On the left is Guan Zhi: Wind in Pines among Myriad Valleys (万壑松风), 2015, ink on Xuan paper, 90 x 160 cm — On the right, "Untitled" Fractal Flame Study — © 2017 GK Austin II
The goal here was to pay home to asian ink wash drawing. Hopefully what comes next is a bigger piece with mountains, trees, fog and water and a whole bunch of calming thoughts.
Tired, but the the show must go on. My policy is to do some some sort of artwork each day albeit a figure drawing or a fractal flame. Today, getting ready for a show on April 22nd. More details later.
A sample page from "German Expressionist Prints and Drawings, Vol: 2" — The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies — Pretty boss, huh? — I am on page 54 of 842.
Here is an explanation of the LACMA reading room:
"... The [LACMA] Reading Room is a special corner of lacma.org dedicated to catalogues and brochures of exhibitions past. These are out-of-print, hard-to-find publications available here in full for free. From a unique set of publications focused on the Southern California art scene to rare books about German Expressionism, modern art, Southeast Asian art, and more, the catalogues and brochures here reflect the depth and breadth of LACMA’s collection and exhibition history. We continue to add new publications on an ongoing basis. ..."
A great reference site for artists, art critics, or those rare individuals who appreciate deeper subject matter than a FaceBook "meme."
Medium Fractal Flame — Ectropy #1
"Ectrophy" is an antonym of "entropy." Ectrophy is defined as an organizing force amidst chaos. This was a lovely experiment and I will determine in the next couple of weeks if this 40-inch by 60-inch artwork should be bonded to white aluminum.
Serendipity happens! This structure appeared while editing a "Breeze…" element and I had to go with it. I will be adding some more elements to the foreground and background in the final composition. I am aiming for a piece that is 60in x 40in so the render is taking a really long time. What stated as a 8hr render suddenly became a 10.5hr render and then a 22hr render.
We go back to the Breeze series when this beast is complete. Had to share it with you.
Medium: Fractal Flame — Breeze series sketch.
Forty-three artists have submitted their best work to go Agora and a piece I created last year, "Breeze #5," will be the one of two digital pieces curated. The work will be on display from August 19th through to the 30th.
I will be in New York for the reception and mainly to see the reaction to my work from the public at large. If you come for a visit (address below) I would love to meet you. That is the sole reason why I do art; to make people happy and to exchange ideas. :-)
Date: August 19, 2017 through to the August 30, 2017
Email: info@agora-gallery.com
Tel: (+1)212-226-4151
Fax: (+1)212-966-4380
Gallery Hours:Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
Address: 530 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001
Subway information:
If you are in New York, the gallery is easily accessible from the trains. Simply get off at the 23rd street stop, exit at the 25th street exit, and walk 2 1/2 blocks west.
Parking Information:
If you prefer to drive, we recommend reserving your spot in advance with ParkWhiz, an online parking reservation service. Visit the Agora Gallery ParkWhiz Parking Page to choose and book your spot.
This is the Fractal Flame painting that started it all, Titled: "Evolving Symmetry," Two others exist in red and green.
The Pacific Design Center has a series of art galleries on the second floor. Thomas Paul Fine Art has its showroom therein
I love this photo. A classic pose and all this gentleman needs is a top hat and cane. The couple was very kind and their attendance was very appreciated.
Fourteen total, response was very uplifting and gave me a sense of purpose.
My friend, my most honest critic, Producer/Editor at major studio in town, gave me a thumbs. Can you tell I am happy?
This painting originally hung top to bottom... Tom suggested hanging it sideways and thereon it took on a whole different idea.
This painting, "Breeze #5," was received well and will be featured at the Agora Gallery in New York as a winning exhibitor piece for the Chelsea International Fine Art Contest. Seventy-five artists were selected, only two digital artist were accepted, and I was fortunate enough, and quite honored, to have this painting chosen as one of them.
To the far left is a 30x40-inch "Thriving #61" series painting
You meet the nicest people at an art gallery.
It was really great when the showroom filled. I was thrilled beyond belief.
The first day of Spring and I was told to arrived at 5:00 PM for my solo show at the 'Pacific Design Center' for their 32nd annual WESTWEEK 2017 kickoff. I was going to be the focal point at the Thomas Paul Fine Art Showroom and the photo above was about 1-second before I comprehended the gravity of it all...
For me, and your milage may vary if you are an artist or actor, when I saw ALL of my best art hanging up in one of the most the prestigious buildings in L.A., It was like having an amazingly ethereal dream and then suddenly mortified at the realization that you have arrived to the gallery wearing NO CLOTHES...
I felt awe, (as witnessed in the photo above), then shock, and NAKED before my peers.
The show went very well and I met exceptional people. I will be posting a bunch of photos soon!
I made this iPhone 6 background screen today for some Twitter users that liked a Tweet I wrote regarding my upcoming "Evolving Symmetry" show at the Pacific Design Center on March 22nd.
I think you should have it too. No strings attached even.
I guess you could call this a 'first person' press release, which is something I have never written before. Nonetheless this is for a very important event in my life: My first gallery show at not just a cultural landmark but a cultural focal point in southern California. My fine art will be featured at the 'Thomas Paul Fine Art' showroom at the 'Pacific Design Center' for 'WESTWEEK 2017' on March 22nd.
