Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Josie Morway’s oil paintings are striking representations of the natural world, typically adorned with some combination of wild animals, symbols, text, or abstractions. With her bold subjects and engrossing lighting, she offers reflections on beauty, the universal language of flora and fauna, and messages that are less clear upon first inspection.
Of all the creatures on the planet, perhaps no other has inspired us quite like birds; they are strong, light, beautiful, and have the freedom to go anywhere they want to go. Birds have long inspired artist Tom Hill's mixed media sculptures made of carved wood, forged copper, and steel. The birds that he builds are characterizations of real species like owls and and black birds, capturing their natural personalities in a playful, even cartoonish way. He gives them big, rounded and expressive eyes, delicate feathers spun out of hardy wires, and long, spindly legs. "I tend to think of all my pieces as character studies. Spend a few seconds observing a bird; the turn of the head, the flash of an eye, puffed up feathers; each gesture conveys a wealth of visual material for the artist as we see the bird consider and interact intelligently with the world around it," he says.
South Korean, New York-based artist Ran Hwang uses buttons from the fashion industry to create large-scale, often immersive installations. The artist describes her process of hammering thousands of pins into a wall akin to a monk meditating. Both practices rely on repetition and result in something mystical.