Pat Steir

Pat Steir

Nothing, 1974, oil on canvas

August Waterfall, 2000, photogravure and aquatint

Pat Steir is a painter and printmaker who works with abstracted landscapes.

Formally, she works on a large scale and frequently uses silver, gold, white, and Paynes gray. She puts X's through things which implies a theme of destruction. She says she wanted to destroy images as symbols and that no imagery was the same as endless imagery.

In her waterfall paintings, she pours paint on canvas and allows colors to mix and merge (a wet on wet technique). In her colored abstract paintings, the colors correspond with 5 Buddha families. In fact a lot of her paintings are representative of her interest in Asian, specifically Chinese, art. (The act of paint flowing corresponds to the philosophy of Daoism.)

Jumaldi Alfi

Jumaldi Alfi

Footnote #4 (Blackboard painting), 2012, acrylic and oil bar on canvas

Renewal/Verjungung Series 2-B, 2009, acrylic on canvas

Jumaldi Alfi surprisingly removes his art from socio-political themes in favor of formal elements. He identifies as an Indonesian artist. His background as a poet is evident in his work (through use of text and subject matter). His work is about naivity and minimalism.

Formally, he uses color, line, texture, and meaningless doodles in his compositions. Text is present in nearly all the ones I've seen and sometimes is even the sole subject. Skulls are a very common theme in his work bringing to mind death and decay.

chalkboard paintings reminiscent of Cy Twombly.

Allison Miller

Allison Miller

Wave, 2003, oil and acrylic on canvas

Repeater, 2013, oil and acrylic on canvas

Allison Miller is an abstract artist who includes unique materials like dirt into her oil, acrylic, and pencil works. She combines linear mark-making with abstractions. Her pieces use bright colors, bold forms, and heavy textures. Her line work has been described as a gravity-defying 3D sculptural effect. Formally, she is deliberately inconsistent but in a way that does not evoke collage.

Black is consistently dominant in her paintings. Other colors are drab and institutional with bright colors peeking through.

She explores new territories while she paints and doesn't like to talk about her work. One of her preoccupations is figure-ground relationship. Her use of depth and layers cause viewers to question what they're supposed to be looking at.

Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander

Mirror Plane, 2012

Shahzia Sikander likes the idea of exhausting an image. Sikander creates stimulating visual experiences for her audience through the addition of modern and non-traditional elements by forcing the viewer to reconcile conflicting sensibilities hidden within beautifully rendered landscapes as well as offering a wide range of stimuli from the traditional Muslim world to popular Western culture, such as mandalas, airplanes and cowboy boots and soccer balls. 

For her subjects, she mixes personal and historical experiences such as reading the Qu'ran. She seeks to subvert Eastern stereotypes through her work.

She is very skilled in Indo-Persian miniature painting technique and formal practice.  She frequently uses repetitive shapes to represent movement. In the one above, she uses the same shape repetition for the hair and the flight of birds, which is really cool. She does a lot of performance-based installations to further get her concept across.

Art 21 video

Jim Nutt

Jim Nutt

Coursing, 1966, acrylic and collage on plexiglas

Trim, 2010, acrylic on linen

Jim Nutt is a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as Chicago Imagists, or Hairy Who. His pop culture influence is evident in his work. He often paints fantasy, characters, and political commentary.

In his portraits, he paints expectations of faces instead of actual faces.  His faces could be compared to that which a child would draw. He uses mixed media and collage. They could be classified as cartoon versions of people, kind of remind me of Ren and Stimpy. His flat areas of color bring to mind digital versions of paintings.

The shapes of his figures could be compared to John Currin.

These two paintings have over a 40 year span but elements of distortion and strange shapes remain constant.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

Red Painting, 1961, oil, crayon, and pencil on canvas

Untitled, 1968, house paint and crayon on canvas

Cy Twombly evaded the dominant styles of the time: Pop, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism in favor of his large-scale, calligraphic, graffiti-style paintings.

He works in mixed media: sprayed graffiti-like paint on solid fields of gray, white, or tan. They appear to have been scribbled by a child.

His influences of each individual work are suggested in the titles. He sites the lines and smudges as the subjects of the paintings. He paints with cultural memory and sometimes evokes landscapes through use of color.

During the 1960s, his exhibitions were negatively received; people said their kid could paint that. His later works have been categorized into Romantic Symbolism.

Tomory Dodge

Tomory Dodge

Mar-Eye-Ah, 2010, oil on canvas

Weekend, 2005, oil on canvas

Tomory Dodge uses a variety of approaches to painting on a single surface. He wants to emphasize the immediate experience of painting via abstraction.

