Artists n' Stuff

Once upon a time when I worked at Herbert Palmer Gallery, I finally got some cash together to buy a silkscreen by Gerald Laing (since I didn't have the money for an Albrect Durer woodcut that may have been a fake). I bought a great piece from the Baby Baby Wild Things series he did in the 60s...

It is my favorite thing in my home. I don't even care about Bridget Bardot, but I like the image. Little did I know that he was STILL making kick ass pop art images, even of today's celebrity train wrecks...

do yourself a favor and grab one if you can.

Steve from "Artwork by Steve" also does pop art style oil paintings; girls with colored sunglasses and always with food, or bubbles, or both...

You can also buy prints from his site.

My parents started collecting the work of David Miretsky in the 70s. In fact he did a huge painting they bought to celebrate the birth of moi. He does a lot of social and family scenes that reflect the Brighton Beach circles of Russians and Ukrainians, but also nudes and political satire paintings. His work is either soft and pretty, or very surreal and bizarre. The men in his work are always in fact, very ugly. Though I guess the women can come off like cheap whores or well-to-do depending how you look at it. I grew up with both types of his work hung around the house, and I'm sure it made an impression on me on top of all the other eastern European artists my parents collected. In fact, many visitors to the house always asked how my family could live with so many large, bizarre, and somewhat disturbing images. I thought they were awesome, and thought it was normal. But here is one of his more subdued works...

I am not really a fan of vector art or digital painting, mostly because it looks digital and has the potential to appear very dated in the long run. But, I do like Tom Bagshaw, aka www.mostlywanted.com.

His work has a painterly figurative, anime, and comic book-like quality that for some reason I really dig. You can see some of his process on his blog: http://tombagshaw.blogspot.com/