Art Hound

More from Traywick Contemporary: Rachel Davis’ watercolor series “MSG.” Don’t you wish your biology textbooks had looked like this?

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Nature-inspired watercolors by LA-based Portia Hein at Traywick Contemporary.

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I saw these mesmerizing ink and water drawings by Lorna Simpson on design*sponge. Aren’t they gorgeous? These are not your average portraits… They’re psychedelic ‘hair portraits:’ only the hair provides a glimpse into the lives of these voguish, seductive women.

I think loose watercolor (or in this case ink and water) portraits are really freakin’ cool. Storm Tharp and Manfred Naescher are two other great examples. The medium provides so much room for emotion and interpretation and these artists really take advantage of that.

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Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Yellena Bryksenkova is an illustrator and recent MICA grad. Her work is delicate, feminine and a little haunting. Prints are available on etsy. (via design sponge)

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“my aesthetic is shaped by the places i encounter on my travels, nostalgic recollections, traditional eastern european folk arts, and the russian “world of art” movement. one of my most important influences is the work of contemporary japanese authors haruki murakami and banana yoshimoto.”

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Storm Tharp (whose work I saw on art splash) has a show this month, Hercules, at Portland’s PDX and is also in the 2010 Whitney Biennial. In many ways Tharp’s work reminds me of that of Berlin artist/illustrator, Manfred Naescher. Both artists create watery, enigmatic portraits that reference iconic films of the 1970’s.

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This particular choice of material (gouaches, inks and water) results in a finished product that is never fully designed by the artist. Herein lies the beauty of this work: the tension between the artist’s hand in the work and the unrestrained marks left by the water. It adds a wonderful element of ambiguity that leaves the viewer wondering which elements were central in the artist’s vision.

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Keren Kroul showed in last summer’s A New Breed of Watercolors at Soo Visual Art Center with Betsy Walton, Serena Cole and others. Kroul’s work is vibrant and visually-ripe but fairly open to interpretation – a nice combination.

Kroul’s dream-like narratives are reminiscent of Betsy Walton’s work although while Walton’s narratives are grounded in the natural world, Kroul’s float in the transient space of the mental landscape. As the artist explains in her personal statement, “Memories and dreams flow forward and backward, turn over and over, are deconstructed, abstracted, reconstructed.”

Nevertheless, certain material landmarks (houses, flowers, clouds) appear in Kroul’s work, rooting these scenes in a loose context of identity, memory and mortality.

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