Artists I'd like steal from:

Dana Schutz: Creative and humorous narratives, wide variety of concepts
Lucian Freud: Psychological impact of portraiture
Jenny Saville: Exaggerated perspective and proportions
Lisa Yuskavage: Droopy stylization of form, bright colors
Neal Adams: Fluid narrative compositions
N.C. Wyeth: Visual storytelling and dynamic compositions full of tension
Maxfield Parrish: Luminous colors and stunning depiction of light
Matt Rockefeller: Jumbled, interesting compositions with narrative detail
Guillermo Del Toro: Capturing a mood, making interesting and unsettling images

Dana Schutz is an American artist who merges organic and geometric in her colorfully abstracted paintings. Among other things, she loves to paint situations that might be considered awkward or embarrassing in real life. Her work dips into expressionism and realism, but bright colors and humorous subjects are constants in all her paintings.

Reformers, 2004

 I enjoy Schutz's paintings for their comedic absurdity, where crazy situations are compared to our normally unquestioned realities and entertaining works of fiction are easily related to our natural experiences. Dana expresses a lot of interesting concepts in her work like a race of self-cannibalizers or a situation in which she is stuck painting the last man on earth, and I think her paintings are best appreciated with these narratives in mind (although it should be said that the paintings are visually entertaining even without context, which isn't always common in abstract works). 

Face Eater, 2004

One of the best things about Dana's work is its fearlessness. She experiments with many subjects that I can tell she's very entertained by, and I don't feel she gets stuck on one idea or holds back on any creative impulses. 

"Usually before I start making a painting I’ll sketch or write lists of ideas for paintings that may or may not end up being made. Like: paint a stuffed-animal fight, or a time machine, or a boy with handmade features getting a haircut. That will get things going... When I am blocked I start drawing, writing, thinking about different ideas and reading. Sometimes I’ll respond to things that I’ve just made. I think it’s part of the process to get frustrated and then get a bunch of new ideas."

Simultaneously, I think that she paints for her audience's enjoyment. She even puts herself in the position of the audience and wonders when to incorporate herself in the fiction of the painting, as she does with her "Last Man on Earth" series. Ultimately there isn't anything too personal, abstract, or scholarly in her work to make it inaccessible to general audiences, and I believe this accessibility is something to be admired when a primary strength of art is its use as a communicative tool. Schutz is thus someone I can really admire for her empathy as well as her creativity.

Chris's Rubber Soul, 2001

Angela Dufresne is an American painter with a love for ambiguous narratives. Her smeared and blotchy brushwork creates a dream-like weirdness often shared by her subject matter. Some of Dufresne's works are so hilariously strange, it's exciting to think they've traveled to international exhibits.

 Dwarf, Goat, Woman, Man and Head, 2014

As a lesbian growing up in Kansas with her old-fashioned parents, Dufresne "reached the point of realizing that society had nothing to offer [her], and thus [she] had nothing to lose." She decided to pursue art-making as a way of communicating openly about her interests and freeing herself from the impending doom of a mute, servile female role. She recalls, "I wanted to be a storyteller, a punk, an image maker, and a feminist."

Reflecting her anti-establishment personality, Dufresne enjoys sidestepping exact ideals and pretty perceptions in her work, the kind that narrative media often attempts to provoke from its audience. 

She chooses to make emotional rather than researched responses to "revered" images from film and art history, so the result is more abstract and personal than an all-encompassing narrative ready-made for its audience's digestion. 

Mommy Dearest, 2014

I'm really fond of seeing artists who don't put their subject matter on a pedestal to the point of being too stuffy, serious, or fussy with it, and I suppose this is a big part of my attraction to Dufrensne's work; the variety she has in her paintings conveys her interest in experimentation over perfection. I'm entertained by the surprises I find in some of her weirder paintings (men with erections hugging foals), and I can also just appreciate the beauty of her luminescent colors and  lively compositions.

Death of Silence, 2013

I also enjoy her mixing of techniques used to show depth (atmospheric perspective, contrasting values) with intentionally keeping other parts of her work flat (with colors saturated where they should recede and very samey values). This creates an inconsistent space that confuses the eye a bit, adding to the otherworldly appearance of her settings. 

Battle Royale on Ice, 2012

Most of all, I can relate to how Dufresne tends to imply stories with still portraiture rather than showing the actual action taking place. This character-centric interest is present in what I believe are her stronger works.

Girl and Salmon, 2014

Lucian Freud is a recently-deceased British painter with a lot of personal relationships intimately tied to his work. He is also one of Jenny Saville's inspirations; it's easy to see how his abstract patterns of color and distorted proportions contributed to her work.

Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985

Though I am not a big fan of the dry, mundane subject matter of Freud's paintings, there is an underlying psychology to his portraiture that I am drawn to much more than to Jenny's work. The expressions seem to be looking inward, contemplating rather than acknowledging the presence of the painter. And when their gaze does happen to meet the viewer's, they seem annoyed or exasperated by it, as if they resent being in the picture. I love how Freud banishes the seductive or reverent gaze that a lot of portraits tend to assume.

Figure with Bare Arms, 1961 

Besides his stylization of proportion and shape, which is always something cool to experiment with, I think I'd like to replicate the relateability of Freud's portraits, the way they seem to resent their documentation during a moment where they'd prefer to be alone and invisible.  Freud captured these mentally fatigued expressions by taking over a year each to finish some of his portraits, as he worked slowly over multiple sessions and painted his models from live observation. But I think a similar result could be achieved by simply aiming to create it. Posed, perfect portraits are all too common with selfies and advertisements, so I think the different direction might be an intriguing relief to a lot of people.

Interior in Paddington, 1951

Art that impresses me usually ticks off the items on this list:

-It has a conscientious composition that leads the eye
-It is stylized but technically skillful in a traditional sense
-It is full of small, loving details
-It tells an interesting story
-Its individual components combine to create a strong atmosphere
-It exaggerates proportion and perspective to create a dynamic image
-It does something to engage the viewer, breaking the fourth wall or the picture plane

Neal Adams' comic pages for Batman (inked by Scott Williams) meet all these criteria. My favorite part of these images is how they break out of the panels sometimes, but the dramatic lighting and perspective, technical details, and clear narrative flow all make these pages really exciting for me. Another great thing about comics in general is that the viewer sets their own reading pace, so it's a medium I really enjoy for that layer of interactivity.
\\

Cambridge-born Jenny Saville may be a realist at heart, but her work is just the kind of stuff that fascinates me; it's gross, exaggerated, and more than a little creepy. Her figures are often violently afflicted with scars and swelling, with sickening color palettes that combine morbid, viscous reds with lifeless pastel tones. But more often than not, there is beauty in the rawness of her figures.

Conceptually, the paintings also make an interesting statement about body image, aggressively challenging the tried-and-true imagery of beautiful women loved by painters throughout history. Saville remarks being "fascinated" by flesh and fat, and uses her work to explore it fully, both from a positive standpoint that celebrates its attractiveness as well as a negative one that slices and objectifies the bodies; the first image below, Plan, evokes the idea of cosmetic surgery. Artist Patricia Cronin says, "The scale of her figures indicates the psychological space the body takes up in our collective psyches -- we are obsessed with diets, nutrition, physical fitness, health, vanity, self-esteem."

Plan, 1993

An aspect of art that I've always been excited by is its capacity to distort reality to reach the real "truth" of our personal perception. Thus, I'm a huge fan of the fish-eye perspective Saville uses to show the immensity of her chubby women. I find the largeness of these figures makes their bodies not so ugly but rather impressive for their strength and volume; they aren't defined by their silhouettes (as is the intended purpose of using skinny models) but rather by the internal undulating of their muscle and fat. The forms have a lot of character and humanity; they look tangible. This is aided by some of the loose, sculptural brushwork Saville has adopted from abstract artists, whom she says have "taught [her] a lot about the physical act of painting, about pace and tempo, using drips and marks in ways that aren’t just decorative.”

Propped, 1992

Still, there are works of Saville's that I really dislike, mostly her portraits, for failing to depict unattractive people or a wider variety of facial types. I feel certain pieces are fetishized for her already-established audience rather than experimental and confrontational. It doesn't help when the depictions try too hard to look detached, cool and edgy, as I feel is the case with Reverse. The technique and colors of this piece are stunning, but the woman has the expressive sincerity of a fashion model, and the puffiness of her glistening mouth looks like an erotic choice that embraces violence rather than forsakes it. Whether or not this is intentional, I think the exaggerated bodies she is known for are much stronger and more unique images.

Reverse, 2003

A Night Out on the Town, 2013

Ron Hicks is an American oil painter who takes after 19th century French impressionists. I stumbled across him across while researching Alex Kanevsky.

Comparatively, I find Hicks' work a lot more romanticized in a way that I really like, with dramatic, entwining figures and beautifully expressive portraits that recall the early stars of cinema romances. The emotions he conveys suggest larger conversations and relationships, and since storytelling happens to be my favorite application of art, I'm drawn immediately to his paintings.

Twilight Conversation, 2013

Hicks' goal is to “keep [his] work as fresh and new as possible," which I find interesting since his paintings could easily be called "dated" due to the romance novel-esque melodrama he prefers to depict. Disregarding this, I think that passion itself is a timeless subject for impressionism, and I admire that he pursues it without losing great historical influences like Degas. Hicks' brush strokes flow in a sculptural way that entwines shapes together, giving them form and life and filling the paintings with energy. I think his technique is enough to invigorate the subjects with "freshness," and I love the charm of his pictorial romances.

