John Martin

So, let's face it, the bible can be boring. For every action-packed  pillar of fire and brimstone episode, there's a couple hundred pages of what fabrics not to wear and whose dad was whose. Luckily for us, most of the cool stuff in the bible can be summed up in the works of Christian painter, John Martin. Martin lived during early 1800s, and was actively involved in the romanticism art movement, for all you Art 101 kids searching google images the night before your paper is due. It's okay, I won't tell anyone. Anyway, Martin's work is amazing in the depth and breadth of his landscapes, which are all pretty much apocalyptic. There are no sugary sweet fat Jesus babies being cradled by doe-eyed virgins in these works. Each piece shows the fiery wrath of God in full color, from mountains crashing down, exploding volcanoes, storms, floods, falling angels, you name it. And they are breath-taking. The thunderous crag-like clouds are ominous and foreboding, and you can really get the atmosphere he was going for. When they were made, the paintings were immensely popular, however, at the peak of his popularity, Martin gave up painting to pursue some other wacky enlightened endeavors, like redesigning the London sewage and water systems, railroads, and light houses. He was also considered sort of an odd-ball-- preferring to hiss during the national anthem, for instance. Though his paintings themselves are amazing, his body of work has continued as a major influence to numerous artists today, notably George Lucas, H.P. Lovecraft, and Derek Riggs, that guy that paints the covers for Iron Maiden.

JOB update

The kickstarter for JOB is up and running and ready for donations. JOB has recently been added as a recommended project, so please get out there and start donating to get this project underway.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/762567073/job-a-comic-by-egan?ref=email

Thanks,
Egan

JOB

I regularly feature different artists on this blog, but since one of my personal projects is really getting under way, I'd like to invite you to check out some of my own work, namely my comic book, "JOB". JOB chronicles the life of seventeen year old Job Freewell, a homeless girl in southern Louisiana who is the subject of a wager between God and the Devil. The devil has one year to corrupt her by any means necessary. Once Job finds out about this endeavor, however, she sets out to get back at heaven for destroying her life, and this time, God had better be looking over his shoulder.

For more information, check out the official JOB blog:

http://www.jobcomics.blogspot.com

Alex Pardee

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of cutesy art, especially paintings. I feel like the art medium of splashy watercolor backdrops behind over-rendered, graffiti knock-off line art is over and done, and any issue of High Fructose can attest to that. But, I happened to break this trend in my oh so refined tastes with the art of Alex Pardee. While he subscribes to the aforementioned painting trend, his subject matter is gruesome and creepy enough to keep the eye interested. Some of his pieces, especially the ones with creepy critters riding each other, keep the viewer pleasantly uncomfortable about each seemingly innocuous image, which is more than I can say for most modern painting. That being said, while I was impressed with the scope of Pardee's monster factory, he seems to lean on making art as marketing rather than craft, but then again, even artists have to eat.

All of these works belong to Alex Pardee, and can be found with much of his other work at

http://www.eyessuckink.com/

Abelardo Morell

Photography can seem like one of those mediums that has been explored to its limit. With the dawn of digital technology and phones that can take better photos than most cameras I've ever owned, now everyone's an artist...and a critic. It's harder and harder to impress the world with that perfect composition, and if you want notoriety, it seems like every worthwhile piece has to capture that infinitely deep emotion caught only in the perfect context. The art of Abelardo Morell, a Cuban native, pleasantly turns this idea on its head. Rather than photograph the world directly, he implements the age-old process of camera-obscura into his photography. By creating a pin-hole in the wall of a room, the inverse image of the world outside is projected magically onto the wall inside. If this is confusing, check out his piece below, entitled "Light bulb," which explains the process visually. The juxtaposition of each of the outdoor landscapes with the simple room assemblies he creates are beautiful, understated, and whimsical; and they force the viewer to reevaluate the colors, shapes, and visual quality of the outside world in ways that you'd never imagine. As a side note, currently, Morell's work is on display in National Geographic magazine this month, so if you want some impromptu posters of Morell's work on the cheap, you know where to find them.

The magic of camera obscura: A small slit in the box allows the inverted image of the light bulb to filter in, projecting an image onto the back wall of the box.

All of these works belong to Abelardo Morell, and can be found with more of his work at http://www.abelardomorell.net/

Ron Mueck

Some of my favorite art is that which causes the viewer to give a double take--art whose illusion of reality nearly overwhelms the act of its creation. Ron Mueck's work is an example of such art. While Mueck began his artistic career working on scenery and lending voices to characters on an Australian children's show, he found a higher calling, producing the fantastic, hyper-realistist human forms. This alone isn't that exciting. Special effects people have been recreating the human form for decades. The factor that make's Mueck's work different is not readily aparent in photographs--but when you notice the size of the viewers present, it's jarringly obvious. Scale. Each of Mueck's figures has been exanpded to 2 or 3 times their normal size, or inversely, has been shrunken to fit in your pocket. One of the beauties of this work is that these changes in size do not come at the expense of detail, or proportion. Each figure exists alone in its own surreal world of enormity or insignificance, and each has something to say about those factors in every human being.

Ernst Haekel

If you ever want to feel like an under achiever, look no further than the works of Ernst Haekel, actually, just look at his life. Haekel lived from 1834 to 1919, and was notable for simultaneously being a biologist, artist, physician, professor, and naturalist. He catalogued over a thousand new species, often meticulously depicting them in his fine art. He tirelessly promoted Charles Darwin's work and the theory of evolution. He did slip up however, in his uninformed assumption that different races of people comprised different species. Oops. I guess we'll have to let that one slide in the light of how fantastic his depictions of his biological escapades turned out. I'm especially fond of the multi-colored sea creatures, which I wish were printed on my shower curtain instead of the map of the world.

Biography courtesy of Wikipedia