Mr. Imagination (Gregory Warmack) Art

Guillaume Couffignal (French b. 1964) Theatre, 2014. Bronze. 19 7/8 x 13 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches. Signed on the base: Couffignal. Beautiful texture and patina. Guillaume Couffignal is a French Postwar & Contemporary self taught, outsider artist who was born in 1964. He works in bronze casting complex, fantastic, architecture models, abstract theater and boat models that look like relics from the past. He learned the art of lost wax casting with a traditional African foundry in Koudougou, Burkina Faso in Africa when he was 23, blessed to find his way so young. He felt the deep alchemy of the process combining the elements of Nature to produce a concept that did not previously exist in our world. He saw the potential of this earth magic. It forces chance and pushes the limits of bronze because each sculpture can never be exactly reproduced. Like the use of clay, this art has a deep connection with the primitive elements of Nature. There is the wind and the sky and the earth and the fire. There are ashes and dust. Here exists a collaboration with the spirit of the Illusionist, an artist in all his unpredictability. But it is not an art of chance. The Illusionist / artist masters the elements of accident and surprise. He is a magician who controls the secrets of his process. In the case of Couffignal, this has to do with the three-dimensional collage of carefully chosen fragments and shapes and with its earth-like textures, carefully perfected over many years of experimentation. Its textures make the materials lie. They have an irregular patina of wear and bad weather. They make bronze itself secondary with this creamy pigmentation of the earth burnt by the sun. The texture then becomes a painting. Couffignal sets the scene for the pure drama of the void. He fills it with memories and voices. This decor is visually minimal, but this very minimalism points to the importance of his other intentions. Its boats are "soul boats" caught between two universes. Its architectural pieces evoke ruins and nevertheless attest to their own existence. Although this process is ancient, and in this case learned from the African tradition, the true testimony of the power of Guillaume Couffignal is that not a single element of his work derives from something existing. As a true iconoclast, he has taken up a traditional language, learned this language, and starting from this language has created a poetry completely unique and unique to him. Randal Morris, 2013. His work is from the tradition of outsider art, art brut, folk art, naïve art, visionary art and intuitive art with a sophisticated subject matter. A kind of symbiosis of jean Dubuffet and Daniel Arsham. Sculptures as forgotten images of a world where the trace always precedes presence. As in the art of raku, ancestral Japanese pottery where the cooking accident and the patina of use - wabi and sabi - testify to an intimate cosmogonic geography. Omnipresent memory of the color and the smell of the earth - mud, noble material which in Africa is used to erect huts, houses, palaces and mosques. Historically and up to the margins of the caravan route, on the borders of the great Arabic Muslim...

Murat Brierre or Murat Briere (1938–1988) was one of Haiti's principal metal sculptors. He was influenced by George Liautaud, but his work acquired its own, highly experimental style, often focusing on multi-faceted and conjoined figures, fantastically personified elements, and unborn babies visible within larger creatures. He sculpted works that reflected both Christian and Haitian Vodou themes. Murat BRIERRE was born in Mirebalais in 1938. He first worked as a builder, cabinetmaker and blacksmith before being introduced to Le Centre d’Art in 1966. After trying painting with DeWitt Peters, he realized that metal sculpture was best suited for him and studied under Georges Liautaud in order to learn the métier. He also made very beautiful linocuts. Francine Murat quickly recognized his talent and considered Brierre to be one of the best Haitian sculptors. He passed away in 1988 at the age of 50. Brierre’s works have been exhibited in France, the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Mexico and Jamaica, in such places as the Abbaye de Daoulas, the Grand Palais, the Brooklyn Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Mexico and the Musée du Montparnasse. His work is part of the permanent collections at the Waterloo Museum, the Davenport Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Le Centre d’Art, the Musée d’art Haïtien du Collège Saint-Pierre and the Musée de Panthéon National Haïtien. References Phyllis Kind...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Working from found materials, Fitzgerald constructs miniature soap box cars...

Ann Rothman Green Ballerina (Circus, Whimsical, Viola Frey, Delicate, Playful, Fun, Cirque du Soleil, The Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey) 2022 Porcelain, ...

Ford William is a self-taught folk/outsider artist, who began making art after coming to terms with chronic mental health issues that had plagued him all his life. The piece was made...

Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald uses his works as a means of resurrecting the idyllic worlds he once found in the industrial surroundings of his youth. Raised in Grand Rapids...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his miniature car sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Born from a fascination with the soap box derby cars of his youth, each vehicle is an exercise in imagining the future through the lens of the past – or vice versa. Built from found materials collected over the years, the car's futuristic form is layered with personal memories and keepsakes from the past. The most minute of details is always intentional – from the weathered finish to the fictitious sponsor to the miniaturized furnishings of the cramped interior. This sculptural car entitled "Pylon Trunk" is intended as a complement to the rest of Fitzgerald's imaginative cars, something of a service vehicle loaded with removable traffic cones and street signs. A simple truck bed...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his miniature car sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Born from a fascination with the soap box...

Important one of a kind painting by Noche Crist (1909 - 2004). A shaped painting titled " Flower Caryatid". Noche Crist imbued her cutouts with more...

Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald uses his works as a means of resurrecting the idyllic worlds he once found in the industrial surroundings of his youth. Raised in Grand Rapids...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his miniature car sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Born from a fascination with the soap box...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Working from found materials, Fitzgerald constructs miniature soap box cars...