MAGICAL REALISM OF JULIE HEFFERNAN

Julie Heffernan is a contemporary American painter known for her Baroque-inspired fantasy portraits and landscapes. Influenced by allegories, politics, and literature, Heffernan’s work explores a sensual fantasy realm where plants and animals coexist in harmony within a lush, plentiful atmosphere. In a reoccurring series, she paints women standing in full skirts made out of ripe fruit or blooming flowers. “When I look back on my work, I realize I was wrestling with my own psychic and physical growth,” the artist has said. “I realize now that when I was doing the flower skirts, they were about a burgeoning sexuality. […] Now I’ve shifted my work entirely to the tortured landscape. I’m looking around for new metaphors for my own present-day experience.” Heffernan notably employs an aesthetic based on the traditional oil painting techniques of Northern Renaissance artists—such as Hierronymous Bosch—while maintaining a wholly contemporary atmosphere that seems to come more from science fiction than art historical tropes. Born in 1956 in Peoria, IL, Heffernan went on to receive her BFA from the University of California Santa Cruz and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1985, where she worked alongside fellow figurative painter Lisa Yuskavage. Today, Herffernan’s works are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, among others. She lives and works in New York, NY.

ccg_090111.2, 9/1/11, 9:36 AM, 16C, 3738×4285 (8+503), 62%, Repro 2.2 v2, 1/40 s, R75.1, G67.9, B82.0

 

SOURCE: http://www.artnet.com/artists/julie-heffernan/

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’S ART

“I paint what I see with my eyes closed.”
-Giorgio de Chirico-

Giorgio de Chirico was born to Italian parents in Volos, Greece, on July 10, 1888. In his art, he sought to evoke the hidden meanings behind everyday life, and his enigmatic scenes of empty cities, menacing statues, mysterious shadows and strange combinations of everyday objects inspired the artists of the Surrealist movement in the 1910s, De Chirico died in Rome, Italy, on November 19, 1978.
He first studied art at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens. After the death of his father in 1905, de Chirico’s mother moved her three children to Munich, where de Chirico completed two years of study at the Academy of Fine Arts. After leaving the Academy he continued to educate himself, taking a particular interest in the philosophical writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. He returned to Italy in 1908, traveling to Milan and Turin and settling in Florence.
As a young artist, de Chirico was inspired by the European Symbolist artists and their use of dream-like imagery. His earliest signature works combined a Symbolist sensibility with his love of the classical antiquities of Greece and Italy and his philosophical musings on the true nature of reality. In paintings De Chirico depicted dramatically lit city piazzas inhabited only by one or two figures, a statue or mysterious shadows.

In 1911, de Chirico traveled to Paris, France, where his brother, Andrea (also known as Alberto Savinio), was living. There, he exhibited his work and met a number of influential avant-garde artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi.
Meanwhile, World War I had begun, and de Chirico and his brother were drafted into the Italian Army in 1915. In 1917, he met artist Carlo Carrà, who worked with him to define his style of “metaphysical painting,” emphasizing the hidden significance of ordinary places and objects.
De Chirico’s work was greatly admired by the newly formed Surrealist school of artists and writers, who were fascinated by dream analysis and the subconscious mind.
Though de Chirico did not identify himself as a Surrealist, he briefly collaborated with the artists of this circle, showing his work in their group exhibitions in Paris and illustrating books by Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau. However, in the 1920s, he began working in a neo-traditional style inspired by Renaissance “old masters” like Raphael and Titian, and he turned against modern art and broke ties with the Surrealists.
De Chirico’s later career was inconsistent and occasionally controversial. He worked in a variety of formats from theater design to book illustration to sculpture, but his style was subject to unpredictable changes. His reputation was damaged when falsely dated copies of his works, by both de Chirico himself and forgers, infiltrated the art market.

SOURCE: https://www.biography.com/people/giorgio-de-chirico-9246949

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/giorgio-de-chirico

Giorgio de Chirico – La Casa Museo

PEOPLE AND LOVE AND DAVID RENSHAW’S ART

Being only interested in art I left school and studied Graphic Design, after which I started work at a local art as a Picture framer. I continued to paint alongside my job. I always try to make my work feel atmospheric and I like to pay attention to sky and clouds.
DAVID RENSHAW’S ART

David Renshaw Art

TALENTED AUSTRIAN ARTIST CHRISTIAN SCHOLE

Anything can happen in a world that holds such a beuty
Christian Schole -talented Austrian Artist with Illustratıon and paintings, digital arts, photography

Christian Schloe Youtube Vıdeo

SENSUAL PAINTER FRANCINE VAN HOVE

Francine Van Hove draws and paints young women. Her models participate search together with the artist the best poses that they must hold for hours. Preparatory drawing sessions enable the painter to capture the casual gesture as well as its graphic and sculptural qualities.

Under an apparent simplicity, her everyday life scenes keep a kind of mystery. In a safe place, unconscious or unconcerned by their own beauty, young girls let themselves enjoy laziness or everyday pleasures: reading, having tea, daydreaming or sleeping. Sometimes pensive, other times melancholic, they forbid us the access to their inner life and stay in a way elusive. Francine Van Hove’s work reflects a feeling of impossibility of communication and a saving loneliness, as a retreat deliberately chosen to be protected from the noise of the world.

Influenced by Greek sculpture, Flemish painting and the Italian Renaissance, Francine Van Hove seeks to perpetuate the classical tradition of painting: her refined work brings a sensation of wonder through the play of light, the rendering of the textures and the richness of details. Her skillfully modelled bodies impose a dreamy harmony through the perfection of their confident gestures.

FRANCINE VAN HOVE YOUTUBE VIDEO

BIOGRAPHY :

http://www.artsper.com/en/contemporary-artists/france/3382/francine-van-hove

STUART LUKE GATHERER’S ART

Stuart Luke Gatherer was brought up in the Eastern Highlands of Scotland, and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1995 with an MA in Fine Art. His paintings entice the viewer to interact with contemporary scenes from the vantage point of an unseen onlooker. This creates a psychological ambiguity that is emphasised by strong forms and colours modelled in dramatic light and shade.

Stuart Luke Gatherer

SURREAL PORTRAITS OF ANIMALS-TOMEK ZACZENIUK

Tomek Zaczeniuk was born in 1978, and he is a talented photographer and digital artist. He loves to create parallel reality with help of photo-manipulation and music. In these images two most powerful things are affecting one is image and second is sound. He is brilliantly showing an imaginary world which has stunning nature along with over size animals. Please have a look for your inspiration!
Today surreal portraits of animals by Tomek Zaczeniuk will be presented. He is young talented artist who loves photo manipulation and digital art to show his thinking. All portraits are unreal but eye-catching as they precipitously fascinate viewers look at them.

Animals from Tomek Zaczeniuk’s eye;

Can you imagine life without animals? I can’t. They are not only our best friends, but what is more important that they are the necessary element of global nature balance. Without them we couldn’t exist. It’s very sad that our activities around the world make their lives so complicated, hard and dangerous. We have to do all we can to repair everything what we have destroyed.
It’s not only about saving endangered species. I also dream about the world in which all creatures could live in peace with human kind. Is it possible? I hope so. Just imagine, if the last plant died – we all would die. If animals were gone – we all would be gone as well. Is it so hard to understand this parallel?
In these images, I decided to use animals as the main characters. They are so much better than humans. It’s my own way to say “Thank you, mother nature, for giving me a place to live.”

Yarattığı Sürreal Aleme Hayvanları da Yerleştirmiş Bir Sanatçının 19 Büyüleyici Çalışması