Mundane Made Magnificent: Michael Ward Paints The Mystery Of The Ordinary.

A self-taught artist, Michael Ward captures what British-born philosopher Alan Watts called "the mystery of the ordinary" in his acrylic paintings of things we often overlook in our daily lives. Based on photographic images, his neo-realistic interpretations of unspectacular environments and people in the world around us are composed and rendered in such a way as to bring out the beauty in what one might have previously considered mundane, if not ugly.

Here are several of his paintings:





















Biography (courtesy of the artist):
I began my artistic career doing pen and ink renderings of historical architecture. I began painting in 1980, first in gouache, then in acrylics. Artists whose work I admire and draw inspiration from include Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Richard Estes and Vermeer. I am most interested in depicting what Alan Watts called the mystery of the ordinary; the workaday world we live in without seeing until we are forced to focus upon it, as in a painting.

Nearly all my paintings are based on photographs I have taken, primarily of Southern California scenes, over the years. Though it was never my intention to depict nostalgic scenes, many of the images I have painted have disappeared or been radically altered in the ever-changing landscape that is Southern California. Thus nostalgia is thrust upon the works. But what I am really after is bearing witness, and making people stop what they're doing and pay attention, to something they may have never seen before, but that makes them feel “I know this.”

I am currently working on a series of house paintings. These simple, ordinary, unnoticed places have hidden interior lives, though they do not reveal them to us. The houses are from a variety of locations in the United States and Mexico. They are the place you grew up in, a place of nurture, experience, trial, memory and forgetting. They are all a common size, to symbolize our shared experience of being human.

Phyllis Lutjeans, Museum Educator and former curator, has said of my work: “Although Michael Ward may be called a neo-realist painter his work can ultimately be described as abstract realism. The picture image is photographically realistic, but within the context of the painting his compositions are complex and almost abstract. Deciphering the work section by section one sees how a multitiude of individual complete compositions are put together to form the entire work. For me the viewer is confronted by a realistic image that puzzles us and clearly tells the story simultaneously.”

As a painter, I am self-taught.

Michael Ward Art and Design


A book of his works is available here on Blurb

See his paintings at Pasadena's Tirage Gallery

Other galleries that represent Michael Ward:

Mesa Art
789 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949.548.3570

Studio Gallery
18001 Skypark Circle, Suite R, Irvine, CA
949.851.9181

Contact the artist directly here.

New Body Art From Emma Hack. Beautiful Women And A Look At Painting Them.

Body painter Emma Hack recently completed and launched a new series called "Beautiful Women." The "Housewife" and The "Oriental" were both created as a live installation in her Pop-Up Gallery in Adelaide.

"The Housewife" series has been inspired by the stereotypical American housewife depicted in many films of the 50's: her facade is polished and beautiful but, there is a hidden sadness to her posture and a yearning for a life of freedom and happiness.

"The Oriental" series clearly references the work of Vladimir Tretchikoff, in particular his “Chinese Girl” (1953). However in the hands of Hack, the subjects exude an inner strength, through their posture and demeanor. Again, the insertion of birds has been utilized to reference a yearning for freedom.


above: Vladimir Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl served as the inspiration for Emma's Oriental

She painted two canvas backgrounds and two models for these new works and debuted them at her Collectors Dinner last month. As is the case with all her work, Emma paints both the backgrounds and the clothes you see on the models' naked bodies.

The Housewife (3 versions):




The Oriental (4 versions):





Here's a look at the works in progress.

The backdrop for "Housewife" in progress:

The final backdrop for  "Housewife":

Detail:


Painting the "Housewife":





The backdrop for "Oriental" in progress:

The final backdrop for "Oriental":

Detail:


Painting the "Oriental":




The Catherine Asquith Gallery in Melbourne will be showing her Beautiful Women series in from July 9th through July 27th.


all images courtesy of the artist

Don't forget to see these great works by Emma:
•Taking Body Art To A New Level
• Car Wreck Made of 17 Painted Bodies
• POP Art Series


Emma Hack

Paintings Of Mom by 33 Famous Artists For Mother's Day.

In honor of Mother's Day, I wanted to re-run one of my favorite original posts. "Famous Artists Paint Their Mothers" are thirty-three portraits of the female forebearers of various respected and well-known painters. The portraits range from the 15th century to the present* - excluding paintings of The Madonna, arguably the most famous of all mothers.

Most artists, at one time or another, have painted a portrait of the woman from whose womb they sprang. Some are flattering, some are not and others are very personal or intimate -- yet all are an homage to the parent whose role we celebrate today, Sunday, May 13th.

There are so many, I'd originally broken this up into two posts, but today I am featuring all of them in one post - paintings of artists' mothers prior to the 20th century by the likes of Whistler, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Picasso as well as more recent homages to Mom by such artists as Rockwell, Wood, Hopper, Dali, Hockney, and Warhol.

A good place to start would be with the world's most well-known "Mother" artwork, that of by James McNeill Whistler, painted in 1871:

above: James McNeill Whistler, Whistler's Mother 1871, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The following portraits are presented in chronological order from the earliest to the most recent. While it's true that many of these artists painted multiple sittings of their mothers (e.g. Lautrec, Cassat, and Cezanne), I chose to share those I found to be the most compelling.

Albrecht Durer, portrait of Barbara Durere, the artist's mother, 1490:

Guido Reni, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1612:

Rembrandt, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1630:

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait (sketch) of Lucy Lawrence, the Artist's mother, 1797:

Alfred Rethel, portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1836:

Camille Corot, Madame Corot, the Artist's Mother, Born Marie-Francoise Oberson, 1838:

Pierre Renoir, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1860:

Paul Cezanne, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1866-67:

Mary Cassat, the Artist's Mother reading Le Figaro, 1878:

Edouard Manet, Mother in the garden at Bellevue, 1880:
Georges Seurat, Aquatint of the artist's mother, 1883:

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Countess Adele Zoe de Toulouse Lautrec, The Artist's Mother, 1883:

Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, October, 1888:

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Aline Gauguin, 1890:

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1896:

Edvard Much, The Dead Mother (the artist's mother died when he was five from tuberculosis), 1899:

Franz Marc, portrait of his mother, 1902:

Georgio di Chirico, portrait of the artist's mother, 1911:

Egon Shiele, Mother Sleeping, 1911:

Juan Gris, portrait of the artist's mother, 1912:

Edward Hopper, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, the artist's mother, 1916:

Salvador Dali, portrait of the artist's mother, 1920:

Norman Rockwell's Mother Tucking Children Into Bed (for which his mother Irene was the model), 1921:

Grant Wood, Woman With Plants (his mother), 1929:

Arshile Gorky, portrait of the artist's mother, 1936:

William H. Johnson, Mom Alice, 1944:

Alice Neel, My Mother, 1952:

Lucian Freud, The Painter's Mother, 1973:

Andy Warhol, silkscreen of his mother, Julia Warhola, 1974 :

David Hockney, Mum, 1985:

Daphne Todd, Last Portrait Of Mother, 2009:

David Kassan, portrait of the artist's mother, 2010:


*You will note there are very few, if any, portraits artist's mothers in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries because so much art at that time was dominated by religious paintings and portraits commissioned by the wealthy.

Happy Mother's Day!