Paul Shakespear

Taormina

2022

Paul Shakespear’s minimalist works constantly explore the material properties of paint. This painting is beautifully surfaced. The artist strives to achieve translucence, depth or even a stony surface. The work has no narrative. It has some mark making, but it’s subservient to the tactile quality of the painting’s surface. It’s all about painting as object. He applies close to forty layers of think acrylic glazes that are brushed, troweled and rubbed on. The final layer is often an equisite highly polished surface. The artist compares painting to making music, an activity beyond words, a reaching for the emotional and unconscious world. His work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe and South America. He is in numerous collections, including Addison Gallery of American Art; Ann & Graham Gund Colleciton; Fidelity Investments; University of San Diego; Berkshire Partners and De Cordova Museum. Paul Shakespear lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was educated at Boston College...

Paul Shakespear’s minimalist works constantly explore the material properties of paint. This painting is beautifully surfaced. The artist strives to achieve translucence, depth or even a stony surface. The work has no narrative. It has some mark making, but it’s subservient to the tactile quality of the painting’s surface. It’s all about painting as object. He applies close to forty layers of think acrylic glazes that are brushed, troweled and rubbed on. The final layer is often an equisite highly polished surface. The artist compares painting to making music, an activity beyond words, a reaching for the emotional and unconscious world. His work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe and South America. He is in numerous collections, including Addison Gallery of American Art; Ann & Graham Gund Colleciton; Fidelity Investments; University of San Diego; Berkshire Partners and De Cordova Museum. Paul Shakespear lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was educated at Boston College...

This beautiful painting is by Japanese artist, Takefumi Hori. He was born in Tokyo, Japan. He paints beautiful gold leaf paintings. This piece is acrylic, gold leaf and metal leaf ...

This beautiful painting is by Japanese artist, Takefumi Hori. He was born in Tokyo, Japan. He paints beautiful gold leaf paintings. This piece is acrylic, gold leaf and metal leaf ...

This beautiful painting is by Japanese artist, Takefumi Hori. He was born in Tokyo, Japan. He paints beautiful gold leaf paintings. This piece is acrylic, gold leaf and metal leaf ...

Ayse Wilson is a Turkish-American artist who lives and lives and works in Connecticut. Her work draws from memory and emotion to remind viewers of youth, innocence and the timeless space we occupy when we are young. She creates lively and childlike characters, finding inspiration in the works of early Italian Renaissance masters such as Fra Angelico. Wilson graduated from Wellesley College in 1991, and pursued her education in Florence. She received her MFA at New York Academy of Art, and later worked as a painting assistant to Jeff Koons for two years. This current series employs the toile wallpaper samples that the artist had lying around her house during lockdown as a backdrop for ambiguous and complicated feelings toward quarantine and domestic confinement. In this work, she is hoping to narrate how fear of the pandemic unknown, coupled with household anxieties, and increased self-awareness contributed to the mixed emotions of security and hostility towards enforced domesticity within a masked world. The toile tradition represented a coincidental parallel with the COVID era rediscovery of old-fashioned pastoral lifestyles, and the embrace of self-reliant artisanal practices like cooking, gardening, sewing, and prescribed homeschooling. Her colorful inscriptions, some original, some appropriated, layer in our contemporary lifestyle, our modern methods of connectivity as well as our high-tech world. The punky playfulness of the neon and fluorescents contrasts with the backdrop of Fragonard-esque imagery and hopes to delivery her messages of love and connection, awareness and newness, hope and emotions, as well as the occasional glossily veiled hostility expressed in certain so-called “love” declarations. The phrases evolved from a previous series addressing the Me Too movement...

"Daydreamer" by Ritchelly Oliveira presents a striking portrayal of introspection and vulnerability against a backdrop of pure white. At the heart of the canvas stands a black man, e...

Adam Cohen’s glorious abstract painting is a kaleidoscope of bright colours—a heady mix of orange, pinks, purples, chocolate brown, indigo, turquoise blue, and yellow highlighted by ...

