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It’s been a pleasure learning more about contemporary painter Amy Sherald over the past two months. Most famous for her oil painting of former first lady Michelle Obama, Sherald is generally known for her paintings of black subjects, often wearing vivid clothing and set against colorful backgrounds. While their bodies often appear black-and-white, the vibrant surrounding color palettes in Sherald’s paintings enhance their unique features through these striking contrasts. I also admire her for righteously speaking out against injustice; for context, Sherald had cancelled her 2025 exhibition at the Smithsonian because of their immoral censorship surrounding her painting Trans Forming Liberty, featuring a black trangender woman. By consciously using her platform to confront this powerful institution, Sherald unconditionally stands by her beliefs in representing those who have been (and still are) historically oppressed.

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Learn about painter Amy Sherald and how she sees art as a tool to talk about social justice.

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I just found this work this morning by chance so I don't have much to say and haven't spent much time sitting with it yet, but I was so struck by it when I saw it. I find it really compelling in both content and process. All of her work says it's made with oil and acrylic which is surprising to me and I'm really intrigued because I can't tell how she's painted or where she used which. It bothers me because it's usually really easy for me to decipher how artists have painted their work and how they used each medium. I'm interested to spend more time studying it because it seems like maybe a something that could translate to my work and that I could begin to incorporate in ways that might make my work stronger.

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Bitter Winds III, 24x20″, oil and acrylic on canvas

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Yakuza: Like A Dragon is, to me, a solid contender for best RPG of all time. The 8th mainline game in the Like A Dragon franchise, this game marked a new era of the series in a new genre with a new main protagonist. This game follows the story of Ichiban Kasuga, who starts out as a low-ranking yakuza until he takes the fall for a murder and is imprisoned for 18 years. Upon his release, he finds the family he worked for completely different and is shot by his former patriarch. He wakes up in a homeless camp in a whole other city, having been saved by the people living there, and starts his journey to uncover the endless mysteries surrounding him.

The gameplay is incredibly fun as it features the best mechanic in any RPG: action commands. Nothing breaks up the potential monotony of basic RPG combat better than letting me push more buttons. It also wouldn't be a Like A Dragon game without an absurd amount of minigames and side quests to do around town.

The story and setting is also immaculate. I consider it the premier example of the urban RPG, an idea originated by EarthBound. Like A Dragon is fantastic at highlighting certain "unseemly" groups in society (criminals, sex workers, homeless people), but usually not caricaturizing them. Often it will initially present them in very archetypical ways before going deeper and discussing the real circumstances that put them in that position. Ichiban himself I will put on a pedestal as the best protagonist ever written. His somewhat convoluted backstory is perfectly tied into his personality, worldview, and role in the story, and he's simply a joy to watch.

All in all Yakuza: Like A Dragon is a masterpiece of a game. I recently replayed it just to write a paper about it's main villain, and I'm glad I get to keep talking about it for a grade.

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Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is hands down my favorite book of all time. The world and character building is my favorite part of the book as I believe it is art within itself. I may or may not own 5 editions of this book as each one has different special parts to it. The book in the image is the first edition first print. The way it looks really unlocked something in the book community. Authors saw how the sprayed edges created a huge uproar in sales for this book. Now if you go to a book store and head to basically any section a lot of the newer books will have sprayed edges. I found this super interesting as someone in the book community who saw this sprayed edge phenomenon flourish.

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I am changing it up this time to talk about my favorite singer. Hozier is a singer from Ireland who makes songs in the Folk genre. I listen to his music a lot while I work on my art or just driving around. I saw him live in 2024 and it genuinely changed my life. Hearing the music that I work to live is extremely surreal to experience. His songs have a lot of meaning to them and I recommend anyone to delve a little deeper in his music than his most famous songs.

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Big Swiss is the book that really inspired me to keep reading and engaging with fiction that informs my practice. I'm embarrassed to say that that idea had somehow never occurred to me before, but something just clicked for me when I read this book. It's very frank and unromantic but also delightful and maybe the only book I've ever read that actually made me genuinely laugh. I think about everything that happens in this book and all the little metaphors and descriptions all the time. It helped me inform content and how to control how I convey and communicate through my paintings more effectively. I also think it has helped me understand how to communicate through my paintings in a simultaneously direct and indirect way so that their are visual layers and layers of meaning and themes in my work rather than letting the work fall shallow and one-note.

