Richard Kirk

On the Balcony

1960

"MEJOR SOLAS" OIL AND ACRILIC ON CANVAS SIGNED AND DATED 2010 EXHIBITED MUSEO DEL BANCO CENTRAL DE COSTA RICA 47.5 X 59 INCHES Sofía Ruiz was born in ...

YURI MARTINEZ RAMOS "HOME FIRE OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED CUBAN-AMERICAN, C.2006 20 X 16 INCHES Home Fire" brings me back to my childhood home when my grandpa visited us every day smoking his pipe and conversing good moments. Yuri Martinez Ramos was born in Havana, Cuba on November 24, 1964. He studied at the Elemental School of Plastic Arts from 1975 – 1979 and the National School of the Arts from 1979 – 1983. Martinez’ figurative paintings have been compared to Botero because of his satirical social commentary. His style, however, is uniquely his own with typically vibrant Latin colors and use of expressive magical realism. His paintings tell his story and the story of the Cuban dilemma. Martinez was granted permission by the US Justice Department after much effort with Cuban authorities to come to the US with his family and pursue his career outside Cuba. He now lives and works in Texas. Papillon Gallery...

"UNTITLED" OIL AND ACRILIC ON CANVAS SIGNED 35.5 X 27.5 INCHES Sofía Ruiz was born in 1982. What she expresses through her paintings has to do with whe...

YURI MARTINEZ RAMOS "LOVE FIRST PIPE" OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED CUBAN-AMERICAN, C.2006 20 X 16 INCHES Yuri Martinez Ramos was born in Havana, Cuba on November 24, 1964. He studied at the Elemental School of Plastic Arts from 1975 – 1979 and the National School of the Arts from 1979 – 1983. Martinez’ figurative paintings have been compared to Botero because of his satirical social commentary. His style, however, is uniquely his own with typically vibrant Latin colors and use of expressive magical realism. His paintings tell his story and the story of the Cuban dilemma. Martinez was granted permission by the US Justice Department after much effort with Cuban authorities to come to the US with his family and pursue his career outside Cuba. He now lives and works in Texas. Papillon Gallery...

SUENO PROFUNDO OIL AND ACRILIC ON CANVAS SIGNED, 2013 EXHIBITED MUSEO DEL BANCO CENTRAL DE COSTA RICA 43.25 X 35.5 INCHES Sofía Ruiz was born in 1982....

Size with frame: 34 x 28 Inches Reza begun studying art seriously at age 15 and was studying at the institute of art in Iran where he graduated with highest honors. He also studied...

This Piece was inspired by the story of the Bride of a King. She was so loved by the King because of her great beauty, but the people of the Land loved her so much, not just for her ...

Beneath my sturdiness is a puddle surrounded by the moistness of fresh mud- soft and mushy- and it’s how I learned to nurture and love flowers. I’ve been told my best trait has to b...

In this painting, the painter tries to portray the young sleeping, lying and oversized figure of a woman as part of the landscape. Who likes to be this person and what is she doing i...

This earlier work depicts an unexpected multicolored cone extending from the subject's eye. It represents a field of vision for a young Haitian female who gazes up. It reminds me of something Man Ray or the Dadaists did. Duval-Carrié's work is more than eye-opening. Signed lower right Work is framed - Framed Size - 18 x 22 Edouard Duval...

