Art I like - Memphis Edition: Adam Farmer

Last summer I went to an art show here in Memphis to support Crosstown Arts. The show was called Material Anthology, curated by Hamlett Dobbins, and it consisted of over 50 artists who had exhibited with Hamlett and Material (the exhibition space) from 2004 - 2013. 

I plan on highlighting many of the artists I viewed during that exhibit (there were so many talents in one space), but today I will start with Adam Farmer. His piece Weeping Walter Wonderland (not shown) caught my eye almost immediately for it's rough strokes and wild subject matter. Upon my research, it seems as if he has several pieces of which I am quite fond. 

The last Friday of every month, Adam opens his home in Midtown as an art gallery called Glitch, where he hosts his (and fellow Memphis artists) most recent works. Check out more of Adam's work on his Tumblr page and keep up with Glitch via Facebook.

Stuff I like: Trey Speegle

I was browsing Jonathan Adler's website the other day and I came across my newest obsession: Trey Speegle.  I absolutely love his quirky sense of self and his savvy take on paint by numbers. Besides Jonathan Adler, he has also collaborated with Anthropologie and Stella McCartney (no wonder I'm such a big fan!). Check out more of his work here. 

 

Happy Friday!

Stuff I like: Mary Sims

The other day I had a meeting with a potential client in her home. She was a born and bred Memphian as well, and during our meeting I noticed that she had some fantastic artwork. After our business was conducted, I inquired about some of her paintings - specifically a wacky, yet meticulously detailed still life. She proceed to tell me about Mary Sims, a Memphis painter. She had a couple of her pieces and I just fell in love. Her sense of color and composition is absolutely amazing. 

David Lusk Gallery has some of her pieces and I now have a new entry on my Bucket List: own a Mary Sims painting.  I lifted her bio from her page on the DLG website:

Mary Sims taught herself how to paint. She was the first woman accepted into the printmaking department at the University of Iowa, working under the master, Mauricio Lasanksy. She did further studies in Rome and at Tulane University. Sims got a teaching job at Rhodes College in the early 1970s. Then, pregnant with her daughter, she realized she could only afford the baby or her own printmaking operation. Not long after that decision she started teaching herself to paint.

"I started saying I was going to be an artist when I was three years old -- as early as I could talk. Sims spent her whole life honing her craft and loving every day of art making. I really think I am a happy person. Not because my life is all roses and sunshine. But because I have exactly what I want out of the whole world and I get to work at it."

Her preferred subject matter was anything with eyes – be it a cat, dog, horse, pig, goose, toddler, adolescent or dowager. For Sims the eyes were the soul, and if she was able to recreate them well the rest of the portrait was a piece of cake. Portraits, however, were a small part of her career. She’s most noted for intricate, flat, stylized still life paintings chock full of flowers, fabrics, tsatske and spunk.

Working from meticulously built settings, Sims photographed every inch of the composition, glued the photos into a large study that she then gridded, and transferred that imagery onto a gridded canvas. Her final product was an elegantly simplified arrangement of colorful forms and textures. The paintings are very flat with nary a brush mark evident.

Sims exhibited coast to coast, she sold work to a big group of celebrities and also to museums and fortune 500 companies. She touched everyone she met with her wit, frankness, clever Southern patois and skill with a paintbrush.

Stuff I like: Laura Owens

Laura Owens is an American painter who emerged in the late 1990s. She is best known for her mixed media paintings of animals and landscapes that incorporate a variety of art historical references and painterly techniques. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

I came across her work in the Phaidon book Vitamin P: Perspectives in Paintings back in 2005 and have followed her career ever since. I love her style and how it has evolved over the years and I can't wait to see what great pieces she will create in the future. 

Check out more pieces from this extremely talented artist on her website: Owenslaura.com

Stuff I like: Charlie Harper

While we were visiting my mom in Owensboro, Kentucky over the holidays, we took a little day trip over the river to Newburgh, Indiana (which is an adorable small town on the Ohio River - seriously - I would live there) for a little sight-seeing and shopping. While strolling through one of the art galleries, I came across this artist/illustrator and immediately fell in love!

Charlie Harper (1922 - 2007) is an artist/ illustrator who was born in West Virginia and has had a most interesting and diverse career. He graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnatti in 1947 and had had success in both commercial illustration and personal designs. I love his bright colors, his whimsical yet structured & geometric style and the fact that most of his subjects are animals! When once asked to describe his art style, Harper replied, “When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.”

What a wonderful and talented guy! Happy Friday!