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Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch …

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Based in Boston, New York, and Lebanon, Rania Matar has photographed hundreds of portraits of women and girls over the course of several years. I even had the honor of modeling for one of her photography projects two years ago along with Julia (my twin sister). Matar’s intimate portraits of her subjects reflect her Palestinian and Lebanese “background, cross-cultural experience” between West Asia and the United States, and her “personal narrative.” Moreover, the Guggenheim 2018 fellow working between two continents further enables her “effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality, all within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences.” Looking at Matar’s photographs, up close and personal, simultaneously evokes sensations of serenity and rapport between viewer and subject.

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Portfolios of US & Middle East Fine Art Photography by Rania Matar

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Portfolios of Rania Matar's photography work - her portfolios explore issues of identity, focusing on women in the US and Middle East.

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Alphonse Maria Mucha was a painter and illustrator known for his work in the Art Nouveau movement. His posters, paintings, and advertisements have a graphical and streamlined style, but are still ornate and beautifully detailed. I've been interested in Art Nouveau recently, particularly because it feels timeless in a way. Mucha's work is quite modern-looking for its time, and to a layman I think it would be difficult to pinpoint when he lived and worked.

The dynamic, graphical and colorful nature of Mucha's work reminds me of the "vectorflourish" style of graphics that were popular in the late 2000's. DIY web design is something that also inspires me, even and especially when it's a little silly or tacky. Mucha's work, however, uses flourishes like that in a way that's neither silly nor tacky, but tasteful and elegant.

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Van Gogh, my goat, is an amazing artist that I look up to. he was a Dutch post-impressionist painter known for his use of bold colors, brushwork, and contoured form. I really love his style of work and the use of his colors; it shows how you can use a simple color palette and still be able to produce a lot of different colors and forms out of it. He inspires me to use more color in my work, which is something I struggle with a lot.

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Laufey is one of my favorite artists and I think is close to being my most listened artist. Listening to her music often gets me into a workflow and into a good mood. Not only are her songs beautiful to listen to, but the merge of classical and jazz in her songs is inspirational. I also find her dedication and drive for music very motivational. Her deep passion for her art is something I yearn for. As most artists do, Laufey writes songs about her thoughts and feelings and I find them very relatable.

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Renowned for her breathtaking abstract expressionist paintings of flowers, landscapes, and the American Southwest, I consider Georgia O’Keefe one of the greatest modern artists of the past century. I had the honor of visiting her exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts last fall, never wanting to leave as I peered at many of her gorgeous paintings. Some of them, such as Grey Lines with Black, Blue, and Yellow and Black Iris strongly resemble female genitalia, but, as they were painted under the female gaze, I don’t find them at all provocative. As O’ Keefe quoted herself, “they’re really talking about their own affairs (referring to assumptions about such works of hers). After all, the objective of O’Keefe’s artwork was to allow viewers to see the beauty of nature up close, in all their unique, organic forms. O’Keefe’s striking animal skull paintings deserve equal appreciation as well, as a majority of them appear to gaze at the viewers, thus giving them, in a sense, a new life.

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One of the first female painters to achieve worldwide acclaim from critics and the general public, Georgia O'Keeffe was an American painter who created innovative impressionist images that challenged perceptions and evolved constantly throughout her career.

After studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago she attended the Art Students League in New York, studying under William Merritt Chase. Though she impressed the league with her oil painting "Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot," she lacked self-confidence and decided to pursue a career as a commercial artist and later as a teacher and then head of the art department at West Texas A&M University. At that time she became acquainted with a landscape that would become iconic within her work, the Palo Duro Canyon.

