Daily Art: Self Portrait as a child by Kim Thompson

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Today's Daily Art is by upcoming artist Kim Thompson. According to Kim this artwork is, "Based on a composite of photographs of myself as a child, this recent piece is part of a series I am currently working on which reflects my current sense of self. Now approaching my late twenties, I feel increasingly aware of the notion of 'growing up', yet in 'serious' situations often still feel like a child pretending to ...be so".  

Daily Art: Infectious Alto by Thaniya McArdle

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This dazzling artwork is the creation of Florida based artist Thaniya McArdle who draws inspiration from tribal art. In her own words, "This painting is aesthetically inspired by my keen interest in the folk arts of Mexico and India, particularly in the intensity of their color palettes and their detailed patterns. This painting combines my love for tribal art with a contemporary urban aesthetic resulting in a fresh, vibrant abstract style that expresses the complexity and multiplicity of modern life through a youthful and jubilant perspective". More of her work can be seen here. 

Daily Art: Sushma Seth by Bonny Hazuria

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This is a mixed media piece by Delhi based artist Bonny Hazuria. The veteran actress Sushma Seth is wearing an eye-catching Benarasi saree and vintage pearl and diamond jewellery and the portrait   captures Sushma's natural elegance so well. I specially like the beautiful rendering of her sharp intelligent eyes and determined mouth. An expression we have seen so often in her on-screen portrayal of strong independent women. You can view more of Bonny's work here.      

Daily Art: RA Magazine Cover by Grayson Perry

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Today's Daily Art is the cover of the new Royal Academy magazine by Grayson Perry. It is an attempt to comment on the tastes of the British public, especially those who visit the annual Summer Exhibition. The cover is bright and lively but it leaves me unmoved. The colours are more Las Vegas than British middle class, although I have to admit, it's a relief to see the British being associated with colours other than the Red, Blue and White of the Union Jack. The usual middle class favourites - Waitrose, Radio 4, Mulberry and Le Creuset find their way onto the poster which makes it look even more gimmicky and too much like an advertisement . 

Despite the cover I’m still going to visit the exhibition next week. Expect a deluge about the all the Art I cannot wait to see.

Hope you all have a lovely long weekend! 

Daily Art: Charlie Chaplin Pop Art

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The work of Kazakhi artist Gennady Guirik caught my eye because of  combination of elements of pop art, collage and patchwork of bright colours. He studied Interior Architecture at the Muchina University for Decorative and Applied Art. and lives and works in St.Petersburg.

According to him, "The white canvas is so secretive! A face, objects from a still life, flowers and birds, architecture and music – there are motifs enough; you simply need patience. I believe a painter needs to be mobile - like life itself, which breathes and moves....It’s never too late to learn".

View more of his work here.

Daily Art : Not. ID 003 by Takahiro Kimura

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Takahiro Kimura was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1965. His education at Salesian Polytechnic involves technology of painting, graphic design, skill of drawing, landscape painting and fashion drawing.

Starting his artistic career in 1991, Kimura combined all these skills to develop a very unique personal style.  He makes collages by cutting up photos and rearranging them onto a canvas to which colour is then applied, creating a highly original effect.

Since 2003, Kimura has become interested in faces, producing a series of collages on this theme. There is a sense of dynamism in each portrait, it seems like the subject was captured in mid-sentence. Their faces still appear lit up with emotion. Although the images are composites of several photographs, Kimura deftly breathes life into the anonymous faces. In his own words "He wants to capture dreamy, hallucinatory and constantly mutating movements of people in his drawings".

View more of Takahiro Kimura's work here.

Daily Art: The New Yorker by Danny Olda

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The New Yorker is by Danny Olda, a Florida based artist who likes to use geometric patterns and bright solid colours in his artwork. It is such a fun piece, it immediately makes me think of a white room with accents of pink and orange and the painting propped up on the mantle. To complete the look, I would hang another work by the same artist beside it, the Family Circle. Infact Danny's work like most pop art, would look best hung together in twos or threes. Check out more of his work here, to see what I mean. 

Both images courtesy Danny Olda.

Daily Art : Luciano Di Liberato

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Tondo di Paradiso (1994)

The artist Luciano de Liberato lives and works in Chieti (Italy). He began his artistic career in 1975 as a shy young artist and immediately aroused much interest among prominent Italian art critics.

