The post Get Lost in Nidhi Mariam Jacob’s Mesmerizing Fantasy Gardens appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>These fantasy gardens allow the viewer to get lost in their beauty, bold colors, and complexity, with each flower being captured at its peak and depicted with an impressive attention to detail. There is so much to unpack, explore, and comprehend that you could spend hours watching them without getting bored or feeling you’ve explored everything.
According to Jacob, each one of her paintings is, in some way, an expression of her love for the natural world. Through her works, she aims to capture the “beauty of nature’s evolution” and “the continual cycle of life, death, and rebirth.”
These floral paintings are not just a manifestation of Jacob’s love for nature, but they also have a deep personal meaning for her, being “infused with the rich memories of her childhood, of long evening walks with her grandfather, the scent of orange Champakam and Jasmine flowers at train stations, watching her mother tend to her garden spending a lot of time out in nature.”
You can check out more of Nidhi Mariam Jacob’s works on her social media channels or by scrolling below.
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]]>The post Austin Howlett is a Master at Surreal Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>Surreal is definitely one word to accurately describe Howlett’s paintings, but his oil canvases let loose a handful of other qualities; one of them being sheer talent. It’s not hard to see that the artist is incredibly skilled, which serves as a solid foundation for the radical creative adventures he takes.
Whether it’s a young woman who seems to be “fused” with the branches of a tree, or giant humans roaming around grandiose natural landscapes, Howlett cleverly designs his pieces in such a way that everything seems organic.
His art, while surreal, still has a quaint softness to it. It doesn’t ever feel off-putting or harsh, a goal that many other radical painters tend to strive for. Rather, Howlett strikes a perfect balance between imagination and foundation, and it’s not hard to see why his work is so popular.
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]]>The post Immerse Yourself In Tess Gray’s Landscapes appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>This week we introduce you to artist Tess Gray. Inspired by the world around her (anything from the environment itself to her life experiences), her work most often depicts eerily empty landscapes, but with a fantastical twist.
Born in South Wales and currently based in Cardiff, Gray’s images depict the meeting point between realism and surrealism. Relying on studies from life, automatic sketching, and found images, her toolbox includes brushes, palette knives, and a field easel.
“I would say my practice is project-based,” she told Jackson’s Art, explaining her creative process, “but honestly, I tend to ascribe to the ‘I’ll paint what I want, when I want’ attitude. If a subject captivates me, or I think of a composition, I’ll go with it.”
“I’m of the opinion that painting and drawing are fundamentally the same thing,” adds Gray. “Oil paint is the material I sketch with most naturally for landscapes, but for figures I favor dry media. After working in acrylic as a teenager, I switched to oil. The vibrancy of the colors in oil and the texture was inimitable and I never went back. I just discovered an affinity with it and find it so versatile.”
Her work, in its versatility, is open for interpretation.
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]]>The post Step Inside Polly Townsend’s Eerily Secluded Landscapes appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>Exploring some of the most remote and hostile landscapes in the world, Townsend’s artwork presents a view of the world beyond the familiar, showcasing apparently desolate places that are almost entirely uninhabited.
Each painting is the result of an expedition or a residency. “The work draws on journeys I have made to specific destinations around the world,” Townsend explained in an interview with Jackson’s Art. “They are places where the land is stark and exposed, unfertile, remote, and even hostile,” she adds.
Her work is gradual, producing first small works on-site using a collapsible easel, sketchbooks, and photographs, and then building up to larger canvases in her London studio. “I travel with a basic lightweight kit (oils or acrylics depending on practicality) and a small easel, pencils, charcoals, and a camera,” says Townsend. “Sometimes these small works succeed in their own right and sometimes they become the backbone of studio work.”
While her work strikes a chord with us, it’s also very much detached, creating a sense of foreignness and unexplored territories. See for yourself:
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]]>The post These Artists Will Inspire You to Think Out of the Box appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>The following artists will inspire you to broaden your horizons when it comes to your definition of art. Who knows, they might just inspire you to pick up your brush.
Stone Painting
First up is Japanese artist Akie Nakata. Using small stones and pebbles as her canvas, Nakata’s miniature paintings take after the natural world. Cats, owls, and frogs come to life as she paints them on stone. According to Nakata, she chooses stones that already resemble animals. She then paints straight onto them, using acrylic paint. The end result is quite remarkable.