O'Keeffe did not stop producing charcoal drawings and watercolors during her hiatus, some of which were seen by Alfred Stieglitz, her future husband. Stieglitz was a successful photographer and modern art promoter who owned the 291 Gallery in New York City. He was struck by the sincerity within her work and organized her first solo show in 2017, composed of oil paintings and watercolors completed in Texas.

After their marriage, O'Keeffe became part of an inner circle of American modernist painters who frequently showed in Stieglitz's gallery. Many of the works produced by Georgia O'Keeffe during the 1920s and 1930s hover enticingly on the margins between figuration and abstraction. The notion that car could be entirely non-representational, or abstract, was widely explored in the decade from 1910, particularly in the works of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky and the Dutchman Piet Mondrian. O'Keeffe's works shifted towards oil paintings which appeared to be magnified natural forms. In 1925, her first large-scale flower painting was exhibited in New York City. Petunia marked the beginning of a period of exploration on the flower theme that would continue throughout her career. By magnifying her subject, she emphasized shape and color and brought attention to the tiny details within the flower.

During her life, the flower is a motif that Georgia O'Keeffe always returns to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes - Van Gogh his Sunflowers, Monet his Water Lilies, and Rembrandt his self portrait. O'Keeffe's painting's subjects caught the attention of collectors and critics who responded with alacrity. Their discussion of the O'Keeffe's works were often colored by the popularized tenets of Sigmund Freud, which by the 1920s were widespread in America. In a cultural atmosphere initially titillated and gradually transformed by his theories, art and its critical reception - like many other aspects of modern life - where invariably, and indelibly colored by Freudian consideration. Many claims that the images which Georgia O'Keeffe created when painting flowers, was work which was highly sexual, and many went as far as to say it was an erotic art form; but O'Keeffe rejected that theory consistently. In an attempt to move the attention of her critics away from their Freudian interpretations of her work, she began to paint in a more representational style.

In her series on New York, O'Keeffe excelled in painting architectural structures as highly realistic and expertly employed the style of Precisionism within her work. "Radiator Building-Night, New York" from 1927 can also be interpreted as a double portrait of Steiglitz and O'Keeffe. Object portraiture of this kind was popular amongst the Steiglitz circle at the time and greatly influenced by the poetry of Gertrude Stein.

In 1929, seeking solitude and an escape from a crowd that perhaps felt artistically and socially oppressive, O'Keeffe traveled to New Mexico and began an inspirational love affair with the visual scenery of the state. For 20 years she spent part of every year working in New Mexico, becoming increasingly interested in the forms of animal skulls and the southwest landscapes.

While her popularity continued to grow, O'Keeffe increasingly sought solace in New Mexico. Her painting Ram's Head with Hollyhock encapsulates so much novelty while still maintaining with her classic aesthetic of magnifying and showing the beauty in small, natural details. While her interest in the southwest increased, so did the value of her paintings in the New York galleries.

She was featured in two one-woman retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in the 40's, becoming the first woman to ever have a retrospective at the latter. She developed an obsessive interest in formations of rock near her home in New Mexico and spent hours painting in the sun and wind.

In 1946 O'Keeffe's husband Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis and she moved back to New York for three years after his death to settle his estate before permanently settling in New Mexico. With the loss of Stieglitz came the lessening of her public exposure. O'Keeffe became once again interested in architectural forms, this time focusing on details like her patio wall and door. Her 1958 painting Ladder to the Moon marked yet another shift in her work which many interpreted as a self-portrait that depicted the transitory nature of her life. Others viewed it as a religious statement that showed a link between the earth and cosmic forces above it.

Adding onto a history of abstraction, in the early 1960s O'Keeffe painted an extensive collection of aerial cloudscapes inspired from her view from the windows of airplanes. In 1970 the Whitney Museum of American Art began the first retrospective career of her work in New York since 1946 which greatly revived her career.

Though her eyesight became compromised in the 1970s, she continued working in pencil and charcoal until 1984 and also produced clay pots and a watercolor series. In 1986 she died at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico and requested her ashes be scattered over the top of Pedernal Mountain.