Aiden Kringen's (US based) "Opulence 12" is an original handmade oil painting that is unframed, but ready to hang. About the Artist: A kaleidoscopic fantasia—crystalline planes floating in space, nestling together like immaculate puzzle pieces—abstract nebulae, human figures and faces enveloped in swirling fields or particles of energy—these number among the images evoked by the hauntingly enigmatic paintings of artist Aiden Kringen. Within this worldview a mysterious network of interlocking planes becomes visible to the beholder: mystical fields of unknown substance revealed as the building blocks of our bodies and semblances, surrounding, cocooning, perhaps even protecting us. It is a vision verging on the mystical, which Kringen portrays through a distinctive style: a fractured, cubistic mode of conscious- ness in which multiple dimensions or perspectives assimilate into an ecstatic whole. The artist deploys this style in opulent and seductive portraits as well as abstract tableaux whose optical signature is magnified by compositional dynamism and deeply layered surfaces. Born in Los Angeles in 1992, Kringen lived variously in the American West and Mexico—Sebastopol, Jalisco, Portland, Flagstaff—before settling in the hill- and vineyard-dotted environs of Sonoma, County, where he is now based. In these very different environments, each of which possesses a uniquely picturesque natural beauty, the artist began from an early age to develop his aesthetic approach. He has always had a keen eye for detail, grounded in a gift for looking closely at the human experience. “I’ve always been interested in observing people,” he recalls, “and in the details of how we interact with one another.” He put this natural ability to task when he began working on illustration and graphic-design projects while in high school. From his mother, an artist and graphic designer, he learned the fundamentals of composition and typography, the nuances of positive and negative space and the relationships between them. Using sheets of Letracet—a system for transfer- ring typeface—proved particularly instrumental in developing a methodology for layering and collage, which continue to inform his works on canvas and paper. He learned old-school tech- niques, hands-on and mechanical, in keeping with a Bauhaus-like appreciation for perfectionism, integrity, and hard work. Kringen began painting at 14. Then as now, drawing was central to his approach. He studied vintage anatomy atlases and drew meticulously in his journals, working through myriad permutations of bones and skin, angle and pose, muscles in motion. Honing his natural talent for figuration through long and exhaustive study, he arrived at an understanding of the figure that is both intuitive and virtuosic. On acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Kringen lays down linework with a Micron pen in ever-more-complex compositions, often with the addition of gloss mediums to bring out the layers’ reflectivity and prismatic character. In some pieces he incorporates gold and silver leaf to heighten drama and luxuriance, recalling the mosaic-like work of Gustav Klimt—who, along with fellow Austri- an Expressionist Egon Schiele, stands among Kringen’s most prominent influences. It was in 2011 that he began painting in the style with which he is now most associated: a technique fusing drawing and painting, line and brushstroke, with fragmented shapes undergirding the imag- ery. Notably, this is not simply a stylistic conceit, but more a way of perceiving reality. “Ever since I was young,” Kringen notes, “I’ve spent most of my time observing people: trying to break people down, in a visual sense, into small categorizations of their features, their mannerisms, the way they twitch their nose...” His hypersensitivity to likeness and gesture is key, for this is what distinguishes his portraits from those by artists who strive to depict idealized beauty as an end in itself. Yes, there is an undeniable beauty to Kringen’s subjects, but it does not follow strictly conventional paradigms. There is an individuality, a capturing of idiosyncracies and eccentricities, of optimism and fatalism, light and dark, in his work. He is not painting archetypes, but rather illuminating the essential charac- ters of real people in a highly refined genre of psychological portraiture. The fragmented linework, the grids of planes he uses as lenses to focus these characteristics, is sui generis but never gimmicky; above all it is a tool for defining and refining the features of the face, adding depth and definition. In his abstract work he uses similar techniques, paring the fabric of perception itself down to bare essentials of form, color, and texture. The abstract pieces are simultaneously elegant and complex, combining the sweeping gesturalism of Abstract Expressionism with the rigorous structure of geomet- ric painting. Across the breadth of his output Kringen balances technical and thematic polarities into bracing integrations of sensuality and grittiness, inviting contemplation into the nature of opticality and the infinite possibilities of the seen and unseen. —Richard Speer is a contributor to ARTnews, Artpulse, Visual Art Source, and Surface Design. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, The Oregonian, Salon, Newsweek, and Opera News. He is the author of “Matt Lamb...

The canvas comes alive with "African Princess," a painting that serves as a tribute to the elegance and allure of the African woman. The portrayal of ...