Teabag Painting
Ruby Silvious uses a different material altogether as her canvas: used, dried-up teabags. Her miniature art includes recreations of classic paintings such as Gabriël Metsu’s painting, Woman: “I want viewers to keep an open mind and think beyond the boundaries of what they may consider traditional art,” Silvious remarked once.
“In today’s throw-away culture, where we have immediate access to an abundance of materials and numerous mediums to choose from, all things become possible.” Alongside used teabags, Silvious also paints on broken eggshells and wine corks.
Illustrating with Everyday Objects
Chances are, you’ve stumbled across Christoph Niemann’s illustrations at least once. Celebrated as the world’s best illustrator, his work appears regularly on the covers of The New Yorker, National Geographic, and The New York Times Magazine. Part of his charm and wit is his unique use of everyday objects, incorporating physical objects like matchsticks and socks, into his illustrations.
“More than a specific visual style, my trademark has always been to autonomously, swiftly, and conceivably map out and execute an idea,” Niemann once shared with The Creative Independent. “Nobody ever approached me asking for a drawing of, say, a dinosaur with a fridge as a head done ‘in my style.’”
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]]>The post Maysha Mohamedi’s Abstract Paintings Say It Like It Is appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>With most of her work being abstract, her creative process is very much based on intuition. “I want to make paintings that feel very true,” says Mohamedi. “I think I can do that if I don’t control the inception of the idea very much. I’m sort of like a semipermeable membrane; I just look at what’s around me, watch the thoughts that I have, listen to my children, listen to the air. I’m this filter for whatever’s happening around me.”
As for her inspiration, she finds it in the mundanities of everyday life. “I’m inspired by the things my children say, I’m inspired by my husband, my parents, my heritage, visiting other artist’s studios and seeing the way they do things, watching somebody hold a pencil in an unusual way and the way they press it onto a surface,” she explains. “That inspires me because I think, Why not? Why can’t I try that? Everything inspires me. I’m a sponge and a filter.”
Based in Los Angeles, she has exhibited widely in LA and is also a founding member of the Los Angeles art collective, The Binder of Women. Her work has been profiled in publications such as the LA Times and Huffington Post, but you can also follow her online, via Instagram.
:@musiy
Maysha Mohamedi “I’m Not the Milk and the Milk’s Not Me” 2019 24 x 36 inches Edition of 22 Printed on Black Arches #HamiltonPress #Lithograph #MayshaMohamedi @pathamilton5706The post Maysha Mohamedi’s Abstract Paintings Say It Like It Is appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>The post The Vibrant Painted Gardens of Alexandra Karamallis appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>Her Iranian heritage also plays a central within her work. Identifying as a member of the Baha’i Faith – an oppressed minority in Iran – she explores themes including the oppression of women and minority faiths. Her artistic goal? To make art that is at once thought-provoking and joyful.
Having earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010, her work includes anything from watercolor gouache paintings and collages to knitting sweaters. “I’m a very whatever I feel inspired to do is what I will do kind of a creative person,” she told Matter of Hand. “I love knitting and painting, but I go through phases with both of them. I will really focus on painting for four or five months and then, often in the fall, I’ll start to feel like I want to knit a sweater.”
Much like her work, Karamallis’ creative process varies from piece to piece. “Typically in the front end of the process I do the research and take notes, then I come to a decision more or less about what I want the content of the painting to be,” she explains. After her visual research, she sits down and paints. “I try to come up with a color story that feels cohesive,” she says. “Oftentimes if I decide on a color that I want to have some kind of movement throughout the piece, I will lay it down in a couple places instead of finishing one area first. I try to look at the whole thing throughout the process. I think that a lot of painters do that to create a larger, cohesive composition. “
Her inspiration includes artists like Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Gauguin, but also Persian miniature painting, and Persian rugs and gardens. “One of the biggest goals in a Persian garden is to create protected relaxation outdoors with the same level of privacy that you would feel in your own home,” she notes. “That is something that is really interesting to me.”
Enter her painted gardens:
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]]>The post Get Into Shape with Albert Chamillard appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>Inspired by Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, and Edward Gorey, Chamillard’s illustrations make for a soothing, meditative effect. With a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Arizona, he operates a drawing and bookmaking studio in Tucson, AZ, where he has lived for eighteen years.