While her work varied between the literal portraits, abstractions and landscapes, O'Keeffe's work is still most identified by her iconic flower paintings. In 2014 the Georgia O'Keefe Museum sold a floral painting for $44 million dollars at auction setting the record for artwork sold by a female artist. The piece, titled Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 was painted in 1932 and is an iconic representation of a large-scale flower.

Georgia O'Keeffe died in 1986, at the age of ninety-nine. In her lifetime, she received unprecedented critical acclaim. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and received the United States Medal of Freedom. In 1946, she was the first woman honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and, twenty-five years later, the Whitney Museum's retrospective of this "Mighty Mother's" work garnered her renewed critical acclaim and an ardent feminist following. Following her death, a large portion of her estate's assets was transferred to the Georgia O'Keefe Foundation. Later when this foundation dissolved the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Assets from her estate included an immense body of work and archived materials. Her home in New Mexico was designated a National Historic Landmark is also owned by the O'Keeffe museum.

Within her work and life, O'Keeffe was unapologetically true to her own vision. When she did attempt to supersede her intuition to complete hired work, she became troubled and always retreated back to what felt familiar and natural. She remains one of the most important and innovative artists of the twentieth century.

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Georgia O'Keeffe: 100 Famous Paintings Analysis, Biography & Quotes

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One of the first female painters to achieve worldwide acclaim from critics and the general public, Georgia O'Keeffe was an American painter who created innovative impressionist images that challenged perceptions and evolved constantly throughout her career. After studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago she attended the Art Students League in New York, studying under William Merritt Chase.

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I found Scott Sava on TikTok and have been following him for years. He is who inspired me to start experimenting with gauche. He shares not only the beauty of art, but also the difficulties that come with it. He is always positive (like a current day bob ross), but never hides the struggles he has as an artist. He shares him trying new mediums along with the mediums he is used to using while creating his art. I think he is a super cool artist and I am glad he shows his struggles with being an artist as that is not something a lot of artists show.

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I only just found Jennifer Packer's work like a week or two ago. It's a little hard to find images of her paintings online but I feel so connected to how she paints so I would argue it's worth a dig to see her work. I feel like we look similarly, as in the way that we observe the world. I think studying her work will really help me execute the painting I'm working on, especially looking at where she's carefully noting the details and intricacies of pattern or figure, where to let the drawing shine, and where it is effective to let the viewer complete the form or wonder what's there.

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Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded | Exhibitions | The Renaissance Society

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The Renaissance Society is a contemporary art museum free and open to the public.

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Araki created one of my favorite anime/manga of all time. I love his unconventional art style and the way he connects culture into his artwork. He is one of the only artists to collaborate with high-end brands.

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Eli Sef (he/she), known online as YOCHOLOL, was trained as a scientific illustrator but in recent years has turned his focus to making art about mysticism in nature. Her work is of interest to me not just because I like how it looks, but because I have a lot of things in common with her; I'm also inspired by medieval tapestries and folk art, I also have a love for the sciences and considered scientific illustration at one point, and I'm interested in the esoteric and spiritual and making art about it despite my interest in science. Seeing work that was also inspired by very old and classical mediums and stylistic conventions while being depicted in a very modern style is inspirational for me and makes me feel more like the type of art I want to make is not only possible but that there's also a place in the world for it.

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Steven Universe is one of my favorite childhood shows, however, the story isn’t my favorite part of it. Even the animation isn’t the best as they tend to warp the models.

My favorite part is the musical incorporation. The music and the songs have a special place in my heart and I can’t think of something that enacts the same feeling as it. Another part that I absolutely love is that each character has a different soundtrack to signify their personality: Pearl has a piano and I believe Amethyst has a bass, just to name a couple. Not to mention, the soundtracks for when the characters fuse combines the instruments. It’s very admirable how there was so much love and care for the music.

