Secret Still

What with being a painter, designer, illustrator, pinstriper, and a few other little pies that she manages to have her fingers in, it’s amazing to me that Josie Morway has time to sleep. And who knows, maybe she doesn’t sleep, maybe she keeps both eyes wide open and focused in a state somewhere between meditation and cat-like alertness. Who can really say? But what I do know is that anyone who can dedicate enough time and effort to painting beautiful type combined with beautiful birds is a-ok with me. If I wasn’t afraid that she would break my hand with the force of her focus, I would high five that sleep-deprived magic woman.

Josie Morway

Let’s ease back into this before I head off for another long weekend. We’ll start off with Mateusz Kołek, an illustrator with the kind of understanding of color and line weight that only comes from days of staring at a blank space, stoned out of your mind, Molly Hatchett playing in the background, and a pencil in your hand like a cobra ready to strike. I’m not saying that’s the only way to go about it, but it’s the best way. I learned it from Da Vinci in a bar in Alabama one night in ‘65. I think Kołek knew it instinctively, like bears know to hibernate in the Winter. Jesus, what the hell am I talking about?

Mateusz Kołek

Maybe it was a joke, but I read recently that scientists, in trying to do a study comparing men that look at porn and men that don’t, found that they couldn’t complete their experiment because they couldn’t find a single guy that didn’t look at porn. I look at porn, every dude around you looks at porn, some of them may even be looking at porn right now. So yeah, I like boobs, and I call them boobs because the word breasts just seems like something Anais Nin would say. But porn is porn and art is art. The frame of mind and reference that I look at each one in is totally different. In fact it takes probably 5-10 minutes before the word boobs floats to the surface when I’m looking at art, whereas with porn in less than a second my mind is saying “Sweet, boobs!” This explanation is all leading up to understanding the way that I look at Aaron Nagel’s intensely beautiful paintings. First, I think that he must be using oils, because of the luminosity. Then I think that his choice to use simple black backgrounds to emphasize the light on the figures was a great choice. Next, I look at his brushwork and appreciate his softer detail with the hair, but crisp definition for the eyes. Then it’s contemplation of the overall composition and the religious imagery being used, the analysis of the message. Sweet, boobs! And finally I personalize it by imagining what I would do if I were him, such as leading toward some Madonna (not the singer) imagery or wondering why he might be necessarily avoiding Madonna imagery. And that’s it. I hope this has been an insightful look into the way that I see art, especially art with boobs in it.

Aaron Nagel

Already out the door mentally.

Black Noise - Jackin’ My Fresh

Lucky

Le Grand Content

Western Edition 10 Year

Joyeux Noel

I think we can all agree that a good juxtaposition makes the best results: peanut butter is salty, jelly is sweet; Cocaine is an upper, heroin is a downer; I am pretty awesome, most of the rest of the world is not. It’s the juxtaposition of soft illustration style with bright-ass colors that makes Veronica Hebard’s illustrations so great. I actually think my retina came detached a little bit from the brightness, but you see what I mean. If you didn’t learn the lesson from Paula Abdul that opposites attract, then Hebard can drive it home. And you won’t even have to dance on a roof with a cartoon cat…unless that’s just something you’re into.

Veronica Hebard

Right on the edge.

Justice - Let Love Rule

We Continue in the Old Style

Ukichiro’s Snowflakes

The Passenger

Raise your hand if you remember my previous post about Mark Bodnar (this one). For those of you that raised your hand or clicked on the link, prepare to add Daniel Elson to the analogous aesthetic segment of your memory next to Bodnar. Their styles are similar, but their subjects are very different. Where Bodnar calls on a cast of characters to deliver his messages, Elson relies on one boy to be his voice. That boy, balancing precariously, searching for truth, reminded of death, has a lot to say. In my own paranoid fantasies I kind of want to believe that Elson and Bodnar are the same person, like Jekyll and Hyde, different demons in the same mind. But I also want to believe that my frog can communicate telepathically. I don’t hold out much hope for either, although my frog does always know when I’m coming to feed him. Twilight Zone Music.

Daniel Elson

Let me share something with you: I don’t own a TV. I’ll wait until you recover from shock. Better? Ok. What I do have is a computer, which these days equates to a TV in most cases, meaning that I still watch TV. The thing is, I don’t like to. I don’t have a TV, because I don’t want to spend all my time watching one. What do I do instead? I read books. Books are the TV of the mind, and I read them like crazy, especially comics because they provide the added layer of great art. So, with an impending week long break coming up for the holidays, do you think that I’m anticipating catching up on all the shows I’ve missed? I’ll tell you, I am not. But what I do have is a nice stack of comics to read both digital and analog, and a dog to sit on my feet while I do so. If you can tell me of a better way to relax, I will probably sock your face in because you’re a liar. And sitting like a gem at the top of my comics stack is the work of Luke Pearson, mostly because I haven’t gotten the chance to read a lot of his comics, but also because his work is fucking top notch. His style is variable but always beautiful, his subjects interesting, and there is a dandy balance of wit and pathos. You can bet your ass that one of his comics is worth at least one episode of Lost, even if the comic occupies less time. So, in the coming weeks when you find yourself bored to tears while waiting on your drunk family members to stop fighting, pull up a few of Pearson’s comics and engage your mind. It’s that or stare at Dick Clark’s dessicated android corpse.

Luke Pearson

Paranoid anthropoid

Motor/Ambient Reel

Absolut Machines

Tired of Crazy Train

Golden Artifact

Chromeo - Night by Night

D.I.Y America: Skate and Create

Takayuki Manabe

Coney Island Dream

Women have been the most popular subject matter for drawings/paintings/sculptures about as long as anyone has been making drawings/paintings/sculptures. Women have been represented in every style and form imaginable at this point. Rather than talk about my theories on why women are so popular as a subject, which is boring, I’ll tell you about one of the ways that women are painted/drawn that I hate, which is provocative. I hate the fashion illustration style. The pencil drawn woman with strokes of bright color to fill in. Do you know how many illustrators there are in France alone who work in that style? A lot. However, no matter how similar that sounds to the work of Barcelona artist Conrad Roset, that is not how he is painting. His women aren’t being fashionable. They’re being sexy and coy and beguiling and innocent, which are maybe the best qualities that women possess. They’re being beautiful. And with stylistic hints at Schiele, Roset has given me reason to enjoy a little pencil and a little paint and a look into what magic women have that ensnares the mind. I can only say what I have wanted to say for a long time: Suck it, French fashion illustrators. Man, it feels good to get that off my chest.

Conrad Roset