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September 3, 2015
Caro

Brad Woodfin and Claire Johnson Portray Natural Beauty in New Works

Claire Johnson

Seattle based artist Claire Johnson and Canadian artist Brad Woodfin each portray their own take on natural beauty with realistic detail. While Johnson overpowers her canvases with largescale aerial landscapes, Woodfin’s animal subjects are mysteriously bereft of their environment. Opening tonight, the two artists will debut their new works together at Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle. Brad Woodfin thinks of his oil paintings as metaphors. His art expands on the belief that everything in life is always shrinking or growing. As an artist who shares qualities with Dutch master painting, it might surprise some to know that he is inspired by the likes of Abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Rothko’s influence can be found in Woodfin’s minimal compositions, where animals seem to appear out of black voids. His new paintings portray animals like nautiliuses and colorful birds that rise from darkness before shrinking back into it.

Brad Woodfin

For her exhibition, “Drift”, Claire Johnson also points to aspects of nature that may not seem obvious to us at first. Using a combination of oil and watercolor, she elaborates on formations like Mount Hood in Oregon and the low foothills of the Rockies. Her meticulously detailed paintings are linked together by their natural crevices and rugged terrain. This linkage is inspired by a branching phenomenon that takes place in nature, as in the branching of trees and blood vessels in our bodies. While her snow-drift filled mountainscapes may feel far away and somehow otherworldly, to Johnson, we are closely connected to them.

New works by Brad Woodfin and Claire Johnson are currently on view at Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle through September 26th.

Brad Woodfin:

Claire Johnson:

Topics

Brad Woodfin, Claire Johnson, hyperrealism, Landscape Painting, Mark Rothko

hyperrealism, Patricia Piccinini, sculpture

September 3, 2019

With Patricia Piccinini’s current exhibition at Arken Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the sculptor’s hyperrealistic creations carry a surprising intimacy. Running through Sept. 8, "A World of Love" offers figures and forms across several years from the artist. She was last featured on our website here. (Museum photographs by David Stjernholm.)

Daniel Rich’s Meticulous Paintings of Cities without People

architecture, Daniel Rich, Landscape Painting

November 5, 2015

Originally hailing from Germany, New York based artist Daniel Rich creates meticulous acrylic paintings of an empty, man-made world. Although completely devoid of human presence, his paintings are not without character. Rich chooses to celebrate the rich vibrancy and design of architectural structures, which appear smooth, intricate and appealing. The absence of people also brings out an eerie quiet and calm to what should be bustling urban cities. They are failed utopias- Rich's ideas about what the future of human civilization could look like.

The Vulnerable Oil Paintings of Aleah Chapin

Aleah Chapin, hyperrealism, painting

March 16, 2018

Aleah Chapin’s vulnerable figures exist within a spectrum of emotions: joy, contemplating, stoicism. Yet, in each, the painter has the ability to tie our natural states to nature itself, often crafting lush environments for her subjects. The artist is particularly influenced by the region she inhabited in her youth.

Escape Artist: Joshua Suda’s Subjects Break Through the Surface

hyperrealism, Joshua Suda, painting, Portraiture

July 16, 2014

The hyper-realistic oil paintings of Joshua Suda will make you question whether you’re looking at a painting or a photograph as he recreates the features of the human face with stunning accuracy. Going beyond replicating life, many of Suda’s pieces also have elements of surrealism. Bizarre compositions, mixed with Suda’s impressive attention to detail, result in uncanny contortions of the human face. He often breaks the fourth wall, playing with the foreground and background to make it appear that the subject is bursting through the surface of the piece. In other works, he paints to mimic other media, replicating the detail of everything from pencil drawings to old photographs and contrasting them with how the subjects might appear to the human eye.

Brad Woodfin and Claire Johnson Portray Natural Beauty in New Works

Patricia Piccinini’s Sculptures Featured in Denmark Exhibition

Daniel Rich’s Meticulous Paintings of Cities without People

The Vulnerable Oil Paintings of Aleah Chapin

Escape Artist: Joshua Suda’s Subjects Break Through the Surface

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