Mamma Andersson

Mamma Andersson is a Swedish contemporary artist who currently works in Stockholm. She was born and raised in Sweden near the polar circle, and grew up with a passion for painting, though her family did not support her being an artist. She later attended the Royal University College of Fine Arts and married artist Jockum Nordstrom.

Many of Andersson's prints are dreamlike in nature. She juxtaposes thick layers of ink with loosely washed sections, and chooses to work with a more soothing color palette. She finds inspiration in cinematic imagery, theatre sets, and nordic figurative painting. She often chooses to expose private, evocative, and melancholic scenes, and her work tends to have an intriguing narrative.

I find her work to be visually and conceptually intriguing. I love the colors she uses, and how they work together with her subject matter to create this phantasmagorical piece. Because of the odd and unfamiliar nature of her subject matter, her prints are always interesting to look at and think about. What is going on? What led up to this scene?

Humdrum Day 

Family Ties

FacesColor spit bite and sugar lift aquatints with aquatint and soft ground etching

Who is sleeping on my pillow?

Sundial

Color sugar lift and spit bite aquatints with hard ground

etching printed on gampi paper chine collé

Al Held

AL HELD

Al Held is an American abstract painter who works a lot with printmaking. He died in 2005. He studied in New York and Paris starting off with abstract expressionist. He later moved on towards painting and printing abstract landscapes of precise geometrical shapes with defined colors, described as "concrete abstractions". His color pallets are very unique and interesting -- and of course I admire his precision and accuracy. 

"We're not going to get rid of chaos and complexity but we can find a way to live with them."

Chris Ballantyne

Chris Ballantyne is a printmaker at Paulson Bott Press. Ballantyne uses suburban and industrial images to represent the absurd and unlikely. Using common architecture (buildings, fences, pools, parking lots, etc.), Ballantyne isolates these images onto single, flat fields of color. The simplicity of Chris Ballantyne's work allows such simple architectural and homely images to take on a full new meaning as they reduce down to their own simple form. They stand alone without the help of other common objects that add to their meaning, and so they function solely on the basis of their existence.

Ballantyne received his MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Museum of Modern Art. 

Cameron Martin

Cameron Martin is an American artist, who lives in Brooklyn, NY and was born in 1970. Martin is a painter, but has done many other types of media as well, but currently paints nature, like trees, water, rocks, and mountains. He was inspired by his surroundings when he was growing up in Seattle, Washington. He said "I was surrounded by the imagery of nature.  There was an element of grandeur, of the sublime.  It was something you couldn't overcome, something which contained awe, beauty, and terror." (Tandem Press) He tries to make the viewer wrestle with the issue of perception, and trying to imagine the landscape. His paintings almost seem all white or gray, but after looking closer, people will see the detail hidden behind the exposure. 

I particularly like Martin's work because it has so much detail, but can also be so easily missed. I like how he used the dark lines on top of the painting (third image) because it adds more depth. 

All of the images below are acrylic on canvas.

Sources: askart, Cameron Martin, Van Doren Waxter

an exhibit at the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery

Balantane, 2011

(no name)

Tisdor Sequence, 2010

Partition Expanse, 2011

Chris Johanson

Chris Johanson was born in San Jose, California, in 1968, later moving to San Francisco in 1986. He, in addition to some 3D work, paints, prints, and is a street artist. He uses vibrant colors in his work, giving his pieces a playful feel. His history of drawing and cartoon comes to life in his work as well as he uses words and characters to tell stories in his art. The shapes and patterns in his work create a unique, dynamic depth to the art. Many of his pieces also reference social justice issues. His work appealed to me because of the contrast between the fun colors and shapes and the intense and strong messages behind his work.  

Matthew Barney - César

Matthew Barney is an American Artist that works to combine performance and film with sculpture and drawing. He began with an exploration of improvement with restraint, purposefully restraining himself in an attempt to force himself on to new frontiers with his drawings. I found out about him through his marriage to Bjork but find his work to be pushing boundaries in the visual art world.

Drawing Restraint 

The CREMASTER Cycle

River of Fundament

Chris Schoonover

Chris Schoonover is an American photographer living in the New Jeresy area. He only started taking photographs recently but has attracted a lot of attention. In fact, he bought his first camera in 2013. He comes from a design backround and I beleive that is relevant in his photographs. He has done a lot of work with fashion and portrait photography. Personally, I like the colors in his photographs and how each of his photographs are really differant. He just captures really visually appealing moments that, to me, seem like could be a still from a 20th century movie with a very complex and emotional plot line.