This paragraph defining the campus says it all as to why it is a big deal for me…
"…Designed by architect Cesar Pelli, FAIA, the beautifully landscaped, 14-acre campus is located in the City of West Hollywood, CA. Pacific Design Center’s “Blue Whale” opened in 1975 at 750,000 square-feet. Realizing Pelli’s original vision, the Green Building followed in 1988 at 450,000 square-feet and, finally, the Red Building in 2012 at 400,000 square-feet, offering class A, creative office space for premier businesses including entertainment, fashion, technology and the arts. …The premier, multi-use facility features the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Pacific Design Center… "
Yes! To have my art hanging up at a gallery within the Pacific Design Center on the same campus grounds as MOCA is simply exhilarating.
'Thomas Paul Fine Art' signed me last week after I had the honor of previewing 15-pieces of my best artwork. My medium is not widely known. In fact the core concept was invented in the mid '90s and used mostly for video and digital projection but I decided to bring it into the real world...
I am doing exciting things with Fractal Flames. This piece to the right is titled: Thriving #289." It is 40in-long, 30in-tall. After digitally creating the file, the composition was printed using a special dye and a very drab looking sheet of paper to create what the industry calls a dye sublimation print. Then print is placed face down on white aluminum and put through a hot press. Therein it is baked at 400-degrees Fahrenheit while 80 tons of pressure are forcibly used to bond the dye into the aluminum. Then it gets better…
The print is uber archival and if a splash of water, a martini or a casino owner's elbow touches the image, it won't damage for the dye is baked in and the aluminum is and aluminum is pretty sturdy.
My prints are high resolution, 300dpi-per-inch, thus a 40in-by-60in Chromaluxe print is essentially rendered out at 215-megapixels art piece and would possibly last longer than the cave paintings of Lascaux.
You are all invited and I would be very flattered if I could take a photo with you in front one of my Fractal Flames. It's a beautiful place and full of wonderful things — Hope to see you soon.
The Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California.
I have a policy that I have to do one work of art a day albeit a drawing, digital image or otherwise. Tonight this is what I made in a program called "Mandlebulber."
© 2016 Guy Austin -You can use it if you link to my site and give me attribution.
© 2016 Guy Austin - You can use it if you link to my site and give me attribution.
Here is something fun! There is artwork application up at the Apple App Store called 'Primitive'. What it does is reduce your image into geometric forms with a simple click or tap of a button. The procedure is simple: drag and drop an image you want to alter into a little box, select a geometric pattern such as a triangles, circles, rectangles, quadrilaterals, squares, quadratic Beziers etc, tap the start button and decide when you want to stop.
Included as sample images are a nude oil paint study of a woman exiting the water, a screenshot of a vocalist from a Sade concert in Germany that I yank off a YouTube video.
Australian painter Ashley Wood has mastered several art related disciplines. This includes print, digital, canvas and ink. He is quite industrious and his work has quite a following with gamers, comic book readers, and the diverse set of collectors for both his fine art work and his toy line.
When Ashley signs one of his art books, he value adds the tome with more than just a signature. In the video above is Ashley is drawing and signing each art book purchased with a personalized expressive drawing. That alone is worth more than the price of the book if you take in account the prices of his original work.
Note how finely painted the torso and legs are yet the legs have been lengthened and the girls head over simplified for humorous effect.
An underlying theme in most of his work is what I would call 'heroic female sexuality' (AKA eroticism) but your milage may vary. Some may call it exploitation, others could put up a strong argument that it is porn and others could just label it figurative. In my opinion it is all of the above and, as always, intriguing to look at but what makes it intriguing?
Ashley wood often "mashes-up" illustration styles when painting or drawing. He borrows from the fashion illustration genre making the lower two-thirds of the body all legs. The faces and heads he draws or paints often forego realism and are constructed like "comic strip caricatures rather than embracing traditional realism, yet the bodies beneath these caricatures are seemingly very real. The complete mix of these styles, realism, fashion illustration and caricature really stirs the imagination as the viewer puts it all together.
Remember 'Tank Girl' — It was Ashley Wood that made her famous.
Ashley Wood designed a art toy based upon his art and the franchise itself.
In 2014, Wood had a solo show at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York. The show was titled "Machine Sabbath" and I believe most or all of the paintings sold. I have seen catalogs of the show for sale at Amazon and they are a worthy addition to your art collection.
2014 — Ashley Wood "Machine Sabbath" series for his solo show at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York.
2014 — Ashley Wood "Machine Sabbath" series for his solo show at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York.
2014 — Ashley Wood "Machine Sabbath" series for his solo show at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York.
Artwork for a video game called Metal Gear Solid'
Whatever you think about Ashley Wood's art or the content therein, arguably he appears to have taken the concept of sketch and expressionism as far (or more likely farther) than Egon Schiele or Edvard Munch ever dreamed.
© 2016 Guy Austin - but feel free to place it on your phone as wallpaper if you like
© 2016 Guy Austin — I built it Adobe Illustrator - Including the line art to illustrate the process.