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Katie Miranda is a painter, jewelry maker, cartoonist, and activist based in Oregon, United States. Her work focuses on the ongoing Palestinian struggle and Palestinian culture in addition to Arabic calligraphy. In 2007, Miranda founded Art Under Apartheid, “a program that taught art, English,and yoga to underserved children in Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood and Balata refugee camp in Nablus.” Although Miranda is not Palestinian herself, I deeply appreciate her authentic depictions of Palestinian subject matter resulting from her own experience witnessing the decades long occupation of Palestine. As an artist myself who is passionate about the same cause, I find myself consistently looking to fellow creators like Miranda for inspiration to create art as a vehicle for change. By bringing awareness to the world’s past and present problems (such as the aforementioned occupation), such art can initiate important questions and conversations among viewers.

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In a world where people are divided by technology and war, we're losing our connection to one another and nature. My art is a call to reconnect with loved ones, the earth, and the sanctity of life itself.

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Valley of the Shadow of Death by Rodger Fenton

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Rodger Fenton was a photographer during the Crimean war. I would not say I am a huge fan of him and his work but I do find it interesting. Fenton was a photographer who used objects to create a more interesting narrative in is photos. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is a photograph that Fenton created in 1855. He added the canon balls to the road to create a more interesting story. He is a prime example of how photography is not always the solid truth and that is why I like bringing up his work.

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I have a hard time finding artists organically. Usually, the best way to find other illustrators is through Instagram and other social media.

This is an artist I found on Instagram, and I just enjoy the style, use of color, and rich environmental details.

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I love to listen to audiobooks as I work. For my next senior studio project, I actually plan to use my interest in memoirs to illustrate a series of book covers.

Recently, I have started a story called Where There Is Evil by Sandra Brown, and the macabre and raw tale I think overall influences my outlook on the world and furthers my own literary knowledge.

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Hirohiko Araki is the famous creator of manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Amongst every series I've engaged with, I have the most complex thoughts on JoJo. As a whole, I would not call it "good," but I would call it extremely interesting. Similarly, I'd say Araki as a writer falls short in many areas, but it's so interesting to analyze his methods and the way he thinks.

If unaware, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is an anthology series following the bloodline of Johnathan Joestar as they grapple with Dio Brando and the consequences of his vampiric shenanigans. Each arc or "part" takes place in a different time period, often with an entirely new cast of characters. While it does maintain an over-arcing story, each part is largely self-contained. Couple that with it initially being on a weekly release schedule, and you'll find that behind the initial shock value hooks and badass climaxes, the characters can be surprisingly flat and spends a bit too long just being... gross. Not the body horror gross, the obnoxiously sexual gross.

This series has run for almost 40 years now. While Araki briefly tried to end the series after part 6, he seems to have become exceedingly attached to this series. In an interview in 2022, Araki said, "If JoJo ends up being the only notable series I work on, I'm okay with that. You know how there are pottery makers who still work even after turning 90? That's something I admire. I'd like to keep writing JoJo forever." I think to Araki, JoJo is his little writer's playground where he can make whatever he fancies at the time. I may question his process at times, but I respect his dedication to his craft. Part 4 is the best one btw.

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I've been aware of Jenny Saville's work for a long time but I've somehow never seen her current work. People only ever talk about her 90's earlier work like Fulcrum but I'm fully obsessed with her current work, this is actually my favorite era of hers (though she's never had a bad one). I love how it feels like she's stepped back and seems to be really exploring just paint and the act of painting rather than using paint as a means of exploring something else, typically flesh and the human body. This painting struck me in particular. it's called Song of Songs which speaks to me in the biblical reference I think she's making as that book of the Bible is so strangely sexual and I've spent a lot of time contemplating that specific book.

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Learn about the work and career of artist Jenny Saville. Artworks, biography, exhibitions, editorial content, news, museum exhibitions, press, and more.

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BOKURA is a two-player co-op game where you relive the childhood memories of two boys. It’s a puzzle game where each player sees two separate worlds: a world of robots and a world of animals. Although most of the story is very linear, there are choices throughout the game that affect the ending of the story.

What I specifically liked about the game was the quality of the story and how much depth was added to it, even though its core is just a puzzle co-op game.

The main story is about the two children’s weird dynamic with their town and their own parents, but also touches on exceeding past the expectations placed onto them by others. The game also expresses nostalgia through the contrast from their life in the past and present.

