Original drawings of rosy-cheeked girls with glasses, pink hair, and antlers. Why didn’t I think of that? Luckily the LA based artist behind ‘Pretty Little Thieves’ did.

Cowboys, cafes and drugs ~ there’s got to be a story in there somewhere.

I’m not sure if I’m more jealous of these oil paintings by Drew Deane or the many inspiration gathering road trips she’s obviously been on. These amazing signs remind me that I still haven’t lived out a life long dream of driving across the southern states in an old gold convertible… I know, I know, how very Thelma & Louise of me.

This just in:

Detail of ‘Spiritual America’, Richard Prince 1983

Here’s a strange coincidence. As I was working on my latest show, ‘Finders Keepers’ {featuring work that uses found imagery}, the Tate wound up in the middle of a controversy over exactly that.

A few days ago a nude photograph Brooke Shields, at the age of 10, was removed from the walls of the Tate. Children’s campaigners are calling it pornography, not art. This is where the line gets fuzzy. The original photograph, taken by Gary Gross in 1975, certainly looks like child pornography… Brooke’s mom consented to this photo by the way. Years later that same image is rephotographed by artist Richard Prince, in order to make a statement about ‘a society that would celebrate the commodification of a little girl’, and therefore becomes art  – right? It was supposed to be included in the current exhibition, ‘Pop Life: Art in a Material World’, at the Tate Modern, but was taken down before the show even opened. I guess all we can do now is ponder the age old question, What is art?  Makes your head hurt a little bit doesn’t it?

Ladies and gentlemen… My Mooks! Custom ordered. Animal masks chosen by me. Ready to be displayed in my home. So cool!

I wrote about Kimberley Laurenti’s masked Mooks about a month ago, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I bought them. They were my first official ‘Jealous Curator’ purchase. Hm, I better be careful… this could get quite expensive if I start buying everything that I write about. Note to self: never ever write about sculptures made of diamonds & gold.

I must have beef on the brain, much like the guy in the image above. After my last post featuring Ilana Kohn’s steaks I ended up finding these pieces by Christian Northeast. I found the top most image first, and then as I made my way through Christian’s portfolio I found the other two. I thought they told quite a nice little story when shown together… and now I’m hungry, but also slightly grossed out. Maybe I’ll just have an apple.

Hunks of meat, a puppet show and Christmas jeers… how can you not be jealous of this work by illustrator Ilana Kohn? I chose these three from her portfolio because I love the grey scale, quite detailed faces against the flat colours & shapes that surround them… and to be honest, and not artsy at all, I really really really like those big chunks of steak.

I’ve been charmed by Charming Baker. Ok, not a very original joke, but it’s true!

I had just planned on showing the first painting of the school group… but then I found the one with the horse… and then the one with holes drilled into it. I could have kept going too, but I stopped myself before it spun out of control. And that’s when I realized that I had in fact been charmed.

When I first saw these soft, yet striking, pieces by Melissa Doherty I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. Is it sculpture? Photographs of tiny models? Nope, they’re paintings. Oil on canvas. Amazing! Now in my defense, Melissa does say that she thinks ‘of each painting more as a still life, construction, or model, and a metaphor for comfort, desire, protection, isolation and facade’… so at least my model theory wasn’t that far off!

{This artist was brought to my attention by Eric Cator, another fabulous painter that I wrote about in July. His blog is called paintblog and features lots & lots of painters that would make anyone jealous!}