Shorts: Henri Matisse, "Harmony in Red"

Title: The Dessert: Harmony in Red (aka The Red Room in Russia)

Artist: Henri Matisse

Date: 1908-1909

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 180 x 246 cm (5'11" x 8'1" ft)

Gallery: The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

"A painting comprises of overall harmony: Any superfluous detail would steal, in the mind of the spectator, the place of another detail that is essential..." -Henri Matisse, Remarks on Painting*

Water Water Everywhere: Close ups, Moments, and Motions

When I think of a painting featuring water I usually think of a traditional land or sea scape. Something like a lake nestled amongst tree littered hills or salty ocean waters lapping up along the short cliffs of a picturesque seaside town. But there are so many opportunities for some really awesome paintings beyond this common subject. Our good friend H₂O behaves in all sorts of interesting and wonderful ways within its environment, just waiting to be fully appreciated with a dab or two of paint.

Turning on the water in the kitchen sink and placing your hand under the faucet to test its temperature, I'd say a pretty common occurrence for many people, one of those normal things that is given little direct notice. With an impressive attention to detail Linnea Strid gets up close and personal with this everyday event and allows the viewer to study what otherwise is often glanced over and forgotten. It is so beautifully and convincingly painted I can almost feel the cold water splashing out onto my own hand.

Linnea Strid, Let it Flow, oil on plywood

Double Exposure Portraits Reinterpreted

A couple months back I wrote a post on Double Exposure Portrait Photography and featured many different artists who have contributed their own approach and style to the trend. Since then I've noticed the visual style of these photographs leak into other media of art. It may be that some of these artists have been directly inspired or the similarities are purely incidental, but I've collected some of these artists here for some cool inspiration for superimposed imagery outside the medium of photography.

Oriol Angrill Jorda
Oriol Angrill Jorda creates these gorgeous blendscapes, as he calls them, using various combinations of acrylic, colored pencil, and graphite with watercolor. Layering the abstract tangibility of substances like water and clouds with the concrete definition of a woman's portrait, these four works maintain a seamless flow between detailed definition and mystic blurs, creating an almost ethereal quality to an otherwise beautiful but normal portrait.