On View: “Love, Strength, and Soul” by Tim Okamura at Yeelen Gallery

"I think my aesthetic is kind of a mash-up: realism, graffiti, stencil art, and some moves inspired at times by abstract expressionism," shares Tim Okamura on his latest solo, "Love Strength and Soul". Now on view at Yeelen Gallery in Miami, his show is an exploration of the figure over the past 5 years. Previously featured here, Okamura's New York city women are a mix of traditional portraiture upgraded by personal symbolism and experiences.

“I think my aesthetic is kind of a mash-up: realism, graffiti, stencil art, and some moves inspired at times by abstract expressionism,” shares Tim Okamura on his latest solo, “Love Strength and Soul”. Now on view at Yeelen Gallery in Miami, his show is an exploration of the figure over the past 5 years. Previously featured here, Okamura’s New York city women are a mix of traditional portraiture upgraded by personal symbolism and experiences.

“Seeds of Contemplation” by Tim Okamura

By pairing new paintings side by side with older pieces on display, Okamura was able to assess his development. “I often like to think of my mindset to making paintings as sharing something in common with a hip-hop DJ; sampling classic grooves, finding something familiar, but putting a new beat over top, giving it a different feel, perhaps more urgent, and perhaps also like an MC, delivering a new message over top of that old school jam…” Okamura carries this idea of experimentation in music into his creative process of painting. For example, “Seeds of Contemplation” is inspired by a Robert Rauschenberg painting, given a new spin with a subdued palette and pattern. He adds, “The key for me is to keep things fresh through these explorations, and to keep looking ahead to the next body of work.”

“Love, Strength, and Soul”, work by Tim Okamura is on view at Yeelen gallery through January 10th, 2015.

Topics

Figure Painting, graffiti, Realism, Robert Rauschenberg, Tim Okamura

Charcoal, Leah Yerpe, Lifesize, Mechanical Pencil, Realism

June 28, 2014

Do you dream about flying? Brooklyn artist Leah Yerpe draws what she dreams- highly detailed, lifesize floating forms that seem to fly off the paper. Some of her artworks are over ten feet high. In contrast to their impressive scale, Yerpe’s choice of materials are simple; black charcoal for her larger works, and a single mechanical pencil for smaller studies. “I enjoy using the human figure in my work because we cannot help but project on and relate to it,” she shares at her website. Yerpe’s passion for dance is evident in the ornate shapes she creates with twisting arms and legs, and intertwined torsos placed against a white background. In dance, abstract emotional expressions have different movement characteristics. Yerpe is also conveying a range of emotions through her compositions. See more after the jump!

Alexandra Bastien Portrays Reincarnation in New Drawings

Alexandra Bastien, colored pencil, Female Empowerment, Metempsychosis, Realism

March 25, 2015

Quebec native Alexandra Bastien (first posted in 2014) can spend over 40 hours on just one of her near hyper-realistic colored pencil drawings. She is currently working on an ongoing series of girls in a state of Metempsychosis, especially reincarnation. In other words, we are witnessing the moment after death where their souls move from one form to another. In Bastien's work, this is usually an animal skull or remains. Take a look at some of her recent drawings, after the jump!

Urban Nation’s Project M/7 Honors “Persons of Interest”

Brooklyn Street Art, graffiti, urban art, Urban Nation

May 7, 2015

We stopped by Urban Nation in Berlin last week to check out their latest project, M/7, in collaboration with Brooklyn Street Art. It is the 7th in a series named after Berlin's UN haus building, which we've been following here over the past several months. A portraiture show in essence, curators Jamie Rojo and Steven P. Harrington invited 12 Brooklyn based street artists to create a portrait of his or her particular "Person of Interest": Dain, Gaia, Don Rimx, Swoon, Specter, Esteban Del Valle, Chris Stain, Nohcoley, Cake, El Sol 25, Icy & Sot, Onur Dinc, Kkade, Nevercrew, Dot Dot Dot, and Anreas Engludn. This makes the exhibition a sort of cultural exhange program that brings together the artists with local residents of Berlin, and encourages them to consider their surroundings.

Mara Light’s Female Subjects Emote Through Textured Layers

Mara Light, painting, Realism

February 16, 2016

"All people- and nature itself- have distinctive layers," says Pittsburgh based painter Mara Light. Teetering between a classical sense of realism and abstraction, her textured oil paintings aim to explore the layers of ourselves that we show and the others we hide within. Her subject matter is almost always women, whose emotions permeate the surface of her work's repetitive layering, scrapes, tears and drips of turpentine over certain areas, a process she enjoys for its unpredictable nature. For her current series, titled "Beneath the Surface," she sees her artistic explorations as more than a way to add visual interest to her work, but also as a metaphor for her personal experiences.

On View: “Love, Strength, and Soul” by Tim Okamura at Yeelen Gallery

Lifesize Floating Forms by Leah Yerpe

Alexandra Bastien Portrays Reincarnation in New Drawings

Urban Nation’s Project M/7 Honors “Persons of Interest”

Mara Light’s Female Subjects Emote Through Textured Layers

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