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A post shared by Jess Cochrane (@jesscochrane____) on Dec 4, 2019 at 2:20pm PST

The palettes, the scale, those loose brushstrokes over dreamy female portraits… and clearly I had to include that video, which by the way, I could watch on repeat all day. Sigh. This is the gorgeous work of Jess Cochrane, an Australian artist based in London. Here are the words from her ‘about’ page:

Cochrane’s work questions the relationship between society, consumerism and pop culture. Her focus is on feminine beauty, illustrated through the application of paint over photographic images. Cochrane reflects upon insecurity and perfectionism in the modern age. Connecting the history of art, design and advertising, she plays on the idea of pop culture and its roots that are planted in both displaying and disguising parts of ourselves.

Beautiful. Be sure to follow her on Instagram too, because she posts a lot of mesmerizing ‘in progress’ videos {like the one above that I’ve watched 23 times}.

{found via Create Magazine}

Yep, I love absolutely everything about this colorful, bizarre, craziness! This is the totally weird work of Portland based artist {and 2nd grade teacher!} Jessie Weitzel Le Grand. The majority of the images above are from a 2019 series titled “Bloom Tomb”. Here is Jessie’s poetic description of this installation:

A thought, like an ambient smell.
It wafts in like a fart.

Hot trash. Musky shoes. It’s meant to be ignored. But this time, maybe—TURN NOW!

Finally see the metal FLY.
Where would you go? A place like no other.

It’s either pitch black or a miracle.
A town of no rules, no pain.

You have arrived.

LOVE! And the final piece above, titled “Drowsy Droop”, is part of Jessie’s show that is currently at Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland until March 21, 2020… GO.

{Photos of Bloom Tomb by John Whitten; Photo of Drowsy Droop by Mario Gallucci}

Oh, American artist Phyllis Bramson …♥! I absolutely LOVE the weird and wonderful mixed media worlds she creates. In fact, I featured Phyllis in my book, A Big Important Art Book – Now With Women … how could I not, after reading her artist statement:

“I use images that are infused with lighthearted arbitrariness and amusing anecdotes about love and affection, in an often cold and hostile world. Mostly, I am making work that percolates forth life’s imperfections: that doesn’t take decorum all that seriously, refusing to separate matters of taste from larger questions about “good behavior.” The paintings are reactions to all sorts of sensuous events, from the casual encounter to highly formalized exchanges of lovemaking (and everything in between). Miniaturized schemes, which meander between love, desire, pleasure and tragedy; all channeled through seasonal changes. Burlesque-like and usually theatrical incidents, that allow for both empathy and “addled” folly, while projecting capricious irritability with comic bumps along the way.”

Her most recent work {yes, the unicorn!} is currently in a group show, titled “Round Hole/Square Peg”, that opened this past weekend at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts. The show will be up until June 6, 2020.

{Round Hole/Square Peg also features the work of Lisa Marie Barber, Erin Hayden, Cody Hudson, Janis Kanter, Sheida Soleimani, Chris Uphues, Caroline Wells Chandler and Wendy White.}

That visor. I’m dying. These are just a couple of the latest ceramic pieces by UK based artist Claire Partington. I wrote about her last year around this time, but these fabulous pieces are included in an upcoming exhibition, titled “Cranach: Artist and Innovator” so I just had to share her work again. Here’s some info about the show:

The archetypal Renaissance man, Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553) was one of the most successful German artists of all time.

Cranach’s paintings of German nobility and the leaders of the Protestant Reformation made him a highly sought after portraitist in his own time, while today he is best known for his seductive paintings of the female nude, which beautifully express temptation and its consequences. Cranach was also a talented entrepreneur, founding a successful publishing business and producing powerful woodcut illustrations for Luther’s translation of the bible.

Featuring some of Cranach’s most beguiling paintings and illustrations, on loan from the National Gallery, the Royal Collection, the British Museum and Waddesdon Manor, the exhibition will also showcase Cranach’s enduring appeal to a range of modern and contemporary artists, including: John Currin, Isabelle Hayman, Michael Landy, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Andrew McIntosh, Ishbel Myerscough, Claire Partington, Pablo Picasso and Raqib Shaw. 

The exhibition will be on view from March 14th through until June 14th 2020 at Compton Verney in Warwickshire.

*Photos by Dan Weill

I always like to keep an eye on what Australian painter Wanda Comrie is up to! While she usually paints plants beautifully arranged on pattern-covered tables, she’s recently started expanding her view. Hello, domestic interiors… I like your weird ceramic dog.

ps. Follow her on Instagram because she’s always posting videos, closeups, and lovely works in progress.

Ahhh, LA based artist Seonna Hong, one of my favorite artists… and she happens to have a new show, titled Liminal Space, opening THIS SATURDAY, March 7th at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York. I’m lucky enough to be seeing them in person later this week {I’ll be filming part of my upcoming Skillshare class there!} The opening is on Saturday from 6-8pm, and Seonna will be there… you should be too!

