Artist 43: Shen Saomin

Saomin was born in Heilongjiang Province, China. He lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Beijing, China. He exhibits internationally, including Liverpool, England, Switzerland, and Melbourne, Australia.

He's a bone sculptor, creating relatively large sculptural oddities of composite figures with bones from assorted animals, sometimes including human bones. THese things are sort of nightmarish, especially when you look at them in the face.

Unknown Creature- Mosquito


This thing looks huge, because it kind of is. It stands 230 cm tall, which converts to 7 feet tall!
These pieces are meant to criticize genetic engineering and what the consequences could be. Imagine if a mosquito larger than the average human escaped from a lab. The consequences would be catastrophic!

At the same time, they're supposed to be the remains of extinct creatures from an era where everything was huge. He occasionally carves into the bone of the sculptures, again eluding to man's disturbance of the natural world. He can create new bone forms by grinding the bone down to meal and casting it into a mold. These casts maintain the look and texture of actual bone, but allow new forms to be made.

Shen is another artists that goes along with the theme of the organic mixed with man-made. His composite bone sculptures have given me a few ideas on what to do with my newly acquired skeletons.

Artist 42: Clive Barker

Barker was born in 1952 in Liverpool, England.

Clive Barker describes his work as unseen fantasy coexisting with our own reality. Regardless of how distorted and deformed his characters are they always portray very real human emotions. His work ranges from shocking to humorous, simple to complex. His mediums and working sizes are just as diverse, ranging from sketches, to oils, to illustrations, and from thumbnails to 6 feet wide.

His painting first started appearing in a fan club magazine called Dreaded, which was dedicated to his already acclaimed horror stories. His artwork is currently displayed at theBert Green Fine Art Gallery in Los Angeles, California. He has produced a few video games which have a fairly loyal following, the most well known of which are Clive Barker's Undying and CLive Barker's Jericho.

On top of being a visual artist, he's also an author and film director. He came to public prominence during the 1980s when he published his first book of short horror stories. His most famous work is the Hellraiser series.

Here are some of his works;

The Painter


Title Unknown

Artist 41: Ptolemy

This guy is a British sculptor whose medium of choice is hubcaps. He rescues the poor things for the side of the road, junkyards, and anywhere a hubcap might get lost. He sees beauty in all things, and hubcaps are no exception. For this reason he will gladly take a visually pleasing object from discarded trash and use it in his artwork. Frankly, he can't believe that people are so unimaginative in recycling their useless, but aesthetically pleasing possessions.

Ptolemy is very upset with the wastefulness of modern human society and seeks to criticize this aspect through his artwork. He uses his hubcap fish to try to get people to think twice before throwing something away.



Ptolemy has inspired me to pick up objects that are in useable shape that other people throw away, usually on the side of the road or on a sidewalk. I've found some rather interesting objects while doing this. I apply this same theory to dead animals; if the skeleton is in good shape, I'll take it. It's actually not that uncommon to see me come to a sudden stop on a road in order to pick up something on the side of the road that caught my eye.

Artist 40: Takashi Amano

Mr. Amano is a different type of artist from what most people are used to. He's a skilled photographer, but he's most well known for his aquascapes. In fact, he single handedly invented a new way to aquascape an aquarium that has taken the world by storm in recent years. This method is called Iwagumi, or the Nature Aquarium.





He was born in 1954 in Niigata, Japan. Ever since 74 he's been going on excursions in the Amazon, rain forests in Borneo, and West Africa. He also takes frequent trips to untouched forests in Japan. He takes photographs at these locations, focusing on the beauty of untouched nature with large format cameras (8" x 20" film). He exhibits these photos all over the world trying to encourage people to find see the wonders of places where mankind has not left its mark. These photos are meant to preserve these pristine locations for generations to come, just incase we destroy them.

Amano travels the world giving lectures about his photography and his experiences in these wild section of the planet. He also emphasized the importance of tree-planting programs and why they need support. He also does underwater photography in exotic locations. In fact, he won the Fuji Film Nature Photo Contest in 1992 for his photo of an Asian sheepshead wrasse.

