Category Archives: Crochet

Jonas Wood

September 1, 2017 12:03 AM \

Admiring the bold graphic paintings of Los Angeles-based artist, Jonas Wood. Wood cites as his inspiration artists from David Hockney to Alex Katz and Lucien Freud. While distinctly contemporary, Wood pays direct homage to artists from Matisse to Picasso in his compositions. On an interview with UCLA blog Hammer he shares some insights into his work:

“I first started painting plants after grad school as a means to paint from life. When I moved to LA I was really taken with the plant life (succulents mostly) and started painting plants more and more.”

“I make paintings from drawings. I make collages and make paintings and drawings from them. Making studies gives me a blue print for how I want to make a painting. With these new plants, most were made from drawings. I made hundreds of drawings of these new plants. In those drawings I was working out the kinks and trying to locate what felt right. I made some paintings of these new plants that were terrible. I cut them up and glued pieces to new canvases and made new configurations. Then I made paintings of these collages. “

“Color is something that I am really into. I guess everyone is into color in some way. Color is a balancing act. I see these new plant paintings as just an exercise in shape and color balance. Using local color is just a tool like perspective. You can see it and maybe you can use it to your advantage in some way, but it actually is pretty boring. When color challenges you, and tells you a plant is blue not green, then maybe color can ask you new questions about what you are seeing.”

You can view more of his work on Google images, David Kordansky Gallery and Anton Kern Gallery.

Images: Courtesy of Jonas Wood.

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Michelle Robinson

July 7, 2017 12:03 AM \

Found ourselves a great weekend project courtesy of Michelle Robinson, who has posted the free pattern and instructions. Melbourne-based artisan Michelle Robinson is the creator/author of Poppy and Bliss, a blog that focuses on modern, vibrant and quirky crochet patterns. She has written a complete guide to modern Tunisian crochet stitches and techniques which is available here on Amazon. You can find additional equally awesome patterns and tutorials when you visit her blog.  She can also be found on Instagram and on Etsy.

Images: Courtesy of Michelle Robinson.

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Posted in: Crochet, Etsy Find, Handcrafted

Raimonds Staprans

July 5, 2017 12:03 AM \

Artist and playwright Raimonds Staprans was born in 1926 in Riga, Latvia. The painter is known for his depictions of fruit, chairs and architecture using flat planes of color to create form and light. In his own words he says this about his work:

“I am an abstract painter whose objects are really recognizable and sometimes quite realistic, but one has to really realize that they are all, everything, even if the object in the paintng looks quite realistic, they are really constructed from the ground up in absolutely abstract terms. But when you really look at it closely, even if I paint the glass, there is very little truth in it . It looks realistic, but when you compare it to the real thing, it really isn’t t here. It’s like the reflections on such, the shadows are quite different, so it’s an illusion. It’s an illusion. But the paintings themselves are quite abstract, and that’s why I really take a joy in it .”

You can learn more about the artist here on an interview with Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

Images: Courtesy of Raimonds Staprans and Google Images.

Posted in: Crochet
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