Kara Walker

 Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions. Her works often address such highly charged themes as power, repression, history, race, and sexuality. Born in Stockton, California, Walker moved to the South at age 13 when her father, artist Larry Walker, accepted a position at Georgia State University and her family relocated to Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta. Focusing on painting and printmaking in college, she received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Walker was included in the 1997 Biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Later that year, at the age of 27,

she became the youngest recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant, which launched a public controversy around her work. In 2002 she was chosen to represent the United States in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in the collections of major museums worldwide. The 2007 Walker Art Center–organized exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love is the artist's first full-scale U.S. museum survey. Walker currently lives in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University.

Si Scott

Si Scott

He is a graphic designer from the Uk who is originally from Leeds but has moved around the country quite a bit, left school at 16 and went to Leeds College Of Art & Design Where he is now a part time lecturer , to study a BTEC in Graphic Design and then a foundation in Visual Communication, before going to Buckinghamshire Chilterns University to study a degree in Graphic Design. Upon completion he stayed in London for another 2 or 3 years and worked for a number of different small design agencies whilst continuing with my own work and freelance projects on the side.

Si Scott is the master of gorgeous, swirly, insanely intricate typography. And, unbelievably enough, it’s all drawn by hand with fine liners. Si has taken his whorls and flourishes and made them into a series of striking sea creatures for his Infectious art. “I imagine them bubbling across your laptop and walls and down the side of a car, like a moving aquarium”"I always start by picking a font I feel fits the brief or works with what I am trying to achieve the piece and then will play around with different page layouts for a while. The next pahse is to just bring the piece to life using fineliners to create the illustration. I always work bigger than the finsihed piece is going to be and scan the illustrations at 1000dpi at 125% so when it is decreased to the actual size it’s very crsip an clean". He says.

Most of his inspiration comes from music  

www.siscottdesign.com
www.wearebitch.com

Richard Hamilton.

Richard Hamilton

Hamilton was born in the Pimlico, London. Despite having left school with no formal qualifications, he managed to gain employment as an apprentice working at an electrical components firm, where he discovered ability for draughtsman ship and began to do painting at evening classes at St Martin's School of Art. This led to his entry into the Royal Academy Schools.

After spending the war working as a technical draftsman, he re-enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools but was later expelled on grounds of "not profiting from the instruction", loss of his student status forcing Hamilton to carry out National Service. After two years at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, Hamilton began exhibiting his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) where he also produced posters and leaflets and teaching at the Central School of Art and Design.

He was often described as the founder of pop art; this was because, although he was the creator of iconic “Pop” images, and was the first artist to use the word in a painting, Hamilton exhibited a versatility which resisted easy definition.

“My ambition was to be multi-allusive,” he once observed. “I wanted to get all of living into my work.” He articulated this inclusiveness in a famous letter he wrote in 1957, to the architects Peter and Alison Smithson that became not only the definitive description of Pop Art, but also a charter for contemporary culture.

Hamilton had always been politically engaged, vociferously supporting the CND. In the 1980s he began a “Northern Ireland” trilogy: The Citizen (1981-83) depicted a “dirty protest” prisoner in the Maze; The Subject (1988-89), a self-righteous Orangeman; and the State (1993), a British soldier on patrol. Inevitably such politicized subject matter attracted criticism, though many considered the works merely naive oversimplifications. (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk)I like his style because it is unique to me as an individual.

Street art

STREET ART

ROA

Roa, a hugely talented Belgian street artist from Ghent, is renowned for his giant black and white animal street art. Roa started off in the street art scene painting animals on abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial areas of his hometown. Today, Roa’s animals may be found slumbering on the sides of semi derelict buildings and on shop shutters in city streets wall across the world from New York to Berlin and Warsaw to Paris and London.

During my trip to east London I saw loads of pieces by Roa , This piece of a bird really stood out to me as he has used stokes to illustrate the feathers , However still making it appear more realistic

In the photograph below Roa has done a design of a pig resting it was done in london below the glass of a tattoo shop . This is a very intresting piece because of the type of animal he has chosen , ‘A Pig’ is a farm animal and not domesticated so it was very perculiar to see one just on the wall.

STINKFISH

Stink fish is an artist from Columbia, he Started graffiti as a teenager and Works with spray paint and on paper, also uses stencils.Works from photos of people he has taken on the street who look interesting or photos he has found like the photo on the left .

This picture caught my eye from the very minute I looked at it. I think the use of many bright colours is meant to have that effect of passer-by’s also the simplicity of the face of the lady also brings out the colours used , it’s important that the colours used don’t clash and Stinkfish has made that of important in this piece.

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Michael Craig- Martin

Michael Craig-Martin

Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin in 1941 and educated in the United States, studying fine art at Yale University. He returned to Europe in the mid-1960s, becoming one of the key figures in the first generation of British conceptual artists. He was a professor at Goldsmith's College from 1974-1988 and 1994-2000, where he remained a powerful influence on the upcoming British artists.

 His early work made reference to the American artists he most appreciated, such as Donald Judd, Jasper Johns and Robert Morris. Although he was particularly affected by Minimalism and used ordinary household materials in his sculptures. In the early 1970s, he exhibited his now important piece An Oak Tree, consisting of a glass of water standing on a shelf attached to the gallery wall. In the accompanying text, he asked himself questions to assert that the glass was in fact an oak tree. Craig-Martin continued working in various forms, always maintaining an elegant restraint and conceptual clarity. During the 1990s the focus of his work shifted decisively to painting, with the same range of boldly outlined motifs and luridly vivid colour schemes in unexpected combinations applied both to works on canvas, and to increasingly complex installations of wall paintings

 Michael Craig martins work makes me feel happy as he uses bright vibrant colours, it’s the kind of art work that you look at and will make you smile. The most fascinating thing about this is that the colours used complement each other a great deal and don’t clash.  After doing a collage and then tracing over I was able to achieve a similar style used by this artist in his work, I also used bright colours and tried not to make them contrast. Studying his work I would like to be able to learn how to choose colours I use carefully to ensure one colour does not dominate the whole painting and be able to balance it properly.

Michael Craig martin quotes  “In the late 70's I started to make drawings of the ordinary objects I had been using in my work. Initially I wanted them to be ready-made drawings of the kind of common objects I had always used in my work. I was surprised to discover I couldn't find the simple, neutral drawings I had assumed existed, so I started to make them myself. I deliberately avoided any personal or expressive character in them (un-inflected line, drawing with tape, etc) - I wanted them to be as impersonal and 'styleless' as possible. Ironically, over the years the character of my drawings has gradually come to be seen as my 'style'.”