Takashi has left an impact in more than the nature photography scene. As stated above, he is revered as an icon in the aquarium hobby. His planted tanks have encouraged thousands, possibly millions to take a chance in using live plants in their aquariums in order to create a more natural take and bring a little piece (sometimes massive chunk) of nature into their home. Most of his aquascapes are not what most people think of when they think "fish tank", they look more like a mountain landscape that was submerged in crystal clear water, and the fish are flying through the valleys.



This man is so revered in the hobby that he actually had a small algae eating shrimp, which he uses extensively in his aquascapes, named after him. This is the Amano shrimp (Cardinia japonica).



Amano has influenced me for quite a while now. I now view my aquariums as a 3-dimensional canvas to paint with aquatic plants, driftwood, decorative rocks, invertebrates, and fish. As an artist, I approach everything artistically, so why not do the same thing with living things and give my pets a gorgeous habitat to live in?

Make sure to check out his website here;
http://www.amanotakashi.net/

Artist 39: Alex Grey

Okay, now it's time to add some trippyness.

Grey was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1953. His father was a graphic designer and encouraged him to develop his drawing abilities. He also felt a close connection to the natural world and had a deep respect for life at a very young age. He would collect insects and animals and bury them in his backyard. The themes of death and an afterlife occur in the vast majority of his artwork, even his early pieces when he was still young. He went to the Columbus College of Art and Design from 1971-73, but dropped out to paint billboards for a year. He then moved to Massachusetts to attend the Boston Museum School and studied under conceptual artist, Jay Jaroslav. He also met his wife in Boston, who is a fellow artist. This was when things started getting weird.

He experimented with LSD with his soon-to-be-wife, Allyson. He then spent 5 years studying human anatomy at Harvard Medical School, studying the body and preparing cadavers for dissection. He also did some work with the Mind/Body Medicine department researching healing energies. All of this worked prepared him well for what is considered to be his masterpiece, the Sacred Mirrors. When doctors saw this series painting they did not hesitate in asking him to do anatomical illustrations.

The Sacred Mirrors


The Sacred Mirrors are a series of 21 life-sized paintings that take the viewer on a journey by examining the body, mind, and spirit. They represent the evolution of man through biological, technological, and cosmic stages. This series took 10 years to complete. They layers of the human body are gradually stripped away, revealing muscles, vital organs, the nervous network, and skeleton. After completing the Sacred Mirrors, he began work on a series that documents vital moments in human life (birth, copulation, death, etc.).

Grey instructed Figure Drawing and Anatomical Studies at New York University for 10 years. He now teaches a course in Visionary Arts at The Open Center in New York City.

In 1972 Alex began a series of performance pieces that represent rites of passage and the development of the human psyche. He has performed 50 of these, all of which are available on DVD.

Grey's work is heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy. He profound respect for the Buddhist and Hindu faiths are very evident in all of his work, either through symbols and stylistic motifs.

Despair



It's hard to believe, but all of his work is hand painted in oils, on canvas or linen. Technically, he's just that good.

Bardobeing


Yes, those are fetuses in the skulls. It's supposed to represent the cycles of life, particularly birth and death.

Alex's extensive knowledge of anatomy is astounding and has influenced me to look deeper than skin and scales to see what makes an organism move. Since taking this approach my sculptures have become much more realistic and life-like. The curves of my sculptures' bodies now look much more believable.

Artist 38: Zdzislaw Beksinski

I'm going to keep the list of dark, nightmarish images rolling for a little while longer, and for a reason. I haven't really had a pleasant dream for several years now. These are the types of images that cycle through my head in a never-ending cycle. Maybe it was seeing someone get run over by a train in London that did it, or my grandma coughing up her lung in a nursing home, or maybe it was the brutal murder of one of my friends in high school. Whatever it was, I don't see it ending soon, so I'm going to harness these images and use them to my advantage. Plus, I don't recall many art majors at CNU taking the dark, macabre route in recent history. It seems like most college art majors these days opt for the pretty, calming images instead of something that makes the viewer want to run away screaming, but they can't find the wind to release that scream, so they just stand there in shock, waiting for the end to come.

