Jeremy Mann

I love how Jeremy Mann uses texture as well as his combination of hard and soft edges. You can also see a lot of the toned canvas which is something I like. Each of his works seems so wholly genuine, a mix of mystery and grit that brings a sublime light to iconic cities like New York and San Francisco.

Abdi Farah

Christine Comyn

Christine Comyn's work appeals to me because I love the way she uses big bold strokes to create a feeling of movement, especially within her dancers series. I also love the way she lets the bright undertone of her canvas come through in various parts of her painting, but at the same time makes her work appear resolved. I think her work is a great example of how a few strokes of paint to give enough information to let the viewer know what they're looking at. It is almost complex in its simplicity.

Benjamin Cohen

KwangHo Shin

Lisa Yuksavage- week 2

Lisa Yuksavage is a traditional oil painter I found who focuses on the female form. What makes Yuksavage interesting is how she enhances the woman's curves and body in a softly sexual way. She does this to the point where it gives the feeling of a fantasy. One of the thing I love most about Yuksavage's work, is her use of color. I think she gets the most amazing hues to come through in her work that really add to the feel of each piece. One Huffington Post article states, "Yuskavage explores the paradoxical nature of beauty by painting cartoonish, child- like women in sexually-charged poses often set amidst an expansive landscape setting...Her work as a whole pushes the limits of voyeurism and eroticism." I feel like her work also conveys socio-cultural connotations as girls today are becoming sexually active much earlier in life, and the desire to be sexy is more prevalent within the younger generation of girls. Her painting depict an odd contradiction of innocence and promiscuity. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/lisa-yuskavage-birthday-female-artist-51_n_3280858.html)

Ryan Mendoza- artist week 1

Ryan Mendoza is an artist I discovered a little while back but has really inspired my work. I love his work for the expressive way he applies paint and the limited palette he uses. He has a very painterly style and although he shrouds his figures in a darker light, he conveys a feeling and emotion in his paintings that almost tells a story. On his website a passage reads, "In the past, a family photographer would turn on the spotlights to capture his customers’ features with clarity and exactitude. But when he invites them into his studio, Mendoza turns the lights out. For the privacy of the dead does not require less discretion than the privacy of the living. The dead cannot defend themselves. Their fear of the dead is even greater than our own. Mendoza knows this and covers his characters with a veil of half-light. But, sometimes, he allows a child to enter his studio who, in the painting of some of his pictures, naively draws an object to so identify a life that is no longer. Because not much remains of a life: the memory of a tricycle, or a top hat that one finds forgotten in a cupboard.” (http://www.ryan-mendoza.com/index.php?/about/bla/)