Lily van der Stokker

Lily van der Stokker is a dutch painter known mostly for her large paintings often on walls and sometimes including furniture or other accessories (installations). Her pieces are colorful, playful and look like doodles which I love. I would say her work is also whimsical but in a more carefree way. Stokker includes text into some of her pieces. Often times she will divulge information from her own life, like little facts about people she likes, things she's done and so on. I read that her work is quite radical in today's modern art scene because it is so easily understood by many. I wouldn't have thought of that but it makes sense. She wants it to be accessible and relate-able to the everyday person.
What I really want to know is if she made the furniture herself (or had it made) or if she found the pieces and then transformed them.

Kim Jones

Kim Jones is known more for his performance artwork than his work pictured here. I was shocked to find out though that in one his performances he set 3 live rats on fire. After finding this out and looking more at some of his sculptural or 3d pieces I realized that this man is a little crazy. I saw that he has a collection of colored "scalps" which is like the hair attatched to the scalp as if it had been ripped off. This man scares me a bit. I do admire though his boldness and the emotion that he is able to evoke out of me through his pieces.

From what I've researched the purpose of Jone's pieces above are to show the suffering of soldiers at war and humans alone. Like his mud man character his characters seem to be trapped or held down by some mass or growth around them. Jones is working on a subconscious level tapping into sexuality, fear, and violence. It's human nature to fight.

Jone's works above are most likely mixed media. Some feature photographs combined or altered.

Amy Cutler

Let me just say I LOVE her stuff! it's so whimsical, dark and funny at the same time. The inspiration for Cutler's work seems to come from a variety of sources. She draws from fairy tales, folk tales, current events, stories and her own imagination which create an amazing combination of realness and creativity. A lot of Cutler's works have "folk" looking women (refering to their style of dress and hair) performing different tasks some of which seem a bit bizarre.
When I was researching Cutler someone stated that the reoccuring themes in her work are "transformation and evolution". I could see that but in my opinion most common viewers of her work are probably going to pick up more on the whimsical funny side of her pieces. That might be a bit complex for viewers.
Cutler pays a lot of attention to detail and shows a lot of control in her pieces. She creates mostly paintings, drawings and prints.
I really like this artist. I love the feeling I get when I look at her pieces. They make me smile. I also love her just because she studied in Germany and I'm a bit jealous of that :)

this week

This week has been a bit busy. im still working in collage and trying to find cool "free" materials. I still can't decide how colorful I want to make my pieces. Right now i'm working on small canvases so I'm not sure how far I want to expand for my final pieces. I work 6 days a week right now so sadly im not getting as much done as i'd like to. Well i'll post more later. gotta work.

David Humphrey

David Humphrey was born in 1955 and currently lives in New York. He creates paintings, drawings and installations. His installation "snowman in love" made me laugh a bit. He tied 6 or more inflatable snowmen together as well as snowman paintings other inflatable snowmen. I like that many of his works have a sense of humor and fun to them. I also like that they're a bit complex and there's a lot to look at. he also has a book of his artwork and words.

Humphrey stated: "My paintings are frequently depictions of depictions. I will copy an amateur painting, for instance, the way a band might cover a song written by someone else, or the way a singer renders an old chestnut. I try to get inside the other person's point of view to stretch my own. Sometimes the preexisting image, like an eccentrically generic landscape, will provide a location for one of my paintings. Sometimes a sad clown or beloved pet painting will provide the protagonist. My handmade renditions, though, take a lot of liberties with the originals. I will add characters or exaggerate and mutate elements. But the work will evolve from contact with the original and will carry iconographic elements, and sometimes feelings, into the finished state."

Humphrey gathers inspiration from flea markets, antique stores and the internet. He also mentioned being influenced by eisenhower's work of creating drawings based on greeting cards. He believes that he does something similar.

I like the contained craziness of his pieces and his use of color. His pieces don't seem too formal but they do show thought.

david huffman

David Huffman is influenced by asian landscapes yet is able to adapt them to today's world and make them all his own. "The representational elements in Huffman’s work are typically interpreted as social commentary. The imagery certainly represents Huffman’s experience as an African-American man who has an awareness of history and politics. Along with social awareness, there is an existential element—a sense of humans as small creatures who must operate in a vast, unstable, and dangerous world."

Huffman's pieces have a bit of a dramatic or tragic undertone due to objects associated with slavery but this tone seems to less apparent due to complexity of his pieces. His focus isn't just the past but also the present and the future. Also his pieces aren't all just about sadness and suffering but also about hope and imagination.

Huffman usually works with mixed media and on a large scale. He is a contemporary artist.

I like the complexity of his pieces and the fact that they have a message and meaning. I want my artwork to have a meaning and be visually grabbing such as huffman's art.

Josef Frank

so i went to google and realized that it looked really cool today and was influenced by josef frank. I really love his sense of shape, pattern and emotion of his pieces. they seem fun which i really love. I also love the fact that his art is practical. its on furniture and clothing. I think this helps to spread his art as well.
Here's a little bit about the artist.
He was an architect and designer in Europe. He is called the father of modern art in Scandinavia. He was born in 1885 in Austria and died at the age of 81. He ultimately settled in Sweden where he worked for a textile company. He spent many years at this company producing his patterns. This company also named him the father of modern art.

I really like the energy of his pieces. They're just fun and exciting to look at. They do remind me though of medieval tapestries a bit. I could see a bit of collage influence in these pieces as well. They're not so geometric and rigid but more organic and free flowing which I think attracts me the most. I love it because I feel like you look at the piece as a whole and not just repeating pieces.