I also built tis in Adobe Illustrator - Including the line art to illustrate the process.
Graphic art can be defined as making art that has been reduced to its bare minimum. I like Kawaii for its essentially purpose is simply "cuteness" — I like them.
Wyland Orcas
Maritime art or marine art was once a highly regarded genre from the 17th-to-19th centuries. It arguably ended its run when consumer photography appeared in 1910. Shortly thereafter fine art at large became experimental with Picasso, Matisse, and Pollock becoming "household names." Consequently, Victorian artists like Homer, Bouguereau, and Turner became passé.
In 1970, a half-century after marine art was practically forgotten, a 14-year-old boy from Michigan named Robert Wyland visited Laguna Beach, California. Then and there he saw the ocean for the first time and on that day (according to Wikipedia) he saw California gray whales breaching the surface. The fire was subsequently lit and by the 1980’s Wyland was off to the beach and then to the bank.
This is not going to be a friendly critique of Mr. Wyland’s work. I do acknowledge and deeply appreciate Wyland’s philanthropy, his passion, his industriousness, and his charitable nature. Mural-wise I find that Wyland's work hits the mark. The grandeur of his paintings is definitely impactful when they are viewed at over 30-feet tall but at 30-inches or so on canvas the detail, the quality, and the compositions border upon ridiculous…
Wayland’s compositions consist mostly of oversimplified whales, dolphins, and turtles swimming “harmoniously” together in crystal clear aquatic utopias free from predators, pollution or storms. At times he sprinkles "NutraSweet" on his subjects with phantasmal ideas such as toddlers riding upon dolphins, (as if they part of a “pony” ride at the rodeo) and kissing orcas in harmonious, choreographed poses. The end result is sea life degraded into cheapened twee or kitsch.
Weyland's work clarifies beautifully as murals but his smaller work is so mired in anthropomorphized lovable slaves that he has degraded the genre into simple K12 art contests and activities
Why my anger? The last straw for me was seeing a quote from USA Today featured within the “About” page at his site stating he is a “…Marine Michelangelo.” A quick perusal of 18th-century marine artists or even reviewing Michelangelo’s work proves not only how ignorant the reviewer was but how badly insulted the marine artists that came before him.
Finally, If I am going to criticize Wyland then I have to show what I can do, thus, I place my work side by side with Weyland’s above. As always and as always "your mileage may vary."
© 2016 Guy Austin - Medium: Fractal Flame — Title: "Jellyfish Bloom"
© 2016 Guy Austin - Medium: Fractal Flame — Title: "Phosphorescent Jellies"
© 2016 Guy Austin - Medium: Fractal Flame — Title: "Blue Whale Study"
Two years ago you cold walk into a gallery in Switzerland with a $1/2-million large and buy everything in the gallery as an anonymous buyer. Guess why?
Fortune magazine has an article about Sotheby's recent "art bubble" woes and it is riddled with phrases like: financial guarantees, revolving credit, LIBOR, and worst of all, “...an instrument for that kind of illegal practice.” Read that last phrase as money laundering!
"It wasn't easy to make, Clark. It took years and cost a fortune. Luckily, I had both." - Batman to Superman after kryptonite exploded in his face.
I tweaked the colors and change them to resemble the Brazilian flag.
The same fractal setup that created the hair within in the "Flowing Hair" gallery was actually derived from me messing with a "crystal" I accidentally made. In other words, I built the crystals first and after changing a couple of numbers to see what would happen, flowing hair appeared. Don't presume I knew what I was doing! I was like a kid "pushing buttons" to see what would happen. In this case nothing exploded and I summarily turned this "kryptonite" crystal into a "Brazilian Braid."
I think they call that serendipity!
GK
©2016 G.K.AUSTIN 40 x 60-inch Chromaluxe print on white aluminum.
I bumped into a TED talk featuring Max Tegmark "evangelizing" the idea that Consciousness is a mathematical pattern. Therein he succinctly defines what a "soul" or the "life force" in every living thing could be and I was electrified. Ultimately this became the sole inspiration for my art which I have recently coined as "Fractalism."
Max Tegmark definitely has "street cred" when making audacious statements about math, consciousness, or the universe: He is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The scientific director at the Foundational Questions Institute. A co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, an organization Elon Musk has endorsed with a large donation to investigate the existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. His first book, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality was received well by critics and was a subsequent bestseller. It is in that book he "doubled down" on his statement regarding consciousness and boldly stated the fabric of the universe itself is math...
It was on! — Experiment time...
What if I take these "patterns of the universe" (they are called 'fractals' - see my artist statement for definition) mash them up digitally & mix them together like a "DJ" and see what they render? To my surprise, familiar and wonderful things were created: Jellyfish, butterflies, lily pads, seashells, braided hair, ocean waves, on and on. I began to collage these patterns wit one another into new vistas and ideas.
One could argue It was all serendipity and that I was simply looking at "clouds" and imagining them as "ice cream castles in the air" as Joni Mitchell would put it. My response is to cite Rene Magritte's painting The Treachery Of Images (This Is Not A Pipe) and let the viewer decide what they see or imagine.
