Greetings Art Lovers,

Dreaming of a white picket fence? You aren’t the only one. This symbol of American idealism is one of David Rickert’s favorite paintings. Back Fence represents a dramatized version of David’s backyard. He says, “Of all the hundreds of paintings I’ve sold, that’s the one I’d like to have back.”

Back Fence is no Tom Sawyer paint job. The well finished colors and composition shows David’s skill in painting. With his controlled brush strokes and attention to dramatic lighting, it’s no wonder David Rickert was a featured artist in The Artist’s Magazine. 

Give this Paperwork print a try and you can have a piece of the American dream that doesn’t require new paint.

Artfully yours,

Kurt

Want the inside scoop? Sign up for our Paperwork newsletter to receive our Paperwork collector’s message via email. Just add your email address to the nifty little the envelope icon on the right side of our Paperwork header to get involved.

Greetings Art Lovers,

It’s here! Paperwork presents another Lydia Kim print. With peaceful colors and a simple composition, “The Wait V” offers insight into Lydia Kim as an artist and a person.

In “The Wait V,” Lydia’s style is as clearly defined as the jungle gym’s bars. Lydia is known to take familiar objects out of their native settings and place them on her own backdrops. The minty background color in “The Wait V” projects a sense of calm despite the loneliness that hangs in the structure’s empty spaces.

Lydia plays with geometry and horizon lines to engage viewers and evoke similar emotions within them. She believes art, like a playground, has the power to inspire happiness and heal lonely wounds.

Artfully yours,

Kurt

Want the inside scoop? Sign up for our Paperwork newsletter to receive our Paperwork collector’s message via email. Just add your email address to the nifty little the envelope icon on the right side of our Paperwork header to get involved.

Greetings Art Lovers,

We’re all family here. Whether you peruse UGallery or prefer browsing Paperwork, the artists on both sites make one awesomely creative unit. Mario Sughi, or Nerosunero, is a Paperwork patriarch. His newest addition, “Family of Immigrants,” is a tribute to the UGallery and Paperwork community.

In “Family of Immigrants,” Mario hits home with his Kundera-like satire and pop flairs indicative of David Hockney. The three members of this family stand together with pride. They are confident in their identity despite the mish-mash of cultural symbols surrounding them (local food, a newspaper, a samovar, a flag, and a church belfry in the city’s skyline).

For Mario, this piece is more than a social commentary. “Family of Immigrants” makes a visual impact with its “space, the sequence of colors and a sense of quietness all around and a sense of elegance.”

Rekindle your own family history with an insider’s look at ours!

Artfully yours,

Kurt

Want the inside scoop? Sign up for our Paperwork newsletter to receive our Paperwork collector’s message via email. Just add your email address to the nifty little the envelope icon on the right side of our Paperwork header to get involved.

Greetings Art Lovers,

Today’s artist Jonelle Summerfield is a bit of an anomaly. In an art world drenched in abstraction and conceptualism, she paints beauty.

Jonelle’s mother taught her how to paint only after Jonelle graduated from college. Her degree in interior design makes its way into her paintings, many of which are interior scenes and cityscapes inspired by travels.

In “Red Chair,” Jonelle paints an antique hallway at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria. Daylight filters through a window, bouncing off textiles and bringing the room to life. By capturing a discernible time of day, Jonelle subtly reminds us of the passage of time. She says that her goal is for her paintings “to remind people of the good things in a world that can be chaotic.”

In my mind, Jonelle succeeds. In the midst of hectic days, I’ll visit Jonelle’s profile, enlarge her paintings to the biggest possible size on my screen, and take a deep breath of fresh air. Go ahead, try it for yourself.

Artfully yours,

Bailey

Judy Mackey’s “White Hydrangeas”

Greetings Art Lovers,

Just a few hours ago, I deplaned from a day-long string of flights carrying me out of the Arctic Circle. Why go to Swedish Lappland - a land of sub-freezing temperatures and only 3 hours of daylight - for vacation? I spent my winter holiday hunting the northern lights!

While the lights themselves were electric, the landscape generally is quite bleak. Untouched snow blankets the horizon and thick birch forests dot the mountains. Beyond these sturdy trees and the lichen buried under the snow, you won’t find much flora up north.

In winter, white hydrangeas like the ones Judy Mackey captures are pipe dreams for the Northern Swedes. Their seasons are strict and unforgiving, unlike here in San Francisco. All we have to do is pop down to the Sunday Farmer’s Market to browse a cornucopia of flowers, fruits and veggies. I’ll brave a little fog for that.

Artfully yours,

Bailey

Greetings Art Lovers,

Spending summers at a lake in western New York gave Alaina Sullivan an affinity for water. Her youth was filled with “aimless floating, vigorous swimming, and paddling.”

