Look What we Have Here . .

This is a facinating work is from a terrific illustrator named Kevin Bannister, who is based out of Long Beach. Notice the humor in these compositions with the photo realistic portrail of science fiction style characters along with comfortable real life situations. Imagine being room mates with a strange squishy heavely texured beast from another world in a studio apartment that enjoys too much heavey metal music and the other guys an alien (pun intended.) notice in the first piece has a simpl layout in a open space where the shadows and texture fill the hollow areas.

The second piece is a print, but appearse the original was created on an actual album cover of Simon and Garfunkel record "Bridge over Troubled Waters", or maybe this was a oil creation with digital touch up, either way a beast geting ready to gobble up these great artisans brings tears to my eyes . . . tears of laughter of course. the fact that a album cover can become a canvas not just for another piece but the exicting image becomes a crucial plot point int the world of the new piece is enlightening and inspires. The smoothness and seemless flow in these images is signs of an experienced hand and master of techniques.

The reaso I chose to display this artist is because I went to school with this artist and can honestly say he taught me a few techniques that bettered my personal skills and I feel he deserves as much exposure as he can get, for all I know he's world famous by now haven't talked to him in years. He is a fabulous artist whos creative craziness is only rivled by well, heck my own crazy ideas. He grew up in the city of Yucaipa and made his way to Long beach and has a few items on display from time to time at the Phone Booth gallery in long beach. (all information provided via google and Facebook.)

While doing one of my hair brained and utterly useless internet searches I came across an artist who's work . . . well, frankly . . . SCARES THE EVER LOVIN' BUDDHA out of me!!! Yet the illustrations are so moving and refined while surreal almost provoking the mind to believe you are standing in this nightmarish existence I can only describe as, a zombie purgatory, but with emotion.

The artist who graciously put this image into the "make Jeremy think twice about sleeping" part of his brain is Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinki, painter, illustrator and photographer. He is described to be a quiet man that had a great sense of humor and in actuality did not resemble his art style in any way. Born in 1929 in poland, developed a love of art thanks to a musical influence (not by playing, but merly enjoying music!) He went through a surreal portion of his career followed late in life with an abstract period. sadly all web pages I have found with more reliably information on his trainning and family and so forth are in either chec or polish languages. (i speak about as much of those languages as I do Klingon, shout out to the trekies reading this.)

sadly This artist was laid to rest in 2005, not by old age like you may think, but do to MURDER!!! Beksinki was stabbed 17 times by dual assailants after refusing to loan a 17 year old son of one of his care takers. The man lost his life for $100 American. So though this work is a bit twisted to some, and makes you want to look away at first, one will find that they can't. The work after a short time becomes inspiring and does something that seems to be increasingly more difficult in modern times, invokes emotion. Remorse, wonder, lose, intense awareness of being. I am glad I found this.

Art That We Love

In the sake of understanding where my love of art comes from I am showing off two pieces done by those who first introduced me to art, animator Chuck Jones, and artist Maurice Noble.

To the left is what I hope is a familiar sight to us all (because if you don't know this scene you were deprived as a child.) This is the ever popular runing gage from Warner Brothers Studios animation department through the 50's "Rabbit season! Duck season!" which Chuck jones produced during his 33 year run as animator, creative director, and gosh knows how many other titles he held during that time frame. Chuck Jones is the man who created some of the greatest animated shorts to hold to adult and child sensabilities in all of our collective funny bones, but more importantly he created the image of our beloved characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Peppe Le Pu, etc. that have become the unchanged standard for over 60 years.

Now lesser known to the public is the artist Maurice Noble, he worked closly with Chuck Jones over the entire corse of their careers. The image we see here to the left is out of the film "The Phantom Toll Booth" in which Chuck Jones did the animation and character design, and Maurice Noble did the backgrounds and layouts for. Note the exagerated perspective of numbers becomming rocks, the blunt light bouncing off the bends and curves of these shapes, now look closly as to how these two artists styles compliment eachother so well (yes the background in the bugs and daffy picture is done by Noble as well, I wondered too.)

the conection I made with thes over the top emotionally driven cartoons was genuine and I'm sure shared by more than just myself.