After a decade of frenetic activity at both national and international scale, and prestigious appearances, such as Art Basel (1983), he decided to withdraw from public life in the early eighties and continue his work in total isolation. Moving away from the dictates of fashion and mannerist trends has helped him gain a highly personal language.

under construction 51 (2009/2011)

Images courtesy Luciano Di Liberato.

Daily Art: Sans Titre by Sadek Rahim

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This painting reminded me so much of ‘Brun eksplosion’ by Jens Paldam. It is strange that two different artists based in different countries would think of such a similar concept. The two paintings can easily be part of the same collection, showing men with their heads bursting into a cornucopia of colours. Both paintings can lend themselves to myriad meanings – suggesting the flowering of an individual’s intellect or maybe depicting his innermost thoughts. I am still trying to figure out, why don’t you have a go and let me know what you think. 

What surprises me is that despite these similarities, the artists cannot be more culturally apart, while Paldam is a Dane who likes to work in pen and ink, Sadek Rahim is an Algerian and his work combines photography and installation, technology and design, skills that he honed during his MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design, London. 

Following his thesis project’s success at Central Saint Martin's in London, he has exhibited in many contemporary art spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Art MAMA Algiers, Paris at the Montparnasse Museum, Oran at the National Museum Zabana, The Brick Lane Gallery and the Oxford House in London and at the Alserkal Foundation Dubai. More of his work can be viewed here.

Daily Art : 'Nothing to Lose' by Mark Posey

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This intriguing portrait titled 'Nothing to Lose' is by San Francisco based artist Mark Posey. Mark who is a student at Academy of Art will be graduating this Summer with a Master of Fine Arts degree. View more of his paintings here.

Daily Art : Quiver by Miseon Yoon

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Incredible artwork by Korean artist Miseon Yoon made using fabric and thread.  View more of the artist's work here.  

Daily Art : "False Histories and confusions in Time 1886" by Stephen Thorpe

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As I am in Edinburgh this week, I want to feature a Scotland based artist on ‘Daily Art’. And of course I have just the artist in mind - Stephen Thorpe, an up and coming artist, who is heading straight for the stratosphere. Graduating in 2010 from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen with a First Class Honours degree in painting, he jump-started his career by receiving the Alexandrina McKenzie Legacy and the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) New Contemporaries Award. His work has recently been featured in Saatchi Gallery Online’s top ten weekly paintings. 

Thorpe likes to paint interior spaces, which he draws from his childhood memories of places he lived in or visited. This imparts his scenes with a strange familiarity. I almost get a sense of déjà vu when I look at his paintings; as if I have been in that room before, maybe I have walked on that tiled floor or sat on the patterned chair. 

However, despite the familiarity something feels amiss. A strange edgy quality which he achieves by distorting perspective, toying with architectural authenticity and spatial illusion and filling the rooms with ballast-patterning, furniture and ornaments, some unidentified fabric and un-natural geometric forms. According to him, “this is designed to question and test the viewers pre-conceptions of space, objects and their relationship in any given setting”.

Image courtesy Stephen Thorpe

Daily Art : Daniel Gonzalez Coves

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Net no.4 is a stark painting by Spanish artist Daniel Gonzalez Coves, but the attention to detail lifts it out of the ordinary. The subject is shown sitting sideways so that we only see her profile. She appears to be wearing a man’s shirt and is either listening to someone or lost deep in thought. Even though we can only see her profile she seems tense and there is a strange melancholic aura surrounding her.The painting can lend itself to several interpretations and that adds to its attraction.

Daniel lives and works in Valencia, more of his work can be viewed here.

Daily Art: Someday My Prince Will Come

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View more work by the artist Fiona Phillips here.

Pop Art Furniture by Silvia Zacchello

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Silvia Zacchello describes her work as recycling and restoring furniture and vintage objects with a pop art theme, but it is so much more than that. Like a true artist, she takes a common object, brushes it with her unique sensibility and turns it into something special. In Silvia’s case this special ability is her great sense of humour and the ability to have fun with her craft.

She grew up in Mestre, at a time of economic austerity, feminist demonstrations and blight, absorbing these environmental and equalitarian messages as her biggest inspirations. Complimentary to this is the joie de vivre in her work, which springs from her childhood in the 70’s and 80’s. Growing up with disco music, Superman and Wonder Woman as her heroes and travelling on family vacations in an Orange Fiat 128 3P, she formed an image of her ideal world - “absolutely colourful, conceivably inhabited by super-heroes”. 

