Art Expo 2007: What's Left of the Rest
Rounding up the visit to this year's Art Expo, I will touch lightly on several artists whose works didn't fall into any comfortable or easily definable category. A few small samples follow. You can check out their artworks at their websites.
Uses orthodox iconography and watercolors to paint fantsies and book illustrations.
Bends flowerlike shapes into abstract expressions.
An Argentinian artist who uses scratch lines and cartoon-like characters to create commentaries on modern urban life.
Shefali's work is sometimes three-dimensional and draws on her Asian/Indian background to depict seasons, and fairy-tale-like narrative paintings.
There were several other artists with excellent work very worth seeing, but whose websites are either under construction, or not coming up, or not available for one reason or another. Perhaps I can blog about them at another time.
And now, the surprise find of the ArtExpo. This artist's work totally stopped me in my tracks and made me wish for really stupid dollars in order to buy even one of his serigraphs. The style of his work is the seminal influence of all the other artists I have written about in the last two entries.
Born in NYC in 1916, Earle had his first solo show in France at the age of 14. At 21, travelling across country from NY to Los Angeles by bicycle, he paid his travel expenses by painting. By the age of 23, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had purchased one of his paintings for their permanent collection.
In 1951, he was hired by Disney studios as an assistant background painter, eventually becoming responsible for the backgrounds featured in such animated films as "Peter Pan", "Paul Bunyan" and "Lady and the Tramp." He was resposible for the style, background and color pallete of "Sleeping Beauty." He also designed several television programs, a line of Christmas cards for American Artist Group. In the late 1960s, he returned to painting full time and continued to paint nearly every day until the end of his life at the age of 84.
His style is simple and direct style -- almost Art Deco, not quite primative... cool and calm but evocative. Dreamlike, but not completely fantastical. Next time you're watching a Disney movie, take the time to appreciate the backgrounds and lovely colors of Eyvind Earle.
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