Attention all artists! In partnership with our friends at Squarespace, Hi-Fructose will be highlighting five artists who are currently using Squarespace for their website or portfolio, to be featured on HiFructose.com. This week we are featuring Newcastle, England based artist Vanessa Foley, who expresses an affinity for wildlife in her realistic portraits of animals. She grew up in the Northumberland countryside surrounded by nature which left a lasting impression on her. In her artist statement, she writes, “My love of nature and art are inseparable, and I could never imagine one without the other.”
After working solely in graphite, the artist has recently expanded to add more oil painting to her repertoire, often portraying romantic images of birds and flowers. Her technique shares sensibilities with Chinese bird-and-flower painting, where subjects can be compared to almost all thoughts and feelings of a person. They can symbolize feminine beauty, virtues, and omens. Inspired by mythological themes, Foley also adds symbolic meaning to her pieces. In her painting of a kingfisher, for instance, she portrays a father kingfisher who stole a flaming arrow from the gods. Viewers can read more about the stories behind her works at her blog.
Squarespace is a website publishing platform that makes it easy to create beautiful websites, portfolios, blogs, and online stores without touching a line of code. With easy templates and tools, artist’s can make organized, easy to read and simple to update portfolio sites for art lovers to view all your work in one place. Set up a free trial here and use code HIFRUCTOSE for 10% off your purchase!
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Tokuhiro Kawai is known for paintings that both recall and satirize scenes from mythology. Yet, as his statement with Gallery Gyokuei reminds us, “The history of pictorial expression is history of reproduction.” In recent years, Kawai has specifically garnered popularity for the motif of felines donned in the garb of royalty.
