Glorious freak parade

Thomas Woodruff's visions shimmer and glimmer and entice us to dream of darkness and whimsy. These images are taken from his book "Freak Parade", in which all the paintings hang together to create a long parade. This book is available at Last Gasp and will make a fine Halloween present.

Two-faced Paintings

A Cross-eyed Clergyman/The Loving Haft-wit Albino , 2007-2008
pastel on prepared paper




Inquisitive Infanta/Phobic Don , 2007-2008
pastel on prepared paper





Silent Screen Siren/Hag who Understands All , 2007-2008
pastel on prepared paper

The unbelievably talented Thomas Woodruff is showing this month some amazing two-faced paintings, that use visual trickery. As a child I was captivated looking at optical illusions and visual puzzles. I remember most fondly the strange vegetable faces by the Italien artist Arcimboldo or the steps that lead to nowhere by M.C. Escher.
I am glad that Thomas Woodruff is continuing this mind boggeling artistic tradition.

In love with Colonial Baroque

"Rosario de Besos " by Ray Martin Abeyta
"Mano O Mano" by Ray Martin Abeyta
"Distillacion" by Ray Martin Abeyta

By coincidence I came across these wonderful paintings. Ray Martin Abeyta is a contemporary master of colonial baroque paintings. He combines successfully the historical style of colonial retabolo paintings and the modern iconography of lowbrow culture. I would love to see his work up close.

My Halloween Gallery: Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden in his studio






I have first encountered Mark Ryden's art in the art magazine Juxtapoz in the late 90's and have been following his work since. The top 3 paintings are from his "Blood" series, more creepy than usual , but perfect for my Halloween gallery. The image of the lone girl in the big, puffy skirt is called "The Debutant" and we own this print by him. It is one of my favorite paintings and one day I'll make myself a costume like that. All these bizarre items, that are attached to her skirt, are icons of some sort or another, but jumbled together their meaning is put out of its original context. As a child my parents used to have one of these drawers with little compartments for type setting. They hung it on the wall and displayed little meaningful objects in the different compartments: a little Buddha statue, a silver dollar, my baby tooth, a sea shell, a plastic toy soldier... a collage of objects that each have memories and meaning attached to them, but together they have no relationship.
I also love the last image, which is from his latest exhibition, "the tree show" and it is called "Allegory and the four elements".

TRAGIC KINGDOM: THE ART OF CAMILLE ROSE GARCIA

Black Dawn Rising, giclée print with hand-applied mica glitter on archival paper.


Antarctic Suburban Outpost, 2006. Acrylic and glitter on wood



The San Jose Museum of Modern Art is showing a fabulous exhibition of Camille Rose Garcia's work. She is part of the whole LA Pop-Surrealist or Lowbrow Movement. Her art is spooky-cute! A strange and enticing combination of sadness and naive kitsch. I can recommend the beautiful book that accompanies this exhibition (published by Last Gasp) and my husband bought my daughter and me two of Camille's dolls. Here is a picture of Lulu and conjoined sisters Sadie/Katie.

Camille paints a child's fairy tale with all the pains that we inflict on our world by destroying the environment , killing animals, fighting wars. She named a cycle of paintings aptly "The saddest place on earth" , a reference to Disneyland, that is billed as the "Happiest Place on Earth" - and indeed we see a sugary sweet realm, but understand it is fake and it's reality is based on pain and sadness. Click here to read about her on the San Jose Museum Of Modern Art web site and watch Youtube video interviews with her.