Robert Crooker

Takachiho Gorge, Original Landscape Painting, 2017

2017

Roses, Original Contemporary Impressionist Floral Still Life Painting, 2014 20" x 16" x 1.5" (HxWxD) Acrylic on Canvas Hand-signed by the artist. In this work, artist Ingrid Dohm ha...

Artist Commentary: This is an original acrylic on canvas garden landscape painting, 48 48 inches. Keywords: garden, spring, nature, trellis, orange, green, lush, happy, spring Arti...

Artist Commentary: My painting studio is cold. It's January/February in Massachusetts. So I painted a cold picture... Keywords: Winter, Island, Snow, Trees, snow, lake, ice, refle...

Artist Commentary: It wasn’t until Ingrid came to the United States from Austria and married that she considered painting seriously. A casual remark by her husband, that she had a na...

Stonehenge at Dusk By Max Panks [2021] Whiteshill, Stroud, Gloucestershire By Max Panks original Watercolour on Paper Image size: H:27 cm x W:39 cm Complete Size of Unframed Work: H...

One of a kind Mixed Medium on Canvas Artwork: Original abstract mixed media work on canvas, which combines new media - digital original hand painting, printed on canvas, then hand ...

"Endless Summer" is a well-known artwork among Peter Schenck's many remarkable paintings, and addresses subject matter that continues to engage the artist – the tools of painting and art making, including brushes, tubes of paint and palette knife are arranged in a child-like tableau alongside brightly colored and eroticized inflatables of the hand, the breast, the dollop of paint... And all of it reminiscent of toys on a beach under blue skies where anything should be possible. From Peter Schenck: "Endless Summer mixes up the time-honored tradition of the still life with my feelings on an artist's attachment to their tools – brush, palette, paint – an attachment at times bordering on erotic, at times feeling awkward and all-thumbs. I was also taking on Tom Wesselmann's concentrated still lives of the 60s and 70s, banal and erotic all at once." "Endless Summer" is an acrylic paint on canvas measuring 30" tall by 25" wide. It was included in the group show "Sitting Still" at Bravin Lee Programs Gallery, New York City in October 2017, and showed alongside work by Fairfield Porter, Thomas Nozkowski, Janet Fish, Robert DeNiro Sr...

Josh Talbott's (US based) "Untitled at Sea" is an acrylic painting that depicts a small toy red piano floating suspended in a light blue sea background. Bio: Josh Talbott grew up in suburban/rural Georgia in the southern US. His first work as a professional artist was in scenic painting and murals for various production companies. An attempt to deepen his well of possibilities led to New Orleans where as a street artist he sold works to people from all over the world before loosing everything in hurricane Katrina. With short stints in Santa Fe and then Los Angeles Josh arrived in the small coastal city of Los Osos, California where he lives and works today. His curiosity is voracious and interests are many, including scuba/ free diving, sailing, surfing, gardening, geology, rock hounding, rationality, AI, history, and philosophy. In his studio there is always an audiobook on, and outside of the studio there are all manner of activities making there way into his work. He has many private collectors scattered across the globe and murals in San Francisco. ARTIST STATEMENT We live in a time of extreme and accelerated change, growing complexity, and specialization. At every stage in our human trajectory from primitive beginnings crawling out of the sea to the present gauntlet of challenges, our thinking tools and their uses are central to the story of what it means to be human. My work is informed by a fascination with thinking tools and the effects of programming and environment through the different phases of life and our capacity for storytelling. My practice consists of constructing small-scale still life scenarios of toys and other artifacts of human development, then creating photorealistic acrylic paintings of these scenes. The work juxtaposes the familiar and playful with a contemporary, complex, adult world. While I am interested in the science of the mind, and what it means to be a human, my work seldom features the human form, focusing instead on the objects and items that are frequently left behind. As such, the subject of the painting becomes the viewer him or herself because their own humanity is ultimately what is revealed. My work honors toys as thinking tools for small people and the scenes depicted explore the ways in which the culture of our formative years leaves a lasting mark and continues to shape our storytelling. The plastic artifacts of my formative years carry memories of simultaneous confusion and wonder at the world around me. These are sensations and emotions still very much present in my life. What were your imaginings and dramas when you played with toys? Are you living them today? The multileveled still life paintings of familiar toys are bright and accessible and connect to the viewer's nostalgia and playfulness while provoking deeper insights into our current evolutionary, cultural, and technological moment. I place each little curio with care into meaningful relationship to their interlocutors and environment. The plastic dinosaurs often depicted are emblematic of childhood curiosities, of great wonder and speculation at past worlds and the depth of evolutionary time, and yet they are made of a material that illustrates our shortsightedness, a quintessential human quality that makes it quite possible that these plastic creations will outlast us all. I do my best to draw inspiration and resources from everywhere to build a visual language. In my divergent path I find the musical compositions and the story of composer, Philip Glass inspiring. The story of his devotion to his craft and his subsequent successes have encouraged and inspired me. I'm influenced by writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Sapolsky, and Yuval Noah Harari, the many books by Simon Winchester, Daniel Dennet, Robert Wright...