Some of his pieces appear to be smudges and lines in somewhat of a Cubist fashion, although others have a clear representational subject. His strong use of color and line suggest energy and movement.

He chooses not to fit into a preconceived notion of painting and has a hard time accepting the last marks as the last. He can be classified as an abstract artist who challenges representation with his unusual and energetic painting style.

Rosy Keyser

Rosy Keyser

A Blind Torpedo Walks Into a Bar, 2013, raffia, enamel, glass, wood, and basket

Saturday Nite Special, 2013, enamel, oil, and rope on canvas

Rosy Keyser can be classified as an abstract painter, although I might think she's more non-representational? She works beyond her medium's natural habitats by including materials derived from upstate New York like corrugated steel, beer cans, sawdust, and tarps. In fact some of her "paintings" appear to just be collages of materials and not paintings at all.

Her use of unusual materials seems to be about exploration and place.

Amy Cutler

Amy Cutler

Above the Fjord, gouache on paper

Tiger Mending, 2003, gouache on paper

Amy Cutler is a contemporary artist who makes illustrations of women, often dressed in Victorian style clothing, performing strange, cryptic tasks.

Formally she uses gouache on paper with large, white backgrounds that provide little context to the meanings. Figures are rendered simply but with exquisite detail. Her style is reminiscent of European Folk Art.

Her works have elements of humor and fairy tales.

Richard Estes

Richard Estes

Richard Estes can be classified as a photorealist painter. He paints a lot of New York City scenes and reflections of city life, although he avoids famous landmarks.

Extremely meticulous depiction of detail, high finish, and sharp focus. He paints intricate reflections of glass and mirror surfaces that look like high-definition photographs.  He doesn't include certain details like snow or dirt because he feels they will detract from the scene.

compared to Chuck Close and Dwayne Hanson.

Hung Liu

Hung Liu

Cherry, 2010, mixed media

Rainmaker, 2011, mixed media on tapestry

Hung Liu studied mural painting in Beijing. She includes Chinese history in nearly all of her paintings.

She shows images of refugees, women, and children- references of anonymous Chinese historical photographs. Heavy use of metaphor for the loss of memory and traditional Chinese symbolism.

Formally she uses linseed oil to make the painting look drippy/obviously referential of paint itself. This is a GREAT example of space and place! She uses mixed media on panel, canvas, or tapestry.  Mixed media breaks figure/background planes.

Nigel Cooke

Nigel Cooke

Nature Loves You, 2011-2012

1989, 2009, oil on linen

Nigel Cooke's large-scale paintings depict fantastical hyper-realistic scenes. His influences include Van Gogh, Gerhard Richter, graffiti, Dutch masters, graphic novels, and Byzantine art.

Themes of his work include the sublime, space, decay, death, self-destruction, and landscapes.

He does figurative paintings that evoke anxiety with large open backgrounds. He tries to use colors emotively to communicate ambivalence, doubt, and conflict.

article in which he describes his first painting experience ;)

Lorraine Shemesh

Lorraine Shemesh

Bubbles, 1990, oil on canvas

Spots, 2012, oil on canvas

Lorraine Shemesh is a hyper-realist painter. She lists Edward Hopper, athletic figures, dancers, Abstract Expressionism, and Neo-Impressionism as her influences.

Themes include unconventional cityscapes, figures, interiors, repetition, and water.

Her underwater scenes are super good - highly saturated colors with water distortion. Her earlier works are humorous and contemplative.

Mark Tansey

Mark Tansey

The Innocent Eye Test, oil on canvas

Doubting Thomas, 1985, oil on canvas

Mark Tansey has been described as a historian-painter of the Postmodern art world. (If you glanced at them you might think they were history paintings but they have surprising and unexpected subject matter). (You might even think they were highly faded photographs.)

This guy is pretty cool - he paints representations of Doubting Thomas and people painting a spaceship. Represents action/instant painting, because you couldn't paint a spaceship because it would take too long. He uses a monochromatic color scheme.

He is very technically skilled in his use of humor and criticism of art.

Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch

Felsen, 2001, oil on canvas

Regel, 2000, oil on paper

Neo Rauch is a German oil painter. He combines themes of politics and personal history, Social Realism , and industrial alienation.

Subjects include men in uniform taking control of civilian life. The landscapes clash and have no apparent intention.  The artist or painter often appears in the paintings themselves, engaging in a violent struggle. Formally the figures appear realistically comic-booky like a cartoon I would turn off or a violent graphic novel.

His works have been described as "failed utopia"

video

Tal R.

Tal R.