Her journey as an artist started when one day she found an old chair in her house and decided to paint it in the images from her dream world - superheroes and comic books. Her idea was to rescue these objects from their gloomy existence and give them back a new, adventurous and colourful life. An idea that is clearly visible in her pieces even today, specially her chairs, which are painted with themes inspired by pop art, comic books and vintage graphics. These chairs with their bright pops of colour can instantly enliven a room and turn it into a happy space. 

Silvia Zacchello still lives and paints in the chaotic city of Mestre, in an apartment that she loves to continuously make more colourful.

All images courtesy Silvia Zacchello

Daily Art : The Snow Goose

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Today’s Daily art features “The snow goose”, painted in 1946 by Sir Peter Scott, is a portrait of his first wife - the beautiful novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. The painting depicts Howard as Fritha in the iconic book Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, which Scott illustrated in 1946.

The painting has a strange moodiness. Partly because of the awkward way in which Fritha is holding the wounded goose and the drawn, wary look in her big expressive eyes. The palette of dull washed out colours add to the sense of sadness. 

In her autobiography, Howard recalls how, on a passage to New York on board the Aquitania with four hundred GI brides, Scott had searched the ship for a suitable model for Fritha, but “with the general prostration and the fact that the brides were unexpectedly a series of ‘no oil paintings’, he had to fall back on me. I stood for hours holding a pillow, which he turned into the wounded snow goose.”

Earth Day with Anthropologie

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My Earth Day resolution for this year is “saving water”, by giving up leisurely (read wasteful) baths and taking quick 5-minute showers instead. 

If you are wondering where my inspiration comes from, just look at how Anthropologie are marking Earth day this year – by putting on stunning underwater theme windows at their stores across the US. These windows are public art with a very relevant message, which will no doubt inspire thousands of people to make small changes to their lifestyles. So what change are you making to your lifestyle this Earth Day? No matter what steps you’re taking - big or small – every little change will help make the world a greener place.

Rockefeller Centre, New York, NY

Rockefeller Centre, New York, NY

Columbus, OH

Dunwoody, GA

Edgewater, NJ

Nashville, TN

New Orleans, LA

Burlingame, CA

Allen, TX

Boston, MA

Paramus, NJ

Indianapolis, IN

Corte Madera, CA

Next month, one of us could own these oceanic creations. In May, select stores will be auctioning off their displays to benefit the marine habitat activists –the WylandFoundation - who raise awareness for the importance of healthy oceans and waterways through public art programs.

All images courtesy Anthropologie.

Daily Art : Brown Explosion

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"Brun eksplosion" (Brown explosion) is a pen and ink drawing by Jens Paldam who specialises in abstract expressionism. Jens was born in Aarhus, Denmark, and currently lives in the buzzing neighbourhood of Nørrebro in the northern part of Copenhagen. He has traveled the world and has lived in Santiago de Chile and Washington DC. In his own word "Traveling has left me with a small, but wholesome mountain within. It is from this geology that my art springs from...".
View more of his works here.

Martin Creed's makeover for Sketch

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Sketch the Gallery restaurant opened in 2002 as a “lieu” or destination place, for food, art and music, spread over two expansive floors of a converted 18th century building in Conduit Street, Mayfair, London. Over the last ten years, it has garnered much media attention for its imaginative and bold food, drink and entertainment styles.

Recently the restaurant re-opened after its much-awaited refurbishment by British artist Martin Creed. Creed has treated the restaurant like a giant canvas, in which every piece of furniture and cutlery is like a different brush stroke. First of a long-term programme of artist-conceived restaurants, it creates an environment that is simultaneously an exhibition, an artwork and a restaurant. The floor, walls and furniture take the form of new artworks that blur the boundaries of art and functionality.



Turner Award winning artist Martin Creed posing at Sketch 



Titled 'Work No. 1343', it brings together mass produced pieces with the handcrafted and juxtaposes antiques with contemporary design.



The flooring is a separate work of art labeled 'Work No. 1347', For this the former Turner Prize winner has brought together 96 different types of marble in a geometric formation on the floor, this pattern is picked up in the wall paintings.



The flooring under construction



All images courtesy Sketch

Daily Art : The Beginning of Memory

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This painting is very close to Romanian artist Melinda Matyas' heart as it reminds her of her childhood. She believes in abandoning the model after a while and letting her mind move without any external guide. This is when the moment of creation starts for her.