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Recently featured in this year’s New York Fashion Week, Nicoletta Lyons’ chic, edgy  designs are significantly influenced by Japanese and Korean streetwear. Starting out as a costume designer, she then designed her own modern jewelry and handbags after studying Jewelry/Metals at the Museum School of Art in Boston. Nicoletta is also a freelance photo stylist based in Boston and New York. I was fortunate to meet Nicoletta through my twin sister, Julia (who modeled for her clothing line) at her boutique, Lola's, last spring. Once I stepped inside, I couldn’t help but gaze at all of her handmade clothing (which I like to describe as an idiosyncratic yet tasteful blend of contemporary and regenerated vintage pieces), jewelry and accessories. As Nicoletta puts it, she is “inspired by the urban landscape, graffiti, and classic vintage patterns and designs.” Nicoletta’s alternative fashion has even been adorned by Erykah Badu in addition to appearing in Vogue Italia, Buzzfeed, and USA Today.

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In general I love this movie because it reminds me of my brother. When I was younger we used to watch 3 specific studio Ghibli movies together. This movie was the one that stuck with me the most.

Now that I am older I focus less on the story and more on the artwork that was used to create it. When I started to get into gauche painting, I learned that some of the backgrounds in the movies are gauche paintings. This movie brings me a lot of nostalgia and brings back happy memories from my childhood.

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Kamomoe Shirahama is a Japanese illustrator and mangaka. She is most well known for her ongoing manga series Witch Hat Atelier, but she has worked on cover art for DC and Marvel comics as well. The style of her manga is very elaborate, and is notably influenced by artists like Jean Giraud and Alfons Maria Mucha. Her use of cross-contour shading is reminiscent of Medieval etchings, and is one of the things that makes her art stand out. Shirahama is active on social media as well, often posting about her dogs, reposting fanart of her manga, and supporting the work of her colleagues in both the manga industry and all over the world.

The magical world of Witch Hat Atelier is radically inclusive and diverse compared to many famous anime and manga series, featuring a rich cast of characters from different ethnic backgrounds (not real countries, since the story doesn't take place in the real world), disabled characters, and queer themes. Shirahama's vocal support of the LGBT+ community as well as her thoughtful narratives on disability and accessibility make her work particularly beloved among readers.

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Raphael was another Italian Renaissance painter and architect. He is most known for his Madonnas. he was influenced by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci.

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Michelangelo is another Italian Renaissance sculptor. He was a painter, sculptor, and he made drawings, frescoes, and reliefs. He has too many recognizable pieces of art, like painting the Sistine Chapel, the Creation of Adam, and the Last Judgment.

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Another Italian artist in the Renaissance, he is the founder of modern sculpture for his realistic and emotional depictions. He was influenced by Michelangelo. His most famous artwork is the bronze David.

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He is one of the artist's inspirations. He is an Italian Renaissance artist. "learning never exhausts the mind." His forms of art included painting, drawing, sculpture, and murals. He is most famous for his artwork, the Mona Lisa, which was stolen by napoian and is now owned by the French.

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(and kilim rugs but I can't put two pictures)

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I have recently started coming to terms with how much of my painting practice I owe to growing up in Central Asia. I have usually avoided talking about, or even thinking about that history and have a lot of mixed feelings associated with it, but I did a painting with Atlas silk in it about a year ago and have recently realized that if I hadn't done that painting, I never would have been able to make the paintings I make now. That painting was the first time I used vibrant color and I noticed recently that those are the same colors I use now when I'm making my underpaintings. Ever since living in and being immersed in Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Turkish culture, I've had an immense obsession with fabric and fiber, especially woven kilim rugs and rug making practices around the world and rich histories of wool and shepherding and vibrant dyes and patterns. But, I never saw how it could intersect in my art practice once I realized I wasn't interested in exploring fiber art in my fine arts practice until I saw this connection with color which I was intuitively doing without even seeing where it came from or why it just felt right.