Anyways, back to the purpose of this post.
Zdzislaw Beksinski was a painter, photographer, and sculptor born in 1929 in Sanok, Poland. Before his higher education began he spent several years as a construction supervisor, which he despised. However, this was an important stage in his life, as it was then that he became interested in photography, sculpture, and painting. He started by making sculptures out of plaster, metal, and wire. His photography mainly focused on texture and landscapes, which would later became a major feature in his paintings. This was also when the dark, twisted imagery started making its appearance. Such photos included a baby doll with its face ripped off, and portraits of people without faces or with bandages faces. In the 1960s he began his first surrealistic paintings that he is known for today.

In 1964 he had an opening in Warsaw, Poland. This is considered to be a successful opening, since every single one of his painting were sold! He worked constantly on his paintings after this event, usually listening to classical music while working (musical influence!!! Although my music is a little more abrasive than Bach or Handel). These painting depicted a decaying, death ridden post-apocalyptic world which very few people would want to be stuck in. He said "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing a dream."

*Can someone please get him out of my head?

Beksinski claimed that his paintings were optimistic and even humorous (I'm serious, get him out of my head!). He even admits that he didn't even know the meaning of his own artwork, and didn't want to hear people's interpretations of them (I think I'm his brain child, this is weird). He didn't even title his paintings (finally, something different!). Before his move to Warsaw in 1977 he burned a select few paintings in his back yard, without leaving documentations of them (this though has crossed my mind). The reason behind this was that he found some of the pieces too person or unsatisfactory, and didn't want anyone to see them, ever.

He went through a transitory period in the 1980s. His works became more popular in France and achieved major popularity in Western Europe, the US, and Japan. His 80s and 90s work shifted to monumental sculptural images with a subdued color palette. These paintings were less lavish that his previous style and often had heavily sketched lines. They were still very powerful images despite the changes he made. In the late 1990s he discovered the digital world, which he became more involved with until his death.

The late 90s were not good times for the Beksinskis. His wife died in 1998, and his son, a popular radio announcer, committed suicide a year later. Zdzislaw was unfortunate enough to discover his son's body and never really came to terms with the tragic event. He kept an envelope that said, "For Tomek in case I kick the bucket" pinned to a wall in his flat.

On February 21, 2005 the final blow was delivered to his family. His body was found in his flat with 17 stab wounds, 2 of which were fatal. Robert Kupiec, son of his long time care taker pleaded guilty to the murder. He and a friend were arrested and charged shortly afterwards. Robert was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and his accomplice received 5.

Despite Beksinski's dark and disturbing imagery, he was an pleasant, enjoyable person to be around, often indulging in long conversations with a great sense of humor. He was actually a very shy person, and avoided going to his own openings at all costs.

Here are some of his astounding paintings;










I have to say that out of all of the artists I have researched so far, Zdzislaw Beksinski has probably impacted me the most. It almost feels like we're close to the same exact person, just working in different mediums, for the most part. My personality is so similar to his that it's almost scary, though i seem to be a bit more outgoing. From now on, whenever someone asks. "If you could have dinner with any person in the world, alive or dead, who would it be?", my answer will be, "Zdzislaw Beksinski."

Artist 37: Paul Gerrard

"This is not horror, this is undefined reality."
-Paul Gerrard

Gerrard is another member of the Last Rite Gallery in New York City. He hated college classes, since he didn't want to produce anything his professors wanted. He was interested in creating bug-like creatures and warriors made out of metal. He says that his first job was putting dots on maps, which he hated as well. He did this for two years and almost completely lost his passion for art. He wanted to work on large scale paintings, but had no room to do this. So he sold his car, bought a Pentium 200 mmx computer so he could create large pieces without consuming every square inch of his apartment. He spent many years contemplating whether or not he should stay digital or move to oils, until he started working in the video game industry. He now works for Ubisoft UK (the company who created Shadow of the Beast). He works as a level, world, and vehicle designer and has the official title of Art Director. This is a job he is finally happy with.

You're probably wondering what his work looks like by now. Well, here it is.

The Original Mandala


The band Sybreed's music creates images in my head that are almost exactly like this. His work carries along the theme that I am researching of the man-made versus the natural, and the mixture of the two. Sybreed plays into this as well (their name means Synthetic Breed). Incase you're curious, here's some Sybreed to listen to while looking at Gerrard's work;