhibition, Alexander Rutsch, a Pop-Up, at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY, on view March 4-7 and March 11-14. 2021. The exhibition includes paintings on panel, works on paper, sketchbook pages, and whimsical bronze sculptures cast from industrial materials and found objects.

September 1, 2020August 8, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Fay Ku in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Fay Ku

May 2020. The artist lives and shares a studio with her partner, who is a musician. She is usually on the other side of her worktable, or else he wouldn’t have been able to sneak this photo of her.

For Taiwanese born artist, Fay Ku, the single, most formative event in life was immigrating to the United States. Ku says that if she had stayed in Taiwan, she would never have become an artist so she would have been a completely different person. It still surprises her how much this one event which she was too young to remember (though of course remembering all its aftershocks), shapes her work, often without her being consciously aware of the themes and issues at the time of making the work. Fay Ku shares some insights on her body of work in Domestic Brutes, the all women group show at the Pelham Art Center which engages the visitor with diverse approaches of what feminism means in American society today.

July 12, 2020August 8, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Kyle Staver – New Work at Zürcher

In Dialogue with Kyle Staver

Kyle Stave, *Venus and the Octopus*, 2020, Oil on canvas, 70 x 58 in / 177,8 cm x 147,3 cm, Image courtesy of the Artist and Zürcher Gallery, NY/Paris

Kyle Staver’s second solo show at Zürcher Gallery in New York features new paintings, relief sculptures, drawings, and aquatint etchings through July 24th. In this interview Kyle Staver shares some ideas on her work process, touches upon the narrative and mythological elements in her work, and gives us an insight on her notion of art history.

June 27, 2020June 27, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Dasha Bazanova

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

What To Where When, September 2019, burnt wood installation in progress,
@Gridspace gallery

Dasha Bazanova was born in Arkhangelsk, Russia right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a child she spent most of her time at her grandparents’ farm in a small village called Kulikovo. In 2004 she moved to Moscow where she got her Master’s Degree in 2011 at the Moscow State University of International Relations. In 2012 she moved to New York. She earned an MFA at Long Island University in 2014, and in the intervening years she has shown extensively all across the United States.Her artwork is inspired by her childhood memories and Russian folklore, but with an ironic 21^st Century twist. She lives and works in Bushwick, NY. Her work is currently featured in The Making of… at Art Port Kingston, which has just reopened again for visits during weekends.

June 13, 2020May 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Miles Hall

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

*Deconstructing the Apocalypse in her own Image,* 72 x 84, Oil on panel, 2018. (in studio)

Miles Hall is a painter and draftsman. He has lived in California, Massachusetts, Japan, and New York, but now resides in Richmond, VA. His work explores the mythological relationship between the landscape and human figure. The science and psychology of visual perception is important to his practice. He currently teaches in the Communication Arts Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and maintains a critical visual arts review for the Richmond area called Lucid.

May 26, 2020May 27, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Ashley Norwood Cooper

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

A graffiti covered wall

Description automatically generated — Easter Eggs, 2020, oil on linen, 80” x 72”

Ashley Norwood Cooper’s paintings are intensely colored, painterly figurative work, exploring the creative lives of women, the awkwardness of family relationships, and the schizophrenic role of the artist-mother-wife teacher. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibits throughout the US including First Street Gallery (NYC) and ZINC contemporary (Seattle). Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and on the I Like Your Work Podcast. Her recent debut at VOLTA NYC 2020 garnered write ups in the NY Times and Arcade Projects Zine (Columbia University).