Left - Beach Bum, Right - Tats, 8″ by 10 ” - Acrylic on wood with glitter

Left - Kearney Girls, 11″ by 14 ” - Acrylic on wood with glitter
Right - Sun Spots, 9″ by 13 ” - Acrylic on wood with glitter

Danielle Lamberti is a young Painter/Illustrator and was born in the Italian-American neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn NY. Her paintings could be said to be Superflat (the postmodern art movement founded by Takashi Murakami) styles and juxtapositions. Like most Superflat artists, Danielle’s art takes a critical look at consumerism and the environment while remaining playful with bright colors, rainbows and imagery that could be taken from a child’s book. Her work is inspired from her all girl catholic school education to life in the 21st century. The artist states, “I wanted to tell a story of what we see without even thinking about the problems of global warming. By asking “How is this affecting us? Good or bad on an unconscious level?” Everything from her colorful palette to her sad-eyed characters has meaning within each individual piece. This is art that certainly just doesn’t “look pretty.

lust

For further information or to view more of her unique works visit: Danielle Lamberti

Cornelia and Love Hate, Ink and Acrylic watercolor

Angelique Houtkamp is a Dutch tattoo artist, painter and shoe designer. Her style is a simplistic blend of painterly magic, classic tattoo old school imagery. She uses a variety of subjects, these may include: sultry pin-ups, broken hearts, swallows, sailing ships, black panthers, mermaids, spunky cowgirls, horseshoes, amongst others. Many of her early 20th century girls are adorned with black wavy hair. This offers a unique touch to her eclectic and beautifully rendered art.

Angelique’s work is also used in magazines, on cd covers, postcards, buttons and clothing. You can find more info and view more of her lush work at Angelique Houtkamp.

Delia, Oil on Canvas

Urban Traveler - August 12, 2006

Singapore born and based illustrator Herman Yap (aka Hëage) creates divine fashion illustrations that simply shine amidst the beautifully stylized people he so carefully draws. These fantastical digital illustrations are made by blending photo-montaging and vector lines, in a way that requires special attention to detail. Most of his works are charged with fantasy and formed by memories of people and places he has seen.

Herman’s works have won awards and have been featured in newspapers, publications and magazines. Several of his illustrations have been complied into three fashion illustration books, “Madonna in Art” , “Imagemakers: Cutting-Edge Fashion Illustrations” and the most recently released: “Big Book of Fashion Illustration” .

Check out his shop for prints, notebooks, and other fabulous stuff.

Osaka- 2006

Audrey: Heage de luxe - August 12, 2006

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Psychotropic Comparative Anatomy, 2005-2006, Acrylic on Canvas, 38″ x 60″

Some time back I wrote about the award winning genius Kris Kuksi and his beautiful grotesque series sculptures. These have great appeal (and not without reason) considering he sculpts with complete mastery and imagination. His paintings, however, can not go unnoticed. They come under one of the emerging artistic visionary genres, known by many as Fantastic Realism or Magic realism. In line with this movement, Kris combines his powerful imagination with techniques of the Old Masters and religious/esoteric symbolism. This mix forms the most immaculately painted pieces, while at the same time exposing the illusions we create as a result of fear in our minds. See the whole series on his site.

From his site: “His works share his thoughts on psychological issues, religious ideology, and aesthetics. Yet he never strays from the honesty within himself though he has had to shed many masks in order to do so. He finds the materialistic world of popular culture as the food for self-indulgence, self-escapism, and shallow-heartedness. Kuski is obsessed with exposing the illusions we created as a result of fear in our minds…”

Whimsical Boy, 2001 , Acrylic on Canvas, 40″ x 32″

Amulet Seven, Oil /canvas - 2003

Right - Wonder Pallet, Acrylic /Canvas, 2007

“The most important thing when I paint is to be very careful. It is a consciousness in which I can’t anticipate what kind of work will result. I hope to challenge in paint what I couldn’t handle with my mind. An adventurer makes his way without fully knowing what lies ahead. A chemist never succeeds without experimentation. When I am working, I get to the point where I can’t even imagine the outcome, and then suddenly see a brand-new, beautiful path.”

Young Japanese artist Yosuke Ueno creates exciting outre paintings with an superb mix of cute and surreal cosmic type imagery. You can find plenty of comparable similarities in his style to western pop surrealist/lowbrow artists. Infact, many of his beautifully executed drawings look extremely like the work of Mark Ryden.

Yosuke Ueno’s first exhibition was held in Tokyo in 1994. More successful shows followed in Japan, in New York and in Los Angeles. Mondo Bizzarro Gallery presented his work in Europe, for the first time in 2006.

One will notice that Yosuke’s art is full of icons, and he has put a page describing them, so we understand his iconography much better. Read more of Yosuke’s thoughts in his blog. More samples follow the jump.

S w a n, Acrylic /Canvas - 2006

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Self Portrait - 2003. 70 x 60 x 12 cm - silicone, pigment, hair, fabric - Self Portrait is a fully three-dimensional,
but spatially compressed, wall sculpture. It appears distortion-free only when viewed directly from the front.

Evan Perry alongside Aerial #2 - 2006, 269 x 152 x 33 cm - silicone, pigment, hair, aluminum

Evan Penny’s eccentric portraiture transforms the figurative tradition into contemporary observations on the nature of representation. His lifelike sculptures and photographs tantalize us with vivid allusions to reality, while emphatically affirming their fictional demeanor. When faced with one of Penny’s incredible people, we may not believe what we see. - Joe Houston

Working in a similar ‘hyper-realistic’ sculptural style to Ron Mueck,Canadian artist Evan Penny creates some very realistic molded and dye-painted silicone figures, implanting real hair one strand at a time. His figures are mostly head-and-shoulders busts at twice life size or larger. Penny’s technique for these is very similar to artists such as Mueck and other artists who make props for movies; constructing molds for the silicone by modeling clay by hand. These are meticulously-detailed through the painstaking creation of body imperfections such as scars, blemishes - these offer Penny an exploration into human corporeality and fallibility. Interestingly, Penny combines facial characteristics from a variety of sources to create composite portraits. Accompanying photographs (as in the L. Faux series) emphasize the difference between the visual information we believe to be authentic and what actually exists in space. more…