Although Alaina’s now a young New Yorker, far from summer lakes, she keeps that fascination with the water alive in her paintings. Many of her pieces start as photographs of the ever-changing reflections hidden under docks or created in the shadow of boats. Reflected in water, rigid posts and masts melt into dancing squiggles, hulls become amorphous shapes, flags and sails are skewed beyond immediate recognition. Her work gives us a glimpse of the physical world through a liquid lens.

In “Narcissus,” the water is relatively calm, revealing to us a hint of a dock and a string of iconic lakeside flags. The warm yellows and oranges round out the piece, leaving me with a sense of home - a fitting feeling after the holiday weekend.

Artfully yours,

Bailey

Faye Vander Veer’s “Chance Encounter” is available as a Paperwork print and Ugallery original.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. — T’ien Yiheng

Greetings Art Lovers,

Today’s print celebrates tea, perhaps the wisest of drinks. The story behind the painting is as charming as they come. Painter Faye Vander Veer tells it best: 

I was sitting in a cafe in Italy overlooking the Mediterranean and I noticed a couple sitting at the table next to mine. They were deeply engaged in conversation. When they left, their two small cups on the table remained. The cups looked very intimate and I began to create a story about the couple in my mind which the title of the piece - “Chance Encounter” - captures. I like to look at these empty cups and imagine where the couple went after they left that romantic spot beside the Mediterranean.

That pleasant thought is too lovely to sully with more words.

Artfully yours,

Bailey

Sharon Sieben’s new Paperwork print - “Beatles Cross Abbey Road”

Greetings art fans!

Sadly, no, I’m not a typing Walrus at the other end of your email. I’ve stolen the phrase those legendary mop-topped Brits in honor of our newest print. (You can scoop it up free of shipping costs thru the end of today as part of our sitewide Labor Day Free Shipping Sale. Woot!)

As I imagine all of us already know, today’s piece by Sharon Sieben references The Beatles’  “Abbey Road” album cover from 1969. Besides their skeletal features, the print is true to form: John in his full white suit, Paul barefoot, Ringo and George making the famous “walk”, legs triangulated, all the while noting neither the artist name nor the album title.

The idea for the original cover was actually based on sketched ideas by McCartney. It was taken in early August, 1969 on Abbey Road (of course) outside EMI Studios. Around lunch that day, photographer Iain Macmillan was given just ten minutes to take the photograph. He climbed a small step-ladder while a policeman held the traffic, and created perhaps the most iconic, and most imitated, images of all time. (There are oodles of great tidbits about the photo, and if you’re interested in reading more, I suggest this BBC article.)

Sharon’s painting of Abbey Road takes a little flavor from the culture in her home state. “As an Arizonan, you can’t help but fall in love with the beauty and mystique of Dia de Los Muertos, ” she says. “It’s an incredibly festive time that honors departed family members, and it inspired me to paint skeletons celebrating life.” At the bequest of her clients, she began to paint famous subjects including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Norman Rockwell.

“Beatles Cross Abbey Road” is the latest incarnation of her series, and I believe her best. Now that two of the Beatles have passed on and two are still with us, the sense of transition from one world to the next is particularly potent but not quite haunting. Her jolly skeletons bring me cheerful visions of George and John groovin in the after life.

Artfully yours,

Bailey

Sign up for our Paperwork newsletter to receive collectors message via email. Add your email address to the nifty little the box on the right side of our Paperwork header to sign up.

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! - William Shakespeare

Greetings Collectors,

We’re brimming with excitement here at Paperwork HQ. As we speak, we’re doing the final development tweaks and last testing for some big new features and updates to the site. Can you guess what we might be adding?Stay tuned: our official announcement is just days away.

Ok, onto art. To celebrate our first edition by studly Ohioan Royal Jarmon, let’s do some horsing around. Here are some of the most fun (and most obscure) facts about horses the internet has to offer:

• Horses began to evolve on the American continent over 60 million years ago, they later died out and were reintroduced by Spanish settlers.
• There are about 75 million horses in the world.
• Horses’ hooves grow approximately 0.25 in a month.
• A horse’s heart weighs nine pounds.
• A zedonk is the (ridiculously cute) offspring of a zebra and a donkey.
• Last and certainly most obscure: horses generally dislike the smell of pigs. 

That was fun :)

The painter, Royal Jarmon, is a classical kinda guy. He has a deep passion for the (semi)-old masters Gustav Klimt, Vincent Van Gogh, Egon Schiele, and Albrecht Durer. Each of these masters studied the artists before them religiously while remaining contemporary and progressive. Royal has adopted this practice on his journey of self-education, doing several hours of research for each of the pieces he creates, including these three happy horses.

On behalf of the entire team, we hope you enjoy the edition. Happy arting!

Bailey

Sign up for our Paperwork newsletter to receive collectors message via email. Add your email address to the nifty little the box on the right side of our Paperwork header to sign up.