Archaic Hercules Skinning a Rabbit, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 53.14 H x 55.11 W in. 135 H x 140 W cm In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and his numerous far-ra...

In a captivating new collection, Alex Guofeng Cao dazzles audiences with his unique twist on instantly recognizable images. Inspired by history and pop culture, Cao manipulates one iconic image to create another in his extraordinary large-scale works. From a distance, the pieces appear to be a singular image but as the viewer approaches closer, you find each work is a masterfully crafted compilation of minute detailed images layered next to one another, creating a mesmerizing and hypnotic optical illusion. Cao meticulously places each smaller image to form a dynamic gradient from dark to light which tricks the eye into seeing one image. This expertise in contrast is exemplified in all of his works, from striking black and white pieces to stunning explorations in high-definition color. He cleverly mirrors this visual contrast in his subject matter by subverting the main image and creating a dialogue between the macrocosm and microcosm. Take the piece, Ali vs Armstrong; here we see the iconic image of Muhammed Ali’s victory composed of thousands of tiny portraits...

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Roxbury” is a stunning landscape of architecture and city deleterious. Moon-Joo Lee received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Department of Painting in 2003 and received the schools' Top Prize with this painting. “Roxbury” subsequently was on display at Chrysler’s World Headquarters for a period of time. While at Cranbrook she began to document the ubiquitous construction sites skirting Detroit and similar cities across the country. The transitory urban fabric became her compelling subject, emblematic of fluctuating socio-economic conditions and a widespread culture of uncertainty. - Joe Houston of Cranbrook Art Museum. Lee’s painting “Roxbury” captures the cycle of construction, destruction and reconstruction that perpetually transforms the American city scene. In this image, a business that boasts NEW in its signage is already in the process of being destroyed. This could be a scene of bombing or environmental damage, but per Moon-Joo Lee’s aesthetics, the mountainous terrain of assorted refuse is there to remind the viewer that perhaps new and better do not necessarily mean that nor do they guarantee positive change. Lee's contemporary landscape underscores the extent to which nature has been supplanted by a manufactured environment, portraying rampant cultural transformation as a modern expression of manifest destiny. Moon-Joo Lee is one of the many well-known artists who attended The Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, that was designed by architect and faculty member, Eliel Saarinen who collaborated with Charles and Ray Eames on chair and furniture design. It is the country’s top ranked, graduate-only program in architecture, design and fine art. Each year, just 75 students are invited to study and live on the landmark Saarinen-designed campus which features: private studios, state-of-the art workshops, the renowned Cranbrook Art Museum and 300 acres of forests, lakes and streams, all a short drive from the city of Detroit. The focus at Cranbrook is on studio practice in one of ten disciplines including Architecture, 2D and 3D Design, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media, and Sculpture. The program is anchored by celebrated Artists- and Designers-in-Residence, one for each discipline, all of whom live and practice on campus alongside the graduate students. Numerous creative artists who are alumni of Cranbrook include: Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Jack Lenor Larsen, Donald Lipski, Duane Hanson, Nick Cave, Hani Rashid, George Nelson, Urban Jupena (Nationally recognized fiber artist), Artis Lane (the first African-American artist to have her sculpture, "Sojourner Truth," commissioned for the Emancipation Hall in the Capital Visitor Center in Washington DC), Cory Puhlman (televised Pastry Chef extraordinaire), Thom O’Connor (Lithographs), Paul Evans (Brutalist-inspired sculpted metal furnishings), Eugene Caples (small bronze images/abstract), Morris Brose (Bronze Sculptures), Herb Babcock (blown glass), Larry Butcher (mixed media), Lauren Anais Hussey (Abstract), Andrea Eis (film, photography), Lilian Swann Saarinen (Sculpture), Douglas Semivan...

Coulombe-Bégin's dynamic acrylic on canvas works seek to produce a metamorphic interpretation of the artist's inner identity. Her paintings make ample use of contrasting colors to cr...