Category Artist Profiles

Congratulations to pastel artist Rita Kirkman as our December Artist of the Month! Kirkman was a finalist in Magazine‘s Annual Art Competition! Her piece 9 can be seen below. Read more about Kirkman and her process below.New Braunfels, Texas ~ ritakirkman.comI began drawing portraits of family and friends when I was 11.

Oil painter Jason Chi-Han Cheng’s talents stretch far beyond the stroke of his brush. As a tattoo artist, Cheng creates history; as an oil painter, he memorializes it. Read his story about The Crossing below.San Francisco, California • jasonchihancheng.comI’m a tattoo artist; I find the process profound because the needle penetrates the skin.

Congratulations to oil painter Kelly Birkenruth, our February Artist of the Month! Birkenruth was a finalist in Magazine‘s Annual Art Competition! Her piece Limes and Laughs can be seen below. Read more about the artist and why the limes in the piece were a fun challenge for her.Avon, Connecticut ~ kellybirkenruth.

Congratulations to oil painter Julia Eva Bacon, our January Artist of the Month! Bacon was a finalist in Magazine‘s Annual Art Competition! Her piece Soul Mates can be seen below. Read more about Bacon below and how meeting the love of her life helped inspire the work below.Battleboro, Vermont ~ woodrabbitarts.

Wildlife artist Beatrice Bork is our May 2017 Artist of the Month! Bork was a finalist in Magazine’s Annual Art Competition. Her wildlife painting Through the Shoals is seen below. Read more about the artist and her inspirations!Who I AmI consider myself both an artist and naturalist, and each helps feed the other.

For several years, New York artist Colleen Blackard has been producing an interesting body of drawings that aren’t quite like anything else. Frequently using ballpoint pen as her medium of choice, Blackard’s drawings depict celestial bodies and starry nighttime skies–ambitious subjects. She draws primarily by making circular marks to create tone, which gives her drawings a unique sense of texture and depth.

Still life oil painter Kyle Surges recreates moments from the past in his breathtaking, incredibly realistic work. We first saw Surges work thanks to our Annual Art Competition. Below he tells us what inspired his award-winning World War II Rations and shares some insight into his creative process. Enjoy!

Painters, a Touchdown CelebrationFor most, the Super Bowl is a time to gather together with friends and family, drink a few brews while eating chips and dip until bellies protest with strange noises. For others, the Super Bowl is just something to tolerate between cute commercials filled with more brews, peculiar humor … and, of course, puppies.

“People of color have to live with the burden of past and present discriminations and injustices every day,” says artist Kohshin Finley. “The subjects I paint have only become stronger because of this burden, and have not become weakened by it.”Finley’s contemporary portraiture was submitted to Artists Magazine’s Annual Art Competition.

“In its highest form, art has a civilizing effect on society. It helps us to remember what makes life worth living.”Between Realms by Dorian Vallejo drawing offers a wistful rendition of a tale about love and time. One hundred years have passed, and la belle au bois dormant dreams on and on in her castle keep.

“I prefer oil to other media because it is the most forgiving and sensual of all types of paint I have tried.”Melanie Vote is a naturalist to the core. Painting in the landscape is where she is happiest, and she starts every painting possible from life, in the tradition of the greatest plein air painters.

“Artists and bowerbirds are so much alike. They gather materials and create beautiful settings in order to entice.”Only a true artist understands how deeply love is linked to labor. It’s about the real-time pursuit of the work.“People think being an artist is so romantic and free,” says Chen. “That we are somehow magical because we can make things.

A Painter’s Life on the RoadMeet Emilie Lee, intrepid artist and wanderlust painter. She has walked away from big city life in New York City to embark on an artful life on the road.Her van is her mobile studio and the people, places and things she encounters become her painting subjects and impromptu inspirations.

It’s no surprise that an art juror is going to begin his or her task by studying a painting for certain expected attributes: strong design, solid draftsmanship, a skilled handling of value and color. But once an entry has met criteria like these, what is it in a painting that catches and holds a juror’s attention all the way through to the winner’s circle?

The pop art pioneer combined skillful picture-making with canny appropriationRoy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) is not an artist whose work waits patiently for you to notice it. With their replication of commercial printing processes, unadulterated primary colors, large scale, melodramatic flair and unsettlingly incomplete narratives, his paintings reach out and grab you, whether you’re ready for them or not.

A Painter’s Field Guide for Art on the RoadEmilie Lee puts the art into vanlife. Based in California but trekking year-round and worldwide for two weeks to two months at a time, she paints wherever she goes. Her cross-country creativity and art on the road lifestyle is an inspiration and the stuff of dreams to many of us.

Watercolor Moves from Paper to FondantWatercolor cakes have moved this medium from canvas to fondant, and we are loving it! Between Pinterest, the TV series “The Great British Bake Off” and our generally food-obsessed culture, it’s no wonder art and cakes have crossed paths.Decadent, wedding-style cakes arguably have always been a kind of art.

This edition of Artist HQ spotlights Mexican artist Patricia Guzmán, a painter whose most extensive body of work, “Roots,” depicts Native men, women and children from her country.“By chance two separate glances meet … and I am you and what I see is me…” For Patricia Guzmán, every portrait is a chance to provoke the empathy, awareness and connection so lyricized in Pink Floyd’s song Echoes.

This edition of Artist HQ spotlights Joshua LaRock, an internationally recognized figurative artist whose portraiture and figurative works offer an ode to the Old Masters but with a contemporary spin.Joshua LaRock, An Artist to KnowInspiration can be a difficult thing to articulate for Joshua LaRock.

Drawing on influences from both sides of the Atlantic, Thomas Cole brought attention to the glory of pure wilderness and the encroaching order of civilization.“The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness,” wrote the painter Thomas Cole (1801–48) in an 1836 essay.