Victory Over the Sun, 2000, oil on canvas

Sisters of Kolbojnik, 2002, oil on canvas

Tal R. represents what is at front and back of the mind in conjunction with the bodily and the emotional. He shows melancholy and ecstatic states of transformation. He describes painting as a lunchbox. Subject matter includes imaginary pastoral scenes, primitivism, and patterns to convey a generosity of spirit and joy!

Colors are off, broken, or dense. Paintings exhibit spatial realization through a dynamic horizontal field. He uses collage, pencil, and oil in a variety of techniques (splatter, drip, brushstrokes, etc.)

Uses images from pop culture, and his cultural works are narrative.

Yoshitomo Nara

Yoshitomo Nara

Cosmic Eyes, 2007, acrylic on canvas

Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese Pop artist. He paints illustration-like innocent children with a sadistic twist. Big-eyed, scowling, and malevolent kids. He also incorporates text into his paintings for a narrative clue.

He draws influence from loneliness and freedom.

Formally he uses flat areas of bold color , thick outlines, and stylized forms.

He says the children in his paintings are thinking about what you're thinking about ;)

Janaina Tschape

Janaina Tschape (two dots over the a)

Janaina Tschape creates photographs, videos, performances, and paintings. She paints journeys, romanticism, and dream states.

She uses color, line work, and overlapping shapes to create depth. Drips of paint remind viewers of the surface. She often works with cut paper.

video

Inka Essenhigh

Inka Essenhigh

Subway, 2005, oil on canvas

Shopping, 2005, oil on linen

Inka Essenhigh's paintings can be described as Pop Surrealism. She paints cartoonish, highly abstracted human forms, turning everyday banality into a surrealist case study on modern, urban life.

Formally, she paints strangely attenuated forms in flat, simple colors. Her use of seamless paint appears digital and animated, kind of like Fantasia. Her figures appear distorted in their faces and bodies.

Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage

Edge of Towners, 2011, oil on linen

The Smoker, 2008, oil on linen

Lisa Yuskavage is a figurative painter who works with themes of re-emergence. She is concerned with the immediacy of contemporary life. Her engagement with the human form is representative of John Currin.

Adjectives of her female nude include lavish, erotic, cartoonish, vulgar, and angelic.

Formally, she places her figures in front of rich, atmospheric skies, so as to appear to occupy their own realm. Her lines and colors appear dreamlike.

John Currin

John Currin

The Bra Shop, 1997, oil on canvas

Kiev, 2008, oil on canvas

John Currin is a figurative painter influenced by Renaissance oil paintings, contemporary culture, politics, and women's magazines.

He creates parodies of our sex-obsessed culture through distortion of the human figure. Main themes include pornographic eroticism and manipulation. Often his portraits appear satirical, kitschy, and humorous. Over time his works have gotten much more explicitly erotic.

Will Cotton

Will Cotton

Ice Cream, 2009

Cherry Pop, 2000

Will Cotton juxtaposes landscapes of ice cream and candy, etc. with portraits of beautiful women. His works resemble a Candy Land scene or a gingerbread house. These utopias evoke sight, smell, touch, and taste.

He features elements of advertising, human desire, sugar, and sex (all relatable). He paints with old master technical precision. Some of his paintings appear to be photographs.

His use of color, usually pastel,  provides a dreamlike quality to his paintings.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown

Performance, 1999, oil on linen

Skulldiver III (Flightmask)

Cecily Brown's works ARE representational, although at first glance appear to be sloppy Rorschach-like ink blobs. Her paintings have been linked to Abstract Expressionism.

She creates expressive oil paintings of slippery body parts entwined, engorged, and ecstatic that form kaleidoscopically in the mind. She rides the line of abstraction, figuration, and pornographic abandon.

Her subject matter mainly centers around sexual pleasure, often public acts. She makes viewers question what they see by hiding her images in lavish folds of oil paint.

Pia Fries

Pia Fries

Pia Fries' work results from a conceptual and aesthetic wrestling match with Modernist painting.

She uses palette knives, spatulas, brushes, syringes and other instruments in a variety of applications on heavily primed wood panel. Her use of color is daring and inventive. She creates visual music with graceful swooshes, ethereal spills, muscular swipes, and awkward smears.

Stylistically, Fries blurs the line between painting and sculpture. Conceptually, she is interested in process painting and painting as a verb.

Lesley Vance

Lesley Vance

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Lesley Vance has a highly personal and contemporary approach to painting, revisiting the traditional genre of still life in the form of exquisite abstraction.

She creates self-made objects as source material for her luminous shapes against darkened backgrounds. She uses oil on linen and watercolors. Her wet-on-wet technique is visually interesting.

Her work could appear non-representational but I see figures in some of her paintings - proof that the viewer determines the subject.