Pino

A regular customer came into my job today with some art books. I told him about what I was studying last week and he got really excited and brought me these books to look at. His favorite, and the one he wanted to talk about the most, was Pino. Pino is from Italy, and he was born in 1939. Sadly, he passed away last year. Anyway, the title of his book is "Contemporary Realism," in which he showcases beautiful oil paintings. They mostly feature women, but his touch is unique. He uses fast strokes, and his work has an impressionist feel. He puts the most detail usually within the face of the subject, and the backgrounds tend to be less detailed, and "carelessly" stroked with paint, leaving the evidence of the brush behind. I've never really been drawn to painting that much (pun intended), but looking at Pino's work makes me want to invest in some oil paints. Honestly, I don't even think I've ever seen oil paints.

I just looked this book up on Amazon, and it costs around $250. Wow. His paintings are really gorgeous, though. I'm really glad talking about art with a random customer brought me Pino.

The Last Dance
www.pino-artist.com

Waiting
www.pino-artist.com

Annette Messager

"The Messengers" is Annette Messager's (obvious play on title due to her surname) 2009 exhibition at the Hayward Gallery that spans 4 years of Messager's work. Messager addresses topics such as sexuality, childhood, the body, identity, etc, in her art. She uses everyday objects in her installations such as childhood toys, photographs, and fabrics to create pretty interesting multi-media pieces. The way she sets up her installations forces viewers to look at these objects in different ways.

( from here)

I think the above piece is my favorite from "The Messengers." It focuses on body parts. They're separated, but they are still one, or a whole - and that's how it processes in my mind. I think about each image as a separate thing that makes up this great thing that is the human body, both male and female. I like how all of the images are in black and white, too. Color would have been too distracting. Some of the images are repeated in different sizes, but it does a good job of unifying the piece.

Anne Boyles

Smoking

Kids

Engaged

I stumbled upon Anne Boyles today. She's a young artist in Boise, Idaho, and I'm about 85% positive I went to high school with her.  But anyway, she's 23 and she studied in New York for awhile, but now she's back and she's been doing these awesome photorealistic paintings. Her work can be found on anneboyles.com and all of the images are pulled from that website. 

Walkens Welcome

Marilyn Monroe

I've always been envious of those who are skilled with a brush, and I've also had a fascination with photorealism. What I love about Anne's work is that I'm really not convinced they are paintings just by looking at the images of them, because they seriously look like photographs. I'd like to see them in real life! The one of the girl smoking really intrigues me. She has a nice touch with a paintbrush.