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I KNOW HAYES ALSO DID THIS BUT YOU’RE READING ABOUT THIS TWICE TOMMY

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GLITCH Productions recently released their pilot episode of Knights of Guinevere, introducing the futuristic dystopian world where “Disney” takes over the world and other planets. The focus is around Park Planet where the main characters, Frankie and Andy, try their hardest to make ends meet: joining the organization that is ruining their world, or doing various jobs doing the dirty work for “Disney”. Their world is completely flipped when Frankie encounters a Gwen android that doesn’t seem like most androids.

Dana Terrace decided to make this show after Disney wouldn’t allow her to expand on her story of “The Owl House” because of the queer representation in it. Guinevere, or Gwen for short, is a play on Disney princesses and is used to mass produce merchandise for cash grabs.

It’s about half an hour to watch the whole pilot. You should watch it. :)

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Max Gleason, better known as Smooth McGroove, is a YouTuber known for making acapella covers of video game tracks. In the annals of YouTube history, he is a classic. He was consistently active from 2012-2019 before creating on and off the following years up to now.

Honestly, I can't even really name a particular way Smooth McGroove has inspired me, but his videos have always brought me joy. I remember my dad showing me his covers of Pokemon songs when I was a kid. I do sing nowadays, but I'd say Smooth was just one of many factors pushing towards passion.

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Brendan Blaber is a writer and YouTuber most known for his animated-series-turned-light-novel, Epithet Erased. I love Brendan Blaber mostly for his unique writing style. His greatest strength is his power of description. He's exceptional at likening things to something very specific and potentially niche, but also highly accurate. Brendan Blaber's writing also features a very strong voice that I appreciate. I like when a storyteller puts themselves into how they tell that story.

Epithet Erased on it's own is kind of just my favorite thing. It's a story in world where about 1 in 5 people have an Epithet, a random word attached to their soul that gives them powers based on how they interpret that word. The main character is 12-year-old Molly Blyndeff, who's Epithet is Dumb. It's the best kind of story, one that knows how to jump back and forth between silly and serious at the drop of a hat while still keeping you engaged.

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Alfredo Jaar, a Chilean artist and architect based in New York, has created politically influential works for over forty years. Initially studying architecture as encouraged by his father, Jaar soon realized that he could apply his architectural expertise to his artwork. In one example, The Garden of Good and Evil, Jaar installed nine steel cells, reminiscent of prisons, around sections of vegetation in Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, U.K. Moreover, Jaar extensively researches his subjects as part of his projects, as he firmly believes that it’s irresponsible to convey messages through art without fully knowing and understanding the contexts. Despite the risks, Jaar even travelled to Rwanda to document the genocide for The Rwanda Project (1994 - 2010) in order to gain a better perspective on the impacts of one of the most overlooked atrocities in modern history. In general, bringing awareness to injustices across the world, from unethical gold mining in Brazil to sociopolitical divisions, remains the consistent objective of Jaar’s works.

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Alfredo Jaar on Understanding the World Before Acting in It

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Alfredo Jaar delves into how knowledge is constructed, exposing the mechanisms that shape our understanding and relationship with the world.

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Cassatt was the second female member of the Impressionists and a student of Degas. Her work is beautiful and refined. As a woman, she worked for her money, was not supported in her career by her family, and never married. She represented the New Woman, both in her own life and in her paintings. She showed the vibrant interior lives of women in the domestic spheres, a contrast to how her contemporaries often portrayed women in a more objectified way.

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Virginia Lee Burton and the Folly Cove Designers

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Virginia Lee Burton and the Folly Cove Designers

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Virginia Lee Burton was an artist and children's book author. She founded a group of printmakers known as the Folly Cove Designers, named for the neighborhood in Gloucester, Massachusetts where she and the other designers lived. Burton was born in 1909 and continued making art until her death in 1968.

I grew up with Burton's books, notably Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, The Little House, Katy and the Big Snow, and Life Story. My favorite out of these has always been Life Story, which is a natural history of life on earth presented to the reader as if it's a theater production. The colorful illustrations and vivid descriptions of ancient plants and animals were a significant contributing factor to my lifelong interest in natural history and the natural world in general.

