Art Hound

Kelsey Shultis is a Detroit-based artist originally from Birmingham, Michigan. Shultis works in oils in a variety of subjects – houses, ghostly portraits, florals and landscapes. Some of her work like her portraits she paints in very dark shades with hardly any light at all- reminiscent of Dutch masters like Rembrandt. While I like those pieces, I am really enjoying the brightness of her landscapes and florals below. Some of her work is available for sale through Tappan Collective.

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I’d describe Mark Dutcher’s paintings as heady, dark, aching, raw, but still somehow pretty. On his blog, like in his artwork, Dutcher is unabashedly expressive.

Some insights from the artist from Five Questions.

On what inspires him. “brokenness. resilience.  the idea of change. things changing or becoming something else. authenticity. the wearing of  emotions on a sleeve. a piece of cardboard.  the idea of artists in their studios . the hand of the artist in the work. words. fragments.scuff mark. scratch. mar. blotch. spit. drip.”

On themes he pursues. “the utopian moment. trying to hold onto that moment. memory and the monuments we create. beauty and decay. after the party. the tension between wanting to live and despair. “the decay of the angel”.”

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via Art Blog Of Mike.

Welcome to Curating Some Damn Art, a new series about the artwork I feature on my other site, Buy Some Damn Art!

This week on BSDA we launched a really lovely show by Amanda Brazier, a painter from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The series, Of Dust, references the elemental materials that make up everything from the pigments the artist sifts from the soil to make her paints to our own flesh and blood. The themes of shelter and physical structures run through Amanda’s work and are also present here. The artist’s mother recently moved out of Amanda’s childhood home, so the artist gathered dirt from a dry creek nearby and incorporated pigments from this soil into these paintings.

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Amanda’s process: “I gather red and yellow and brown (and sometimes purple!) earths from around my home and other locations in Tennessee and North Carolina… I pound each in a mortar and pestle until powdery. I then use geological sieves to sift the pigment until it is super fine. After combining the pigment with just enough linseed oil, I grind it on a glass slab with a glass muller.” – Amanda

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“The pinks, browns, and oranges are what the earth gives me. Working with the richness of the ground, I’m aware of several concepts at once. I’m constructing a painted space with materials from my surroundings, fixing a certain place onto each painting. Also, the structures we build are extensions of ourselves. Which, in turn reminds me of the story of Creation in which God forms Man out of the dust. Dust is a material of creation. It also serves as a reminder of the transience of man. We are of dust, as are the things we build.” – Amanda

NYC painter and RISD grad Kim Westfall via BOOOOOOOM.

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Coming across the work of young Italian painter Guglielmo Castelli feels like hitting the art jackpot. I am in love with these paintings. Aren’t they exquisite and so full of life?

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 via Dust Magazine.

Allison Freeman paints office supplies on canvas and slate. The artist’s bio talks about the theme of “blankness” in her work, but what I’m attracted to is the simple humor. I also appreciate that this is a mainstream subject that pretty much anyone can identify.

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