Tag Archives: pop surrealism

Camille Rose Garcia’s “Snow White”

“Snow White” is getting exhaustive play in the media right now, for reasons unknown. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I do enjoy watching stories rise to the forefront of the collective unconscious. The latest entry into the “Snow White” media maelstrom is an illustrated version from underground sweetheart Camille Rose Garcia.

Art dealer extraordinaire Kirsten Anderson wrote a feature article for art wonderland Hi-Fructose:

 

Hi-Fructose favorite Camille Rose Garcia (Volume Eight) is following up her successful interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s ” Alice In Wonderland” with a new illustrated version of the Brothers Grimm story “Snow White” and exhibition of the complete works for the book at Michael Kohn Gallery next month. Illuminating Garcia’s trademark witchy line art with her easter egg color palette- this book is sure to delight her legion of fans! Garcia will be signing books on her West Coast book tour at the end of March so check to see if she will be swinging by a city near you! View more preview images from the book and exhibition below. -Kirsten Anderson

 

Hop on over to Hi-Fructose to see more images!

 

The Art of Malcolm Bucknall: I didn’t know bears had such nice boobs

You’d probably imagine that a kid coming of age in a small, Texas, swamp town in the ’80s would have no choice but to listen to country music and muck about in the bayous trying not to get eaten by alligators. But strangely enough, a different path opened to me, just as wide and easy and obvious as if it were the only one: punk f-ing rock. For whatever reason, Port Arthur, Texas, had a thriving punk rock culture in the ’80s, and I ate it up with youthful abandon. My friends and I skateboarded around the oil refineries, we went to Houston to see bands whose names were dorky acronyms (SNFU, DRI, MDC – I am not even kidding), and we drove around in our crappy, old cars blasting the most offensive music we could find as loud as we could.

And of all the offensive music we could find, the music of the Jesus Lizard [link N(entirely)SFW] was up there at the top of the list. Raw, atonal, screeching, profoundly obnoxious – the Jesus Lizard was dazzlingly rude. But secretly that was not my favorite thing about them. What really caught my attention was their album cover art. It was…exquisite. Disturbing. Masterful as a Renaissance oil painting, and almost as profound. What the fuck was a nasty band like the Jesus Lizard doing with album art like that?

I mean, right?

So punk.

Well, it turns out that the band was friends with a guy whose dad happened to be a world-class oil painter who was weird as hell and an incredibly good sport: Malcolm Bucknall. (Later I found out that Mr. Bucknall was my best friend’s uncle. They had me over to dinner one night in their grand, Victorian house in Austin, TX, and I nearly died of hero worship.)

Beautiful Beast

What do you think, deer?

Malcolm Bucknall’s paintings are massive studies in sensual, uncomfortable surrealism. He uses the painstaking techniques of traditional oil painters to graft animal heads onto the bodies of Elizabethan lords and ladies, like fairy tale characters lost in the twilight lands between worlds.

The Most Beautiful Day

This baby grew up to be a health care lawyer.

 

It’s easy to imagine the subjects of Bucknall’s paintings making deals for one another’s souls, or being tricked into giving up three wishes to eager heroes and heroines. His recent work has moved away from oils and into watercolor washes and line drawings, but it’s no less masterful and weird.

There there, Bare Bear

Check out the rack on that bear!

 

If you like Malcolm Bucknall’s work, you can peruse a rich, satisfying archive at his gallery site. He’s represented exclusively by D Berman in Austin, Texas, and there’s a decent interview with him on the site.

What Kind of Fool Am I?
HRH Willie Nelson

Did I mention the Willie Nelson portrait?

 

 

Femke Hiemstra and the Secret World

Who wouldn't love a face like that?

If you’re a fan of the classic old fairy tale illustrators like Dulac and Rackham, you’ve probably enjoyed the many and marvelous artists coming up in the world of Pop Surrealism in the past decade or so. From intensely creepy (but still enchanting!) works from Ray Caesar to the light and sugary images of Julie West, magical landscapes and enchanted creatures seem to be hiding around every corner in the art world lately.

And I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

So it pleases me greatly to announce a new show by up-and-coming Dutch artist Femke Hiemstra at the Roq la Rue art gallery here in Seattle. Her beautifully realized paintings and drawings of magical creatures in the midst of peculiar circumstances make me swoon.

The show opens November 1, but if you can’t make it to Seattle you’ll have to content yourself with her marvelous blog and website. She’s got a rich online gallery and a nice selection of prints in her shop. Prints start around 80 euros, plus shipping, and are totally worth it.

She’s cute, too.
Ze artiste

Ryohei Hase

One of my favorite fairy tale motifs is transformation. In the fairy tales I love the most, characters shift from human form to animal form and back again with a wanton grace, symbolic of everthing in the world at once. So I now happily point my blog-finger at Ryohei Hase, whose work is a perfect meditation on this very subject.

Courtesy of Coilhouse.