Artist Post: Richard Roberts

Richard Roberts is a famous digital media artist who works in digital illustration. Despite being only twenty years old, Roberts yet he has gained international attention for his artwork and digital creations. He currently works as a freelance illustrator and artist based in Milwaukee.  Although he has been designing for a mere five years, Roberts has been featured in many magazines and blogs. He is a part of an international art collective called depthcore since 2002. Depthcore encompasses a wide range of artwork from digital painting, photography, digital media and music. His depthcore influences can be seen in where Roberts derives his inspiration from such as popular media, songs, movies, and other artists in the movement.

Supernova

                What I find the most interesting about Robert’s artwork is how he manipulates the images on the computer in such a painterly way and how much he uses light to his advantage. The piece becomes completely mesmerizing because the vibrant colors stand out against the stark contrasts of light and shadow. The surrealist atmosphere is partially derived from this lighting. In his piece Supernova, Robert’s painterly style and dramatic use of color are most evident. According to the artist, the image was inspired by his interpretation of the song Champagne Supernova. The organic swirls and halo around the woman’s head gives her an angelic aura amidst the dark atmospheric background. I was slightly surprised to discover that Roberts purchased a photo off of the internet and then manipulated the image into this digital painting. I appreciate that even though his skill is great; he collaborates with other artists to make his images. The volume of works that Roberts possesses at his age attests to the speed and versatility that computer programs have over traditional mediums.  As someone who prefers painting to digital work, I find the conglomerate of the two to be exceptionally inspiring.

Reborn

                In reborn, an illustration that is a member of a four part series designed for a client, Roberts narrates the journey of a girl through the various stages of her life. The struggle of the transition that the girl is experiencing is clearly evident, but the power and energy that is generated in the image promises so much life. The way that the vertical lines go from cloudy and dark at the bottom to extremely bright and almost perfectly vertical creates a feeling of power of light that surrounds the girl. So much energy is captured with the clouds and the lighting effects. The way that the figure is posed suggests a fetal position, yet the movement and the tension in the legs gives the figure life and suggests breaking free of previous constraints and individuality.

                Overall, I found Richard Robert’s work to be astonishing. The ability to manipulate images on the computer in order to create these illustrations and to have this talent without formal training is phenomenal. I find it exceedingly interesting that you can digitally paint on the computer and directly tie traditional art making processes with modern technology. 

Getting lost

 

I found a really pretty neighborhood out on the water. I do not get to see a lot of neighborhoods at College so it was a nice change of pace.

Project 2

Second Artist Talk: Gabriela Balisova

Collateral Image Portraits of Iraqi Refugees

Gabriela Balisova is photojournalist who uses photography to spread her concern for major social and political issues. She travels around the world and in the United States in order to document human tragedies and hardships. She has visited areas such as Chernobyl, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and has recently done work in the Washington, D.C. area with women who have been recently freed from prison.

Throughout Ms. Balisova's talk, I was captivated by her images. I have little experience with photography, but the dramatic light and dark shadows, the color, and arrangements of her photographs capture the anguish and despair that her stories that accompany these photos are filled with. Many of the areas and events that she talked about I was relatively familiar with, but seeing the photographs gave me a completely new understanding and perspective. Seeing the mutated bodies, the war-torn areas, and the expressions of her subjects erased all of the mind-numbing effects that modern news reports has left on me. Being told of tragedies over and over again leads me to feeling desensitized, but this was not the case with the photographs. I was emotionally touched and troubled by her images and I was disappointed to find that the lecture ended so quickly.

Photography of a child disfigured due to the effects of Chernobyl

The clique expression that a photography tells a thousands words seemed to underestimate the gravity and power behind the images that she captured. People are visual creatures, I believe that more activism can be inspired by viewing a disturbing  image of someone in pain than by reading about the same person. I admire the bravery that it takes for a woman to travel to dangerous areas of the world in order to share other people's stories. She is someone who is using art for a purpose, not just to inspire thought, but to inspire change which is the ultimate measure of accomplishment.

Mary Early

First Outside Art Event/Talk

Mary Early was raised in Washington D.C. and graduated from Bennington College in 1997. She primarily works in Sculpture using beeswax and resin in her work. Her pieces generally seem to have a uniform, repetitious quality about them, but their slight imperfections created by the handmade process add character and beauty to her work.
One of the things that I found interesting about this artist is that she takes in account for many different aspects of her audience's experience. Early pays attention to the space, the smells, the reflections, and the architecture surrounding her setups. It was interesting to see how she maximized the space available to her to create pieces that are simple, yet demand attention.
Something that I noticed about a lot her sculptures was that they seemed to be deeply rooted in math. Many displayed various types of symmetry, radial was especially prominent. Also, Early frequently talked about creating the illusion that the lines of the sculpture just continue off into space. This idea of infinity and the cone and cylindrical shapes reminded me a lot of calculus. Everything seemed uniform and carefully plotted, similar to mathematics.
Another point in her talk that I found intriguing was that she said artist have a certain romance with their materials. She described her fixation with beeswax in this manner. I found this interesting because while romance seems too strong of a description for how I personally feel about my art supplies, there definitely is some type of friendship. Some days I will discover something new about my materials, like a pleasant surprise from a friend, and other days there is this frustration that I cannot get across what I envisioned with the material. As I experiment with the materials, it changes me sometimes more that I end up changing it. The paints allow me to view something in a manner I never saw before and they teach me about themselves. They are like a good friend, there to correct you, yet also there to help you get you to your ultimate goal.

Sketch

Line Drawing