Plaza in Milan, 2013

What I like most about Hicks' work is his use of subdued light and color, his great framing and compositions which lead the eye across the piece, and his gestural application of paint; these are all things that add to the clarity and emotional effectiveness of his narratives. It's no surprise to me that he worked as a freelance illustrator after finishing his art degree, and I'd like to keep his techniques in mind for future paintings.

Here are three old artists from our class's list that I think could be relative to my work this semester.

Here are three old artists from our class's list that I think could be relative to my work this semester.

Rene Magritte

Personal Values, 1952

The Lovers II, 1928

The Collective Invention, 1934 

Magritte is a huge inspiration to a lot of illustrators because of how clearly he captures a mood and concept. His surreal imagery instantly catches the eye with its clean shapes framed in large negative spaces. I think I could use the way he personifies objects in Personal Values to make a more interesting still life of a product.

Toulouse Lautrec

Cuirassier, 1896

At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance, 1890

Cuirassier, 1881

Lautrec paints interesting characters, and paints them with interesting character. I'd like to bring the textural energy of his brush strokes to my own work. A lot of advertisements are styled flatly and choose to bypass this liveliness in favor of clarity, and I'd like to try going in an opposite direction for some of my work.

George Tooker

Landscape with Figures, 1965

The Subway, 1950

Bathers, 1950

Tooker examines a lot of the mundane aspects of modern human lifestyles. In works like Landscape with Figures, for example, he empathizes with the compartmentalized, alienating effects of bureaucracies and office jobs. This interest in depicting negative human experiences is characteristic of advertisements that want to offer solutions. I believe I will be returning to Tooker's work for inspiration on how to portray problems to be solved.




The rest of these artists are ones that I simply like; I may want to investigate their styles later.

Aaron Douglas

J. M. W. Turner

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Alberto Giacommeti

Egon Schiele

Gustav Klimt

John Everett Millais

Edwin Dickinson

Gustave Moreau

Jean Dubuffet

Max Ernst

De Chirico

Francisco de Goya

Odilon Redon

Peter Blume

Ben Shahn

Caspar David Friedrich

The Hotel, 2008

Alex Kanevsky is a Russian figurative painter known for his fragmented and ghost-like impressionist style. I've always admired impressionist studies for the apparent speed of their conception, with purposeful, economical brush strokes used to simplify complex forms. Kanevsky's work is interesting because it retains that same appearance of urgency while also looking very carefully smoothed and rendered.

And indeed his process is actually very drawn out as he tries again and again to discover the right amount of fluidity in his paintings. Layers form from his repeated attempts. "I work fast, trying to hit the right note every time," he says. "That is nearly impossible, so I constantly fail. But I keep coming back to a painting. It accumulates layers, each one more or less a complete painting. Complete but failed." Some extensive work-in-progress pictures of this process can be seen here. I'm surprised by how often he will revisit a near-complete piece and change it, only to quickly return to his previous vision. The back-and-forth of these slight alterations seem like the inhaling and exhaling of the painting.

T.S. in Her Bath, 2002

The effect of all these built up layers is an impression of movement, which can easily be felt in Kanevsky's offset shapes and blurring. Motion is very important to the artist, who believes the key to depicting humans naturally is to represent their inability to sit still; unlike inanimate objects which are defined by shapes, people are "defined by their motion." The fluidity of his work is very impressive to me as well as his ability to paint loosely or tightly as needed.

Monster, 2011

I wanted to find more fine artists who embrace a cartoony style and discovered Jeff Soto, an American street/gallery artist with some stunningly rendered surreal paintings. The top and bottom works here show what I really like about his work, which is his crazy colors, detailed designs, and fluid, organic compositions. His bizarre, viscerally textured characters are also a plus for me, since I love figurative works with crazy personalities.

"Technically, graffiti taught me all kinds of things," Soto recalls. "I started painting walls around when I started on canvases so I was learning from both. I think it teaches you about scale and composition. You end up learning what colors look good together, stuff like that."

Untitled Chalk Drawing, 2011

Politics and environmentalism used to be a strong factor in Soto's work, but nowadays he tries to paint in a way that is more emotional than "preachy." He questions whether art is really important to the average person or whether its message can reach them, and mostly sees it as a way for humans to keep themselves active and creative.

The Last Voyage II, 2014

Many of Soto's works look like glorified doodles (his common smiley-face character originated from doodles he made when he was 10 years old) and embrace a stream-of-consciousness aesthetic. I would be very happy being able to balance technical control and creative freedom in the same way he does.