Venues

The giant shark sticking out of Bill Heine’s roof in Oxford represents atomic bombs as something bad. Here’s how Heine describes his masterpiece:

“The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation…. It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.”

One of the big differences between modernism and postmodernism is that a postmodernist would never try to rationalize something as absurd as a giant shark sticking out of the roof. But when this was installed in the late 1980s art had to be justified. That’s not just a giant shark it’s a serious political statement. It’s not suppose to be entertaining; it’s suppose to be preachy.

Manfred W. Juergens is a German artist who works primarily in egg tempera. Check out the hair on the painting above. Egg tempera is great at rendering those kinds of sharp details. Particularly when it’s executed by a master like Juergens.

The painting below is entitled Venezia 1. The egg tempera allows Juergens to capture the extremely complicated clouds and water that would be much more difficult in oil.

Beth Cavener Stichter is a sculpture whose primary work involves varmints in various states of angst. According to her artist’s statement she “want(s) to pry at those uncomfortable, awkward edges between animal and human. The figures are feral and uneasy, expressing frustration for the human tendency towards cruelty and lack of understanding. Entangled in their own internal and external struggles, the figures are engaged with the subjects of fear, apathy, violence and powerlessness.”

The work below is called I’ll Not Tell. Maybe we’ll give it a few more hours and see if that rabbit’s willing to talk.

Is it tasteless to toot your own horn? Who cares? This is my latest painting. It’s 16″ x 20″ oil on panel. A link to all of my recent paintings can be found here.

Here is a detail:

Danato Giancola is a fantasy artist whose work would have recently been dismissed as mere “illustration.” Fortunately today, in more enlightened times, we can recognize Giancola as a painter, even an artist. There used to be a difference. Ironically when there was a difference illustrators tended to be able to paint while painters weren’t. Somehow not being able to paint was a virtue. The idea was that if you didn’t appreciate someone’s random and clumsy paint splatters you just weren’t as sophisticated as the person judging you.

The painting below is entitled Portrait of Michael Kaluta.