Artist #23: Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh

Four Queens. 1909.
Wood, paint, Gesso. @VMFA

Margaret MacDonald was a Scottish artist who lived from 1864 to 1933. She was born in England, studied at Glasgow School of Art, and set up an independent studio with her sister, Francis, in the mid 1980s. She married Charles Rennie Mackintosh, an architect, in 1900.

Ophelia. 1908

Much of the artwork that Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh did was in collaboration with either her sister or her husband after she was married. She was known to make decorative panels for furniture or the walls of the rooms her husband would construct. She also worked with watercolor, metalsmithing, and textiles. However her most popular medium would be gesso and paint on wood. Her style is distinct and enchanting.

The May Queen. 1900.

I found her biography information, here, at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society website. The first image was photographed by me as seen at the VMFA and the rest of the images are from this website's image gallery.

O Ye, All Ye That Walk in Willowwood. 1903.
Panel for the Salon de Luxe, Willow Tea Rooms, Sauchiehall Street.
(Painted gesso on hessian, set with glass beads)

Artist #22: Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is an artist who uses digital photography. He has a MFA in photography from Yale in 1988. He has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Crewdson is an Adjunct Professor for Yale University School of Art Graduate level Photography. He also has published books of his photography.

GREGORY CREWDSON
Untitled, 2004
Digital chromogenic print
64 1/4 x 94 1/4 inches framed

Crewdson works in two different ways. The first is on location, which makes the photograph have a lot to do with the location and its place or setting. The other is through creating a scene by soundstage. The soundstage is a created world of Gregory Crewdson's making; a space for setting up invented sets. A common theme in his photographs is pregnant women. Crewdson says in an interview, here, that he does this because it is the perfect metaphor for an in-between moment.

GREGORY CREWDSON
Untitled, 2003
Digital chromogenic print
64-1/4 x 94-1/4 inches framed (163.2 x 239.4 cm)
Ed. of 6

What I love about Crewdson's work is the way his settings take on a life of their own and seem to describe an emotion. My favorite is the one with the girl in the water from the Twilight series. She almost seems like Ophelia. All of the images are taken from the Gagosian Gallery site, here.

GREGORY CREWDSON
Untitled, 2001
Digital C-print
Image size: 48 x 60 inches (121.9 x 152.4 cm)

Artist #21: Fred Tomaselli

Big Raven, 2008.
Acrylic, photocollage, and resin on wood panel, 84 x 72 in.
Photo Credit

Fred Tomaselli is an American painter from California. He has exhibited in both group and solo shows across the country. I saw one of his works at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. It captured me from far away with the large painting of a bird, rendered with bright color against a plain black background. Tomaselli's painting then surprised me by being even more interesting close up.

Woodpecker. 2008. @VMFA
Acrylic, gouache, photo collage, resin on wood panel.

What makes Tomaselli's art so amazing is the fine detail of form and pattern within a larger object. For example, the bird's beak is made up of multiple imagery of different types of birds beaks. He allows the viewer to see the anatomical parts that make up his artificial forms. On his White Cube page, here, he says, "It is my ultimate aim, to seduce and transport the viewer in to space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction.”

Woodpecker (detail)

Also, I'll throw in a great video of Fred Tomaselli explaining what he does.

Artist #20: Christine K Harris

Berries for Mother

Cover Up

Christine K Harris is a local Virginia artist. She graduated from Virginia Wesleyan College with a degree in Art and Psychology and from Eastern Virginia Medical School with a masters in Art Therapy. Harris works as a teacher of art and an art therapist with programs for children healing from loss.

Forgotten Promise

Christine Harris considers her artwork to be a record of her processes of personal emotions, observation, and dreams. Her mixed media work is a collection of found objects that build stories. She uses a mix of both animal and human qualities in her work and often uses birds as a theme. According to Harris, birds represent not only freedom of flight, but before that the helplessness and need for nurturing or restrained to a cage.

Someday Never Comes

The images shown here are all from her website. I highly recommend visiting her website, here, for more images of her artwork, because they have better close ups. I think that what is so great about Christine Harris's work is her attention to small details and little found objects on all sides of the work, making them truly sculptural, and that add another dimension to her stories. I really enjoyed seeing her works displayed at the Contemporary Art Center in Virginia Beach.

Regeneration

Artist #19: Jason Levesque

Jason Levesque, also known as Stuntkid, is a graphic artist from Norfolk. He has exhibited in galleries over the world and had a article written about him in the Virginian Pilot. Levesque also works full time as a lead animator for the Norfolk company, Grow Interactive.

Levesque creates his version of the "pinup girl" that usually adds an element of something out of the norm or somewhat gross. He plays with the ideas of an idealized female form that is both beautiful and repulsive. The medium for Jason Levesque's artwork is Photoshop. He draws his images from scanned in model photos or drawings.

I'm totally in love with Levesque's work. I love the concept he works from and the style of his designs. They are all visually intriguing and beautifully constructed. The images are all from his website, here.

Artist #18: Elizabeth Levesque

Elizabeth Levesque is an artist from Norfolk VA who is married to another artist (who I'll do a post on next) that was also exhibited in the Contemporary Art Center in Virginia Beach. She is a painter/web designer/crafts artist who has been in exhibitions across the country. This is Elizabeth Levesque's website, that has links to her blog and more info about her.

What attracted me to her work is her theme of the mystic and things that people use for fortune telling. Elizabeth Levesque uses these themes in her paintings because as a child she remembered playing with the Ouija board with her friends and trying to contact ghosts. She uses the planchette as a symbol in her works for this reason.

I really love the style and ethereal feel of her paintings. I also love the fortune telling theme, because I think that even if people don't believe in those tools they are greatly used and enjoyed by many. The images pictured are all from her website.

Artist #17: Amanda Outcault

Picture Credit

Amanda Outcault is a local painter and metalsmith. She has exhibited in Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio. She had 3 paintings on display at the Contemporary Art Center's Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes Exhibition. Outcault's website, here, has all of her work on display.

Picture Credit

Amanda Outcault describes her artworks as showing the changing roles of women. She says that some of her work describes finding something magical in the ordinary tasks. One of the elements of her paintings are the use of goldfish as a symbol. Outcault says they can show both the meanings of abundance and happiness, but also of domestication and entrapment in small spaces. She is inspired by life and her environment.

Picture Credit

Paintings I saw at the CAC: Fredrick and Friends Accompany Manda On A Bathing Adventure, Manda Pauses the Calorie Count, and Lauren and Danielle Wonder what Happened to the Cookies. I loved her paintings that were on display at the CAC because of the goldfish. There was so much wonder and excitement in them. I could really feel the beauty of life in the everyday experience.