The work of Adam Batchelor has recently been added to my list of favorite artist. He is originally from Norwich UK and i found his work on the website http://abduzeedo.com/ which features artist and illustrators from around the world. his work is mainly in illustration, and comments societies relationship and obsession with popular culture, and its affect on the world. he does this by juxtaposing popular consumer images with people of developing countries. contrasting wealth and poverty, 1st world and developing world, and the state of the world that we live in. His images are very direct and centered within a white space, and uses images that allow us to see the effect of popular culture and consumerism, as we are able to identify the pop symbols in the image, but not the decent or location the subject may come from. Showing the global effect of consumerism, our general ignorance to the rest of the world's problems, and the selfish nature of the 1st world due to consumption and ideology to pop culture.

http://www.adambatchelor.co.uk/

Richard A kirk is a recent artist that i discovered while looking at artist's website's online. He is a visual artist and illustrator based in Canada, and work is mainly consists of surreal drawings. Kirk's work approaches the ideas of reality and the imagination, challenging our ideas of aesthetics in drawing figures and creatures. his creations usually morph human traits along with animal and plant matter to create unique bodies, and forms that exist within and outside of a space or stage. This technique works well in his work, which pays a lot of attention to detail to have micro and macro of life forms coexist simultaneously.

http://www.richardakirk.com/index.html

Andres Miro Quesada is a Peruvian painter who i have recently discovered. Quesada's paintings are very photorealistic, which works in his favor as his images portray snap shots of everyday life and activities. These images are effective in portraying the mood, tone and humor of moments of his or his subjects life, and reveal the little details in our movements and gestures that we fail to see, and notice in our lives. His work takes pleasure in displaying the beauty of the milliseconds that we fail to notice, as we look at the grander scheme of our lives. this shows most in his series of paintings where he captures his facial movements as he sneezes. movements and facial expressions that the subject is usually unavailable to see.

http://andresmiroquesada.blogspot.com/

Li Cheng- Tao. i dont really know this artist. but i thought that this piece was amazing. consumption, cross culture, and american foreign influence, greed, food fetishism in a single painting, etc... equal amazing

Jerry N. Uelsmann is an artist that was recently introduced to me. he is Maggie Taylor's husband and like Maggie, he manipulates and layers images to make black and white surreal photographs. His process is similar, yet very different from Maggie's. while Maggie's pieces are collaged by layering digital images which she has either taken or scanned, Jerry uses film film and manipulates it in a dark toom to produce his final images. His pieces use very nature scenes such as beaches forests, and lakes, that comment on human presence and interaction with these spaces, using techniques that blend the human presence with nature, or show how we affect the spaces we inhabit.

Banksy started his street art career as a graffiti writer. but one evening after nearly being caught by the cops, decided that he needed to find a quicker, easier way to get his work out. from then on he worked on stencil graffiti which can be found in locations around the world, that comment on social and political issues. his work is mainly in stencil graffiti but he has also branched out into doing installation pieces and has installed his work in museums. where he hangs his art work next to famous art pieces to make a statement about what art is and mocking the traditional bourgeois art culture.

http://www.banksy.co.uk/

for the past year i have been working on digital collaged photos. these images are compiled from images that i have taken myself or from found images on google. Most of the pieces i make come to me in an image. i always have a picture in my mind of what that image would be, which is easy to produce on the computer using photoshop and illustrator. But in the past this has been used only as a starting point for my images, from which they move on to become a drawing, a painting or a print.

This process starts by acquiring images to display one or more parts of the image, edited in photoshop to become components of the final image. Many of my final images are thus always composed of at least 5 images or many more. The hardest task of making these pieces is always the task of getting the images to match up and work together, giving it a sense of realism, questioning the reality of the image, while clearly being a surreal image.

i never got into sureal art until 2 years ago. but since then the work of many surreal artist has influenced my work and the way i approach my work. One of my favorite surreal artist is Salvador Dali. he uses many recurring themes in his work, such as time, and memory and expresses his feelings and concepts toward these two themes by using metaphorical symbols and objects to represent his thoughts. he also uses images and imagery that become optical illusions and have been reproduced by many artist for movie posters, paintings and photographs. his style interests me most as well as his ability to tell a story or give a message in a single image.

Maggie Taylor is the artist i am reviewing this week. she is an artist that uses found images and photos that she has taken to make surreal photoshopped images. her images usually come from memories of personal events in her life while others are illustrations such as images that she has made based on Alice In Wonderland. Her work is a big influence to mine because of the process that she uses to create her pieces, as well as the statement she is trying to make in her image, which are usually graphic while being very whimsical and funny.

http://www.maggietaylor.com/

I started drawing and painting from the time I could hold a pencil or brush well enough to make squiggly lines on paper. As I grew older the squiggly lines started to make more sense in the form of an actual image. From that point on I attended art school during the summers, and was in an art class every semester from primary to secondary school. It was my goal in each drawing to capture what was in front of me to the best of my ability. And that was always my favorite part of art; the ability to recapture what you see, and within that time explore and get to know the many aspects of a space, place or person in more detail than you would under regular circumstances.

Art in my home country of Guyana however was seen as nothing more than a hobby, and I never thought I would pursue it, dreading the chance of becoming a starving artist. It was because of this, that I decided to pursue architecture. And keep art simply as something on the side. After two years of architecture school, I realized that I was in the wrong field of study and that I needed to feed my creative side. And with the opportunities of America I was sure I could do fine as an artist.

Since being in college I have tried many new ways of making art from mixed media, to using image and text, 3d sculpture, and collage. My basic idea when I changed majors was to get as much different art as I could under my belt and find my niche, weather it was to remain being drawing and painting as I had always done, or something new that I found more challenging or appropriate for what I was trying to convey.

Today my artwork ventures away from just making aesthetic 2d images, to work that both asks questions and makes statements about things I observe around me, and see in the media. But beyond inspiration from everyday life, Philosophy and the work of many surrealist and digital artist have also become influences in my work and have helped me form some of the thoughts and ideas that go into my work. In my work I try to create an image that says one or many things about a thought, idea or expression, after analyzing and interpreting the things around me, things that may be about me or even about someone else. For me this is my favorite part of art and the reason it is so powerful and the reason I became an artist. To be conscious of myself and the world around me, and to express these ideas to the world in a way that people can see their own lives and thoughts, and feel connected to me without knowing me.

Digital media is currently my main medium for work. It is a change from the drawings and paintings of my youth, but it still follows the trend of mixing or adding color onto matt white surface, that makes the image pop out of the page and bring the viewer’s gaze directly to the content of the piece. It is also my main medium because my first thought of what I want to make comes to me a one clear image. Digital programs such as Photoshop and illustrator allows me to for these images piece by piece in a way that no other medium allows, and thus it is always the first thing I go to, even if it is a jumping off point before the image takes on new shape as a print, painting, drawing or sculpture.

The most influential passage I have ever read was by Aristotle. The piece takes place in his prison cell, and he is talking to two other close philosophers before he is to be hung. In this passage he says it is the responsibility of the philosopher to be always thinking about fulfilling his soul, and not the body; he is to be constantly thinking about the world and his soul’s interaction with it in the present. I feel this is present in my life and my art. My inspiration comes at all times of the day and is influenced by everything I see and analyze in my dreams, as I walk, as I think, and as I eat. This makes my art more meaningful for me, because it is an autobiography of my life as every piece stems from my everyday interactions and experiences.

2 artist that have been an influence to my work are Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. These artist are married and collaborate on all of the projects over the past few years. their images are deep and thought provoking, and i love the aesthetic of the older black and white work.

http://parkeharrison.com/