Portfolio Review Artists

29.  Holly Andres - Sparrow Lane

She is a photographer who was born in Montana in 1977.  Her art is mostly centered on the topic of childhood, which had previously been one of my ideas for my senior seminar.  So during my portfolio review I was directed to her collection called "Sparrow Lane."  It is about girls on the verge of adulthood.  It is very symbolic and meant to have a Nancy Drew type feel to it.

"The Sparrow Lane protagonists are propelled by curiosity, empowered by their discoveries, and are also intimidated by a sense of impending threat. While the girls flirt with danger, however, the work is apparently innocent and devoid of explicit violence. Rather, the series represents the potential loss of innocence."

I love these photos.  The last one reminds me of Alice and Wonderland but what I enjoy about all of the photos is that I feel like they are illustrations to the mystery books they made me read in elementary school.

30. Julie Blackman

She is a landscape painter in Portland, Oregon.  She went to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to earn her BFA in painting and later went to the University of Portland to get her Masters in Education.

She talks about her work as another way to see nature.  How that cameras can show you one image but she tries to portray landscapes in a different way.   "There are many truths about a place or a thing and one image cannot portray all those realities. What we “see” is created by the brain using data sent there by the eye. This allows for many influences to affect our perceptions of reality such as our individual nature, our emotional state and intrusions from the outside."

Her landscapes remind me of stuff by Cezanne, maybe he is an influence on her artwork.

 I could really learn from her work.  She rarely uses white and I tend to do my highlights in mixtures + white.  Her stuff is really bright and beautiful with lots of contrast.

31. Paula Rego

She was born in Portugal and bases a lot of her paintings off of their culture of storytelling.  As a child she loved the illustrations in her father's book, Dante's Inferno, so this is where a lot of her style comes from.  Her stuff is very dark and dramatic.  A lot of her images are influenced by old folk tales, like below the first piece is from her collection of Snow white and the bottom one is from Pinocchio. 

I like how she depicts her woman as these husky masculine creatures.  It makes them look real like they are not idealized women you would see in a magazine.  Their poses are always interesting too.  No model poses here!  It is like she wants to show every flexed muscle and fabric fold in her paintings.