Tag Archives: portraits

Miharu Matsunaga: Ten-ten

Miharu Matsunaga: Ten ten portraits people painting multiples

Using thousands of meticulously painted dots (“ten-ten” in Japanese) designer and photographer Miharu Matsunaga has been exploring the interconnectedness of people and places in these two recently completed projects. The first, a series of mottled portraits was completed as part of her graduate work at Tama Art University. The delicate white dots are meant as a visual display of the often neglected and forgotten interconnectedness between “family, parents, sister, friend, man, woman, adult, baby, race,” and people of different languages. Matsunaga continues this organic, dotted exploration in Ten-ten wherein the dots are used to cover interior walls, vehicles, and other objects. Stunning work. (via spoon and tamago)

Sebastian Schramm

Sebastian Schramm portraits people paper absurdist

A wonderfully absurd photo by German photographer and art director Sebastian Schramm. Available as a print over on Saatchi Online.

By Christopher on October 23, 2011 • absurdist paper people portraits

Ice Mask

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition team explored Antarctica from 1911 through 1914, studying geology, meteorology, and mapping unknown lands. Here, a photograph by Frank Hurley shows the team meteorologist C.T. Madigan with an incredibly thick ice mask after a day of weathering the elements. Here’s another more extreme example. The photo is from the National Library of Australia Commons which recently made several hundred historical images available online.

By Christopher on October 22, 2011 • Antarctica black and white history ice portraits

Paintings by Amanda Clyne

Paintings by Amanda Clyne portraits painting magazines fashion collage

I’m really enjoying these vertically sliced portraits by Amanda Clyne who uses images from fashion magazines as a starting point for a rather involved process, that I’ll let her explain in her own words.

I begin my process by culling images from fashion magazines. Cropping the image into a portrait, I re-print the image on to a surface to which the printing ink does not adhere, so the image remains wet. I photograph the print as the fluid image morphs and dissolves over time. I then compose a new image from fragments of these photographs—each image each is comprised of slices of the image at various stages of dissolution. Once I have resolved the final composition, I project the basic outlines of the image onto a canvas, and use a print-out of my composition as a painting reference. Each fragment is taped off and painted separately. Because of the narrow width of the fragments (some are less than 1/4 inch wide), I usually paint every third fragment, then while I wait for those fragments to dry, I paint alternating fragments on a different painting. Some paintings require three or four rounds of painting, so I work on several paintings at once.

The results are really quite striking. Clyne will have three new works on display at Art Toronto at the end of October. Thanks Amanda for sharing your work with Colossal!

By Christopher on October 13, 2011 • collage fashion magazines painting portraits

New Oil Paintings by Simon Birch

New Oil Paintings by Simon Birch portraits people painting

I’ve been viscerally aware of Simon Birch’s paintings for some time, but it wasn’t until stumbling onto his latest series, Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood, that I really stopped to consider his staggering talent. The paintings from this series use bold, bright color that’s applied in angular, almost geometric brush strokes creating these wonderful portraits. Birch is a U.K.-born artist of Armenian descent who now lives and works in Hong Kong. He’s represented by Future Industries where you can see many more paintings from this exhibition. (via nevver)

By Christopher on October 5, 2011 • painting people portraits

Jack Davison

Jack Davison is a 20-year-old photographer who lives and works between London, Essex and Leamington Spa. He’s currently exhibiting at AtomRooms and you can see more of his work on Flickr (maybe nsfw). Yowza!

By Christopher on October 1, 2011 • people portraits

Blitzstein Exhibit

Blitzstein Exhibit wood portraits painting abstract

I admit, I don’t know the story behind this one. It popped up on suplove (warning, music) a few hours ago and is entitled simply “Blitzstein Exhibit” and is dated 1994 on the bottom. Edvard Munch approved.

Update: Via email Nathan Bowers says: “The Blitzstein Exhibit is on Fairfax in L.A. Across the street from Canter’s Deli. The piece you linked is in the storefront window. I can’t tell if the place is a gallery or a studio because I’ve never seen anyone inside and none of the pieces have seemed to move since at least 1996. Mysterious!” It looks like this is a piece by Harry Blitzstein, and here he is jumping rope on a trampoline. Thanks Nathan!