Yohey Horishita painted these enchanting hands as a cover for the entertainment publication Oz Magazine.
Horishita uses oil pastels, ink and digital art (sometimes combinations) to expressive work with a somehow simultaneously vibrant and muted color palette.
We can see the influence of traditional Japanese art, with a modern styling that is ultimately unique.
I recently stumbled upon Brent Estabrook’s vibrant paintings, which range from cohesive, vivid realism, to the abstract and deconstructed.
Estabrook got his Doctorate in Dental Surgery, practiced for one day, and left the field to pursue his need to paint (a gutsy move, but a good one with this kind of talent!). His paintings are able to conjure up the nostalgia of childhood dreams…
…memories of when all was possible and world was magic. We remember the toys, the textures, the stories we crafted around items we held dear.
In keeping with my tendency to be last on every social media bandwagon, I just started up my Instagram. I randomly saw a suggested post by lauracolors, which drew me into her wonderful world of girls ensconced in nature, anthropomorphic plants and otherwise magical worlds.
While simply being adorable and pretty to look at, her work also has a kind of serene, harmonious feeling to it…a natural flow and order.
…and she inadvertently drew me as a mermaid (or so I tell myself because I wish I looked like this drawing!).
Laura also does fantastic custom vinyl toys and jewelry. Awesome work, all around.
Eric Lacombe has been one of my favorite artists for quite sometime.
His paintings conjure up a sense of anxiety and melancholy; of lost creatures captured in profound moments of transfiguration. His fluid transitions between figurative painting and abstract expressionism heighten the feeling of contained chaos.
He uses acrylics, paper, oil, pens and paper mixed up with glue and acrylic to create these textured effects.
Iris Scott is blurring the boundaries between fine art and child’s play with her vibrant oil finger paintings.
These lively, impressionist scenes fall under the genre of Instinctualism; richly textured images that require no explanation, thus potentially appealing to both innocent and seasoned art lovers.
From the artist bio:
Her paint-heavy finger painting technique and rainbow of pigments, oftentimes utilizes over 100 different oil colors into a single scene. Her paintings portray a dreamy yet dynamic world – a heightened, more lush version of reality. “I want my paintings to be both an escape from our everyday life, and an intensification of the recognizable.”
I love how she is using a medium typically associated with highly refined work to have (during the creation process) and produce a more visceral, kinetic experience.
Jackson’s International Auctions had a listing for this rare 19th Century French automaton of a pig playing a harp.
This dapper swine music box moves his arms over the harp strings via a clockwork key windup.
He stands just over thirteen inches tall and sold for $2,160.00.
See the listing here.
Allow me to step on my soapbox and let loose a rant that’s been brewing for quite sometime…*ahem*…
If you don’t want to read the whole post, I’ll lead with the end point:
I’m shutting down the SWS Facebook “page” and keeping it personal, the way I originally intended, by inviting you all to my regular profile. Click “follow” and you’ll get the daily blog post (as well as some bonus content).
Be sure to click “follow” and not “add friend” so you see the artsy content and avoid clogging up your own feed with my name tagged in various memes and medical articles. Follow HERE.
Now the reason…
A couple of months ago, Facebook notified me that they were going to shut down my blog profile unless I submitted legal documentation proving my name is She Walks Softly. So I converted the profile to a “page,” lost all my data, and now my blog posts are listed as reaching about 7 people instead of 500+ per day via Facebook specifically. Since I had barely touched the site for 5 years, I didn’t realize that Facebook wants us to buy ad space so they limit the post audience and don’t let us add anyone or communicate from a “page.”
I take issue with this because Facebook frequently makes announcements regarding its perpetual quest to target the user’s experience to his or her own interests, as if we should be grateful. It appears this is largely a veil for self-serving data mining and manipulation of visibility for financial gain.
I’m an extremely pronounced introvert. And while I adore and admire my extrovert friends who cast a wide social net, due to my own wiring I cannot…even where it would serve me…muster the faintest interest in non-substantive popularity. This quality is simultaneously a gift that ensures a high concentration of quality personal interactions in my life, and a curse in our market-saturated society that requires copious self-promotion for any independent project (an endeavor at which I’m not only miserable, but wholly inept). I’ve never promoted my blog anywhere nor have I taken any measures to grow the Facebook page. Whoever ended up on these sites found them of their own accord and wanted to be there.
The plummeting numbers themselves didn’t bother me. It bothers me that many people who went out of their way to tell me they appreciated the blog content and followed daily through Facebook no longer see the posts, and I have no recourse to make them aware of the shift. Even if I could remember all the strangers who have expressed gratitude and write to them from my regular profile, I would get temporarily banned for “spamming.” And, if I were able to write to these kind strangers, the messages would be relegated to the recipients’ “other/request” folder, most likely remaining unseen. I didn’t even know an “other” folder existed until there were hundreds of messages in it…and I still never check it.
In short: people who expressed genuine interest have been shut out. This hardly reflects the site’s purported benevolent preoccupation with targeting user interests. Apparently, there is a penalty for valuing quality over quantity, for wanting followers who actually give a damn about the material as opposed to page views that can be bought.
This blog is a fun hobby that has nothing to do with my career. I will never earn money off it, and that was a conscious choice I made so as not to alter my content for search engine optimization, feel tempted to post shameless clickbait, bombard people with pop-up ads and other flagrant marketing tools…or do anything other than share my love of art, absurdity, and the darker side of life with fellow enthusiasts.
Bless my dear Rachel’s late night internet searches, which led me to Anne Bobroff-Hajal’s incredible Russian History illustrations.
Rachel came across THIS incredible illustration, with no explanation whatsoever. It turned out to be a depiction of Ivan he Terrible blessing a mustachioed baby Joseph Stalin (but it’s more entertaining with no idea that it’s supposed to be political satire). I rather enjoyed her recounting the Google image searches that finally led to the image source…including, but not limited to “flying broomstick mustache baby.”
The artist bio describes Bobroff-Hajal’s work as detailed and whimsical visual stories about powerful human motivations: love, greed, grief, competition, fury.
This art has so much character, I feel it could make even those who find history dreadfully boring pay attention
Let’s take a moment to ogle the beauty of nature…
For some reason, people feel slightly uneasy in this chair.
A tad crass…but definitely my favorite faux Rand McNally cover:
Couldn’t they have thought of more appetizing adjectives than “semi-liquids?” I suppose it beats “lumpy, congealed and vomitous.”
Dana, Don’t make a joke about this car being cheesy…Don’t make a joke about this car being cheesy…Resist!
Did anyone have this as a kid? It looks awesome.
How can I get my hands on this book? This woman absolutely has life figured out.
Incredible building of unknown origin.
Gorgeous modern interpretation of Danse Macabre!
The old one was no fun at all…
A children’s book illustration. I’m sure no one had nightmares or anything.
Jerry Uelsmann began creating his surreal, fantastical photographs in the 1960’s using darkroom techniques. So advanced was his vision that the developers of Photoshop actually contacted HIM for help as the program was being created.
Rather like dreams, symbols and archetypes, each person brings their unique sensibilities and associations to these photographs. They are comprised of crisp elements of reality, yet are timeless and open-ended metaphors.
In his portfolio we find a lot of nature-focused subject matter. With only a peripheral glance, one may entirely miss the fact that the laws of time and space as we know them do not exist in this work.
The dynamic tension between real and unreal can unravel some interesting thoughts.
SheWalksSoftly 