Marco Rea

Marco Rea is a Rome based artist representing Italy's lowbrow/pop surrealism. He takes glossy billboards of lip gloss kissed women in today's advertising and defaces them.  Taking the smooth Photoshopped skin and bright highlighted eyes and armed with spray cans, destroys the original intent, resulting in something a lot darker. 

For me he's taken away the fake branded posing model and replaced her with a beautiful melancholic disturbed being. It's funny how what could lie underneath is being plastered on with a mask of paint

So here's to Marco Rea for turning the pin up women who belong on your walls into monsters under your bed.

Friday Playlist

Thought I'd share a few songs that are helping me draw right now, don't think it's actually possible for me to make art without music :)

Anxiety

I don't even feel like I can explain this image with any form of words, it's just perfect. And encapsulates the feeling of anxiety so well. This is an image by Beethy Photography who is primarily a Cosplay photographer, but felt the need to express his feelings through the creative process. Here is a quote from his online journal on the piece 'anxiety'

         "At any random point in the day I can get these attacks. During these attacks I'm overwhelmed with the feeling of imminent death. No rational thinking can erase the thought or feeling. Imagine having a gun held to your head. And you know it's going to go off. You just don't know when. That's what happens when I experience an attack."

He mentions with the piece he found Eric Johansson's TED talk on composition very useful when crafting this image. To create something that doesn't exist. Erik talks about 3 simple rules to achieve a realistic result:

1. Photos combines should have the same perspective

2. Photos combined should have the same type of light 

3. Making the image seamless, so it's impossible to distinguish where the different images begin and end.

Links:

Beethy's Photography

Beethy on Facebook

Erik Johansson's TED Talk

Erik Johansson's Photography

Screen Print Virgin

So something I've never got along well with is screen-print, so in the theme of becoming a better artist I decided to give some a try. So first of all I looked at pieces of my existing work and sought out digitallt to get an idea which ones would make the best screen prints. Then it will be on to producing some originals based on the style of the best outcomes! 

I find the best ones we're the ones that has the most dark colours to begin with as a lot is lost when you increase contrast and levels in Photoshop as the delicacy of the drawing is what I often liked best about it in the first place. My favorite one was the third one down, I like the grungy feel to it and actually prefer it to the original.


Z x

Ethics in art

This is something I've had to consider over the past few weeks, as I've been working on projects surrounding delicate issues. As an artist, ethics need to be considered as insensitivity can easily cause offence. Or maybe thats the intent, and I'm all for stepping on peoples toes a little, but I'm sure we can agree people can go a little too far. Aslong as the work is thought provoking opposed to hurtful, I'm all for it. Bullying just gets everybody nowhere fast. And a closed mind shouldn't be opened with a sledgehammer..

I've been illustrating around the subjects of Parkinson's disease and the Ebola outbreak, so looking at those affected, the individuals with the disease themselves and those surrounding them, ranging from their loved ones, to healthcare staff and then stretching to the media. Just to educate myself and see which angle I would like to pursue the projects from.

With a healthcare background it felt pretty natural to look at how it would feel to care for people with these illnesses. When taking ethics in consideration I didn't want to pretend I knew what it felt like to have Ebola or Parkinson's disease. I was too worried about coming across as presumptuous, naive or insulting to those who are genuinely going through it. And even reading other peoples experiences, taking those and making them my own just didn't feel right. So I decided to take these projects on as an observer, empathising with the individual and trying to understand, because in reality I will never truly know how they feel, nobody ever can.

'Artists are conditioned by their context'

     -The Philosophy Book