Oh. My. Word. This is the bizarre, beautiful and bedazzled work of American artist Amy Gross. I don’t even know where to start… the mushrooms, that hidden bird, the eyeballs!? I’m gonna pass this one over to Amy:

“My hand-embroidered and beaded fiber sculptures are my attempt to merge together the natural world and my own inner life. Their symbiosis suggests not only what can be seen, but also what cannot: the early alterations of time, the first suggestions of disintegration. I’ve always been attracted and frightened by things that are on the edge of spoiling, or straining to support an excess of growth. My elements seem to cluster, tangle, cling and multiply. They surpass some of the constrictions that my mind insists upon: my need to control excess, to categorize and label and keep things safe. They adapt to the environment they are placed into, like much of Florida life, and become hybrids in their desire to survive and thrive. And yet, paradoxically, their existence cannot help but be an exercise in human control – they are completely unnatural. I do not collaborate with the nature that fascinates me, the myriad visible and invisible interactions that lie at the heart of every insect, bacteria, tree and spore. I collaborate with manufacturing. I use no found objects, nothing that was ever alive. All are constructed with craft store yarns and beads and wire and paper and fabric transfers made from altered scans and manipulated photographs. They’re still and silent proxies, fictions frozen in the midst of their suggested transformation. My organisms will not die. The natural world will alter, regardless of any attempts to prolong or preserve. I know that my making these objects will not slow or stop the clock, perhaps they only clutter the environment with my very human need to turn thoughts into objects. Stubbornly, I still need to hold things still, insist upon asserting my will, to make up things that tell a story of change, things that capture rushing ideas in a life that races by.”

Loooooooove.

GAH! How am I just discovering this work now!? These fantastic mixed media pieces are the work of Austin-based American artist Deborah Roberts. She is smart, talented and prolific, with her works being included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art just to name a few! I’m going to include her entire artist statement here, because, well you’ll see:

“Whether I was aware of it or not, otherness has been at the center of my consciousness since the beginning of my artistic career. My early ideals of race and beauty were shaped by and linked through paintings of renaissance artists and photographs in fashion magazines. Those images were mythical, heroic, beautiful, and powerful and embodied a particular status that was not afforded equally to anyone I knew. Those images influenced the way I viewed myself and other African Americans, which led me to investigate the way our identities have been imagined and shaped by societal interpretations of beauty. Having one’s identity dismantled, marginalized and regulated to non-human status demands action. This led me to critically engage image-making in art history and pop-culture, and ultimately grapple with whatever power and authority these images have over the female figure.

My art practice takes on social commentary, critiquing perceptions of ideal beauty. Stereotypes and myths are challenged in my work; I create a dialogue between the ideas of inclusion, dignity, consumption, and subjectivity by addressing beauty in the form of the ideal woman, the Venus. By challenging Venus, my work challenges the notion of universal beauty—making room for women of color who are not included in this definition.

Wading through my work, you must look through multiple layers, double meanings and symbols. My process combines found and manipulated images with hand drawn and painted details to create hybrid figures. These figures often take the form of young girls. I’m interested in the way young girls symbolize vulnerability but also a naïve strength. The girls who populate my work, while subject to societal pressures and projected images, are still unfixed in their identity. Each girl has character and agency to find their own way amidst the complicated narratives of American, African American and art history.”

YES!

{discovered via Art She Says’ Instagram feed}

Today’s episode is very different than the usual ART FOR YOUR EAR. I was supposed to have New York based artist Tara Lewis as my guest, but both of us are sick. Never fear, I’ll have her on next week!  I thought I’d just skip this week altogether, but at the beginning of last week’s episode, I told you I was saving up some super deep and reflective stuff for today, so brace yourself. I have to tell you… I am nervous about hitting PUBLISH. I sat at my computer for ages trying to decide if I really should tell this story or not. It’s not about art, so if you’ve come to hear an interview with an artist, well, you’ll have to come back next week. I decided to tell a very personal story… a story that I’ve never told publicly before. It’s not something I talk about very much… in fact, I try not to think about it very much either. That said, a couple of weeks ago, on February 17^th, I put a post up on Instagram, and so many of the responses gave me chills. This short, very personal episode is the result. Thank you for listening, and if you don’t want to listen, that’s okay too. Click play under that big bouquet of apologies, or you can subscribe to the podcast right here.

Two artists? Yep. This is Manja Eland {left} and Saskia Overzee {right}, but together they are Observe A Fishtank. I have been following them on Instagram for ages, and have been totally curious about their collaborative paintings? How does it work? Who does what? I asked, and they told me:

OBSERVE A FISHTANK, a visual dialogue  Observe a Fishtank is the second of five drawing lessons by Paul Klee. It’s also the title of the drawing collaboration two artists from Eindhoven, the Netherlands initiated in 2018. Looking to challenge their artistic ability they started a visual dialogue. Saskia Overzee and Manja Eland met each other when they both had their studio at Sectie C. Since Manja moved they have been meeting at Saskia’s studio to draw together every couple of weeks.  

PROCESS  The artists try to stretch their artistic routines and drawing hand. When drawing on the same piece of paper they respond to each other’s input in texture and line, not shying away from working over what the other has drawn. The essence of their creative process is searching by doing. In the end result it is impossible to distinguish who did what, sometimes even for themselves. To work so closely together requires flexibility and trust. In this synergy they create work that they wouldn’t make alone. 1+1=3, you could say. The artists prefer work to be layered and complex, maybe even with a little friction.

All works are made with liquid acrylics, ink, pen, pencil and sometimes crayon on heavy paper. Dimensions vary from 30×42 to 100×150 cm.

SPIN OFFS  Under the title Observe a Fishtank they create collaborative originals but also individual spinoffs. Saskia makes digital collages based on parts of the drawings they made together. Manja sometimes incorporates bits and pieces of the originals as layers into her digital drawings. So not only do they create new collaborative work, they also let the style and creative process inspire and influence their own work.

So beautiful and fun and exciting! ps. Here’s an example of two of their “spin offs”. The first is by Saskia, and the second is Manja’s work:

*bio photo by Anniek Mol