It was only a few years ago that I discovered Burton's work with the Folly Cove Designers. They printed with linoleum blocks, mostly on textiles, and mostly creating repeating patterns. However, there are some Burton prints that are more illustrative. Many of her works and the works of the other Designers are now housed at the Cape Ann Museum. The designs are beautifully intricate, yet simplistic enough to be successfully carved into and printed from linoleum.

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Picolo is an artist I have followed for a very long time on Instagram (@_picolo) because I was engrossed with the characters he created based on the story of Icarus and the sun. I found the story so emotional since it is about the love of this woman of light and a gargoyle who melts when he touches her. The short comics he used to make of the two used ot make me so sad but yet addicted to the story because he would create these loving and sweet moments between the two while he slowly melts away. Picolo has now become super successful through publishing comics with DC about the Teen Titans.

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Another beloved series I have read is Hell's Paradise by Yuji Kaku. I am a big comic manga and graphic novel fan, but I always gravitate more to the artistic styles of manga. I think the black and white, almost sketch-like look that some manga emulate evokes a certain dark and compelling atmosphere which is hard to create through the polished prints that is usually done in American comics.

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Sana Takeda is the artist behind the graphic novel series Monstress. I have not read the series all the way through, but I am absolutely obsessed with her art style. Her art is gestural with a slightly sketched hand while also achieving extemely ornate compositions.

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Sui Ishida is my favorite manga artist and the author of Choujin X and the famous Tokyo Ghoul. The art style of Sui Ishida has really developed throughout his famous run of Tokyo Ghoul, and the art style of Tokyo Ghoul: Re is almost entirely new. I fell in love with his art style after reading the manga of Tokyo Ghoul when the second season of the animated show completely failed to live up to its first season. However, I am so glad I read the manga instead because the way in which Sui Ishida draws is raw and sketch-like in an imperfect way that creates beautiful emotion. If you haven't guessed, I am a bit fan of dark and compelling stories, usually involving government corruption, which may have started with that series, as it is one of my biggest inspirations. His second series, Choujin X, seems to be taking a similar direction, and I am excited to see where he takes it.

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Sleepacross is the online persona of a webtoon author whose work is dark, compelling, and absolutely stunning. I have been re-reading their comic Hand Jumper for a long time now and follow up with it every week, and it is by far one of my favorite online comics I have ever read (and I have read a lot). The story is about government control over the genetic mutation of humans called abberants that have developed an array of different abilities. They enlist children who are found to have these superhuman abilities into a police force that combats the outlaw gangs of aberrants that rule the underworld. The real reason I love this story is not only the art style but the dark and twisted main character who makes you question what real morality is.

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Dana Terrace is the creator of the Disney show The Owl House, and recently she released a show with the indie animation production company called Glitch. The show is called Knights of Guinevere, which is a dystopian otherworldly planet controlled by a large corporation that makes amusement parks. The new show is an obvious reference to Disney and the evils of how it functions as a corporate entity.

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I found Lily Macrae's work just this past week and I have spent time thinking about it and looking at it virtually every day since. The paintings "Need Not Tell" and "Sopor" are particularly attention grabbing to me. They feel intimate and dreamlike but they also feel like they're alluding to the possibility of gore or death or something else ominous. I suppose the fact that they leave a lot unanswered about the context and what it is that we're looking at is what draws me to them. I'm simultaneously enamored with the deliciousness of the rich color and evidence of the artist's hand in the paint handling as I'm trying to think about what I'm seeing but it's like my mind can't focus on one without getting distracted by the other and it's a very seductive back and forth in my mind.

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Spiritfarer is a cozy game about dying. You follow along Stella and her cat companion, Daisy, as she learns to basically become the Grim Reaper. You travel around the world in your ship as you find companions, taking the forms of animals, that are on their journey towards death. Your job is to guide them towards the death realm, making sure they leave happy/content. As you continue on your journey, you realize that the animal companions are actually humans that Stella, who was a nurse, helped in real life. One companion you meet, Lily, who is made of a lot of butterflies, is Stella’s sister. Her story is about who Stella was in real life, grieving Stella as she lays in her death bed, telling her stories about their parents and of their childhood. The