New Artist Spotlight: Michael O’Day and Kevin Perlic
UGallery releases new art and welcomes new artists to our community every week. We love seeing what each new week will bring. This week’s newest artist are Michael O’Day and Kevin Perlic! Read on below to learn a little bit more about her work.
Michael O’Day. Taylor, Pennsylvania.
Reality is the foundation of Michael O’Day’s art. He mimics the geometric shapes and shadows that dance in the real world with charcoal to form a direct representation of his inner reality. Michael says, “I use the reality we see as a kind of armature on which to build an alternate reality.” He pulls direct inspiration from George Inness, Robert Kipniss, Thomas Hart Benton, and Diego Rivera.
Kevin Perlic. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Kevin Perlic found photography to be a means of capturing the world around him. Kevin seeks the beautiful in nature and life by peering through the lens of his camera. With a snap of the shutter and his own artistic manipulations, Kevin captures the true essence of the environment. While he loves to take photos in and around the Mid-West, he also document the travels he embarks on with his wife. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Cleveland State University.
If you’re loving these artists, let them know by leaving a comment on their UGallery profile page. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
New Artist Spotlight: Amna Mehmood, Mike Kaplan, Tricia May and Karen Darling
UGallery releases new art and welcomes new artists to our community every week. We love seeing what each new week will bring. This week’s newest artist are Amna Mehmood, Mike Kaplan, Tricia May and Karen Darling! Read on below to learn a little bit more about her work.
Amna Mehmood. San Jose, California.
Amna Mehmood creates stories of fictional characters living in fictional worlds. Her photographs tell tales that go beyond the models and the settings she shoots. Amna hopes to create secret worlds and stories for people to enjoy. She says, “one can just sit, staring at a photograph, lost in the worlds that exist inside it.
Mike Kaplan. Sedgefield, Western Cape.
Mike Kaplan developed his eye for landscapes while studying graphic design in London. His fascination with William Turner’s ability to capture the movement of water motivated him to take his design eye to rivers and oceans with a camera in hand. By snapping long-exposure shots at sunrise and sunset, Mike Kaplan develops his own mastery of the flowing quality of a seascape.
Tricia May. Boise, Idaho.
Tricia May looks to the philosophy of yin and yang to drive her balanced compositions. With Mother Nature as a guiding force for her art, Tricia takes oil to canvas to depict the play of warm and cool colors found in landscapes, flowers, and the sky. Tricia May founded the Plein Air Painters of Idaho and is a member of Oil Painters of America.
Karen Darling. Brampton, Canada
Trained as an illustrator, Karen Darling has learned to capture the human form in all its essence. Her female forms seem to dance across the canvas. Despite a love for abstractions, Karen keeps enough of her understanding of the body to develop a clear and stylistic approach to the figure.
If you’re loving these artists, let them know by leaving a comment on their UGallery profile page. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
New Artist Spotlight: Yoko Naito
UGallery releases new art and welcomes new artists to our community every week. We love seeing what each new week will bring. This week’s newest artist is Yoko Naito! Read on below to learn a little bit more about her work.
Yoko Naito. Woodside, New York.
Yoko Naito only takes photographs when she is alone. Even though her photographs are images of vacant places, they are filled with boundless complexity. In Yoko’s scenes, emptiness is made tangible through her ability to make a void seem as though it had been filled just seconds prior to her snapping the photo. Yoko’s images are reminiscent of ghost towns that once prospered, but are now empty.
If you like Yoko Naito’s art, let her know by leaving a comment on her UGallery profile page. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.
New Artist Spotlight: Victoria Bearden, Phil Couture, Holly Friesen and Casey Rodgers
Every week, UGallery releases new art from our current artists and welcomes new artists to the community. We love seeing what each new week will bring. Say “Hello” to Victoria Bearden, Phil Couture, Holly Friesen and Casey Rodgers. These are UGallery’s newest artists! Read on below to learn a little bit more about their work.
Victoria Bearden. Oceanside, California.
Aquarian Angel, oil painting on stretched canvas, 24” h x 18” w x 1” d
Victoria Bearden uses dreams and memories as inspiration for her paintings. Victoria is attune to her emotional and physical environment and hopes to translate this understanding to the canvas. Victoria says, “I seek to connect with my audience on an intuitive level, but also in an emotional and visceral way.”
Phil Couture. Leesburg, Florida.
Phil Couture was born in Quebec, Canada and moved to Florida at a young age. In the sunshine state, Phil developed the painting skills of the Old Masters, Impressionists, and greats of the past. A primary source of his inspiration comes from his travels to places near and far, both familiar and exotic.
Holly Friesen. Montreal, Quebec.
Holly Friesen captures a region in all its beauty. With vivid exchanges of color and composition, Holly delves into territories not often explored. Each of her brushstrokes become an intuitive moment that echoes her emotional response to the environment and the natural world. Holly says, “painting is like deep prayer awakening a reverence for the earth’s inner landscape.”
Casey Rodgers. West Hollywood, California.
Casey Rodgers’s photographs are made for the big screen. Each photo has an element of suspense and drama that makes it motion picture-worthy. Casey does have a degree in cinema, after all. His leg series was a personal project of his to explore the “what” rather than the “who” that turned into a full-fledged fashion editorial.
If you like what you saw today, let the artists know by leaving a comment on their UGallery profile page. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
New Artist Spotlight: Kathleen Finlay and Jean-Pierre Jacquet
Every week, UGallery releases new art from our current artists and welcomes new artists to the community. We love seeing what each new week will bring. Say “Hello” to Kathleen Finlay and Jean-Pierre Jacquet. These are UGallery’s newest artists! Read on below to learn a little bit more about their work.
Kathleen Finlay. Toronto, Canada.
Kathleen Finlay collects relics. With the stop of a shutter, Kathleen captures the magic of moments. Her inspirations and imagination drives her pristine Polaroids. While a portrait and lifestyle photographer by day, Kathleen treats each of her art prints with her own personalized style to turn the stock images into something spectacular.
Jean-Pierre Jacquet. Greenwich, Connecticut.
There’s something familiar about Jean-Pierre Jacquet’s work. Perhaps it’s his use of social icons and drama that makes his paintings so recognizable. With exaggerated lighting and subjects that appear frozen in time, Jean-Pierre stages cinematic compositions. He says, “My paintings are narrative. They are a mix of stereotypes and clichés inspired by noir movies and literature, channelling private memories and universal gestures and creating a sense of déjà vu.”
If you like what you saw today, let the artists know by leaving a comment on their UGallery profile page. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
New Artist Spotlight: Pamela Gatens, Menno van der Meulen, Sarah Parsons, Brandy Saturley, and Natalia Vetrova
Every week, UGallery releases a batch of new art (as well as new artists). We love seeing what each new week will bring.
Say “Hello” to Pamela Gatens, Menno van der Meulen, Sarah Parsons, Brandy Saturley, and Natalia Vetrova. These are UGallery’s newest artists! Below is a little bit about their work. If you like what you see, let them know by leaving a comment on their profile pages. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
Pamela Gatens. Hillsboro, West Virginia
Pamela Gatens loves to paint, so she does it whenever she can. After we spoke with her on the phone, Pamela ended the conversation with an exuberant, “I think I’m going to paint now!” Pamela proves that a daily art practice will produce expertly-crafted paintings. She shares her fascination with color by painting flowers, cats, and abstracts.
Menno van der Meulen. Arnhem, Netherlands
Heavy in composition and texture, Menno van der Meulen’s analogue and digital photography merges the darker side of traditional portraiture with his modern mentality. Inspired by the work of Anton Corbijn and Sally Mann, Menno channels a ethos of deeply moving art.
Sarah Parsons. Nashville, Tennessee
Sara Parsons conjures a dream world with her dry brush and palette knife techniques. She begins a painting by choosing its colors. Then, whether standing in her local church surrounded by music or in the solitude of her own studio, Sara will let her environment dictate her next stroke. She blurs lines brilliantly for a heavenly finishing touch.
Brandy Saturley. Victoria, British Columbia
Brandy Saturley’s pop creations are surreal looks into the mind of an artist. Her canvases explode with quirky power from her juxtapositions of deers with a fur scarves, skulls with flowers, and modern human figures in legendary and mythical setting. Her art touches the archetypal lobe in the brain of viewers for an overall seductive portfolio.
Natalia Vetrova. Vancouver, Canada
Culling inspiration from her wintry homeland of Russia, Natalia Vetrova drifts through traditional symbols and western colors for a truly global approach to art. No matter how far north Natalia travels, she welds together the formality of the east with the sturdiness of the west.
Finger on the pulse: Photographing your Purse
The New York Times Photography Blog posted a great story - Pockets and Purses Give Up Their Secrets - about the work of Francois Robert, a Tucscon-based photographer who artfully captures the contents of peoples’ bags. One of his subjects had 21 bags of Sweet N’ Low in her bag! (Top that mom!)
Enjoy the story and the photos. To check out Ugallery’s photo collection, click here.
Francois Robert
Pockets and Purses Give Up Their Secrets
By Candice Chan
Francois Robert was 13 when his mother caught him searching her friend’s purse for pocket money. She had never been one to scold. Instead, she gave him a more introspective way to consider what he was doing:
“A woman’s purse is more private than her naked body.”
Those words inspired Mr. Robert, now 63, in the creation of “Contents”: a collection of photographs documenting the possessions tucked inside 120 individuals’ backpacks, pants and jacket pockets, or purses.
The items in each image offer a voyeuristic glimpse into the intimate details of other people’s day-to-day lives. The subjects’ hands are shown beside their belongings, providing an immediate comparison - or contrast - between the objects and their owners.
The participants were construction workers, C.E.O.’s, designers, doctors, girlfriends, and children, ranging in age from 4 to 75.
To get the most unadulterated look at each person’s belongings, Mr. Robert never told anyone in advance what he would be photographing.
Francois Robert
Some were friends and acquaintances, whom he invited over for a chat or a weekend brunch. Others, he simply found at random around Tucson, where Mr. Robert spends winter and spring; and Chicago and Michiana Shores, Ind., where he spends summer and autumn. (He all but dragged a taxi driver into his studio, telling him to leave the meter running.) In each case, he requested participation in what he described as a fine art project.
Only when the subjects were inside the studio would he reveal the nature of his portraits.
“I’m going to empty your entire bag,” Mr. Robert would say. “If there’s anything you don’t want to show, please let me know. You will be allowed to edit the photo.”
But very few people chose to edit their lives, and only one refused to participate.
Bottles of aspirin, bunches of vegetables, contraceptives and gobs of jewelry practically invite you to write your own stories. (Though how does one explain 21 packets of Sweet’N Low?) You can see what people are attached to, whom they cherish or whom they’ve lost. In “Eulogy,” a man flying to his father’s funeral laid out his entire speech for the ceremony.
“I would not have opened my life in that way to anybody else,” said Jennifer Rothman Teufel, 43, whose canvas satchel was upturned for “Alta Forma.” After seeing her life laid-out piece by piece, she said she felt vulnerable. At first, she wanted to take things out of it. But she was also astounded by how powerful the experience was, saying that Mr. Robert “was able to, in such an abbreviated manner, catch somebody’s entire life in that moment.”
“Contents” recalls “What’s in Your Bag?” by Jason Travis and “In Your Bag” by InStyle. But it evolved from a project Mr. Robert began in 1978.
Mr. Robert has worked commercially for clients like Crate and Barrel, and has published three books. His “Stop the Violence” project was a finalist for a Lucie award last year. He is now photographing the ears of 160 people. He asks his subjects — including the composer Philip Glass — to recall the best and worst thing their ears have heard.
Francois Robert
His work makes us consider our own experiences in a new way. Perhaps that’s why one of the most intriguing photos in “Contents” shows a small hand with turquoise nails next to an empty canvas. It seems to signify that the greatest way to express individuality is to carry nothing at all.