#drawing #composition #design #process #topnine2019“I work during the day, so on weekdays I generally start drawing around 8 pm, and work for 2-3 hours,” he relayed in an interview with Faithwaites. “Weekends provide more daytime hours, and I draw quickly, so I’m able to produce a lot of finished work. I find it helpful to have small sketchbooks with me, so I can work out ideas and sketches if I’m on the phone at work, in a meeting, etc. This time also includes finding shows, preparing works for exhibition, documenting, etc.”
“I love making art,” he says, “so I find it easy to motivate myself – it’s something I always want more time to do. I also draw and make art every day, and I think that having a daily practice is a natural motivator, as well. I have a day job, and I’m a busy parent, so it’s not always easy, but for me, a lot of the drive to make art comes from the process of making art.”
Follow his Instagram page for more:
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]]>The post Realism Meets Cubism In Kirstine Reiner Hansen’s Paintings appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>“I started painting this way out of a need to learn the basics of painting so that I could one day work in a looser style,” she adds. “So it became a means to an end so to speak and a challenge to see if I could master the techniques of the old masters.” It all culminated when she moved to New York, where she felt that all those conditions she had put on herself became impossible. At the same time, she explains, there was this persistent underlying nagging voice for change. “It just seemed to become the right time to break out of the self-imposed mold and start experimenting to make those changes I needed to feel more authentic in what I was doing,” she says.
And so, a surreal, loose, and experimental style was born. “I decided that now everything was fair game, photographic source material, appropriation of imagery, using whichever materials, working from the computer screen and so on,” she relays. “So I turned around and did the opposite of what I used to do. Anyway, to make a long story short, this has turned into my ‘style’ as it is now.” She described this style as “realism tumbles with cubism.”
Now based in Berlin, her work has been featured in various publications, including Juxtapoz Magazine and Beautiful/Decay Magazine. In her latest body of work, a series of paintings titled “Glorious Rejects”, she continues to draw on the strategies and manipulations of fashion and media, mashed up with art history, exploring identity and connections. Appropriating imagery from magazines and advertising as a visual reference, she conjoins these images with art historical elements, from renaissance paintings to modernists in collage-like paintings.
But the finished products are open for interpretation. “I think art should be ambiguous enough to allow for different interpretations,” Reiner Hansen stresses. “What I hope for, is for people to create their own narratives… that they hopefully look at the work for more than a glance.”
Take a closer look:
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]]>The post Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s Art Is In Continuous Metamorphosis appeared first on PlayJunkie.
]]>Born in South London in 1994, Yearwood-Dan completed her BA in Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton, before residing back in London. According to her website, being highly expressive and tied to her identity as a young British artist, her work is in continuous metamorphosis.
I feel very proud of myself which is something I rarely say (or believe in tbh)…so also thank you to me for being me 
Open Thursday 17th and Friday 18th January 10am-5pm. Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th January 11am-5pm“I think that over time my artwork has become a bit more confident and refined via the imagery I use,” she added in an interview with Dateagle Art. “Regardless as to whether I’m creating abstract or figurative work, I think I approach each piece with a sense of confidence that steams from the knowing that I’m still learning and growing and if something doesn’t work out that it’s all part of the process towards me making something I’m truly happy with,” she adds.
Her paintings are often based on references to both the origins of traditional fine art and pop culture, including images of late-night food spots, overtly feminine stereotypes, and botanical influences within personalized visual narrative. As a contemporary artist working in a historically renowned art form, Yearwood-Dan’s work heavily focuses on method and technique, often borrowing and adapting traits from western, Japanese, and Chinese historical painting and craft.
“I think I do sometimes think of that work when I’m feeling moments of self-doubt,” says Yearwood-Dan, “conscious that interchanging between figurative and abstract may make it hard for people to establish my work as my own, however, I realize that the way I use paint there is a clear signifier that they share the same artist.”
‘good for now’ 2019 
Pink Kryptonite 
. . . . . “Don’t you ever loose your crown” “They ask meh were meh get it fram […] a true dem meh know it’s fram creation” The post Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s Art Is In Continuous Metamorphosis appeared first on PlayJunkie.
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