Alice's pick
"My pick this month is the landscape photographer, Lynne Douglas. Her atmospheric and dramatic photography captures - through the seasons - the wild and beautiful coastline of Northern Scotland where she lives. I particularly love her quality of line and bold use of colour used to draw out the abstract shapes within the landscape. Often working on a large-scale - befitting of her subject matter - Lynne’s works instantly transport you to this unique corner of the world and will make a statement in any space."
Alex's pick
"Diane is a talented and versatile printmaker producing arresting and atmospheric images at very affordable prices."
Richard's pick
"Louise’s work demonstrates how broad and varied the art of photography can be these days. Her repertoire combines straight, almost documentary images of New York and highly evocative, stylised images that play on the edges of photography, painting and illustration (or some combination of all three). The works encompass almost every genre and subject imaginable – landscapes, nudes, still lifes, flower studies, portraits, architectural – most played with or somehow adulterated to add a slightly unreal effect to the world seen through O’Gorman’s lens.
Many of these colourful and intriguing images transport you to some slightly hazy, more distant world, sometimes to the unfamiliar and exotic: shadows of camels trekking across the Saharan desert and sometimes the more mundane and familiar of kids jumping off diving platforms into the sea. All the images have the power to transport you to these locations or make you want to be there. The quality of light and tone, colours, compositions all are very skilfully created. The works show a photographer totally at home with their medium, confident enough to explore different subjects and present them in all manner of different styles and approaches.
There is nothing overly tricksy or clever about the resulting imagery, rather they just intrigue and draw you further in. You feel as if they are images you might be able to capture yourself, but then on closer inspection, actually not quite. You're not quite sure how she did that or how that effect was achieved... and was she really at that location or is this just some imagined vision created in her studio? All of which is what lends and adds to the universal appeal of these images."
Dario's pick
"Bonjour à tous. I’m not even going to bother with the usual, “I hope you’re well” line. Let’s be honest… these are troubling times. You’re not well, you may never be again. I know it, you know it, even the bin men picking up your chucked out blackbag diary of junk food wrappers and empties revealing a burgeoning drink habit know it. It’s nothing to be concerned about, as long as you haven’t started googling ‘how to get legal highs’ you’ll be fine. Nutmeg and poppy seeds by the way.
What you need my little bunnies is Andrew Morris. I think he’s a newbie at Artfinder, but what a great addition. Coming from a background in commercial art/illustration, Andrew understands composition, where and how to draw your focus, the emotion of colour, and at its most simple, he knows how to make a good painting.
"So what!" I hear you slur. Hear me out. Firstly you must know that commercial artists and fine artists are different beasts. Commercial artists make work based on a brief, whereas fine artists make work because they cant help it. I can’t be bothered to expand on this but trust me, it’s true. Andrew possesses both sensibilities; his work is both image-based and emotionally led. Instantly these paintings pull you in and evoke a world that is personal and intimate, sensitive and emotive. His use of colour, light and space are all employed to make you feel what the buildings or cars or vistas mean to him. They are not casual choices but are places, objects and ‘things’ that are important to him.
Whilst we cannot know of their exact implications in his life, there is an aura and a sense of history present. I think it may be too simple to describe them as nostalgic or wistful, but rather they are places with resonance that Andrew has made accessible to us. These are paintings that perhaps make me feel less alone without fully knowing what I mean by that. They describe what we all feel about certain places that at first can appear inconsequential or unimportant. We’re not all that different really and that’s what they seem to be saying to me, which is quite reassuring.
And before I forget… his charcoal drawings are also very, very good. I’m off now to sharpen my pencils. Actual pencils! Not a euphemism..."
Dr. Matthew Eve's pick
"By strange coincidence my artist choices for last and this month have both been exceptional figurative female Spanish painters, but that’s where the similarities end. Where Tomasa’s figures are meditative, self-isolating and plaintive, my artist this month, Martta Garcia, creates beautifully observed quasi-Op Art paintings of urban street crossings and steps over-populated with busy, faceless people going about their daily grind. From Martta’s very particular perspective: a bird’s eye vantage point, and against a monochrome striped background, simplified positive and negative figurative shapes, painted or left blank, ghostlike, blend in and out of each other as they jostle for ever-decreasing space in a world out of balance. Odd splashes of muted colour describe clothing and punctuate the picture plane, while judicious cropping creates overall tension and unease. These are disquieting, contradictory paintings, full of movement yet frozen in time, seemingly expressing the human condition in all its frailty and over abundance. I strongly recommend Martta’s work; she’s an artist with a very unique and individual vision whose paintings seem like an ironic comment on the world in which we currently find ourselves."
Juliana and Debra's pick
"During lockdown I think we all need to take solace in the beauty of nature as we literally see plants blooming before our eyes. Irina incorporates this three dimensional sculptural element into the traditional still life with beautiful colours and textures."
Julia's pick
"Jane Kell’s works have a calm beauty. Whether her subject is a landscape, still life or abstract, they convey a stillness made also very distinct through her use of colour, shadow and reflection. Every piece is a perfect balance of stillness of a surface or a background interjected with an abstract mark. The problem is I can’t work out which piece I like best!"
Aindrea's pick
"The ethereal beauty of Lillia's fantastical gardenscapes is mixed with a loose Impressionist technique, as brush marks seem to fall off the canvas. Allow earthly splendour to fill the room with dreamy romance and a distinct Japanese calligraphic influence."
Shop all artists of the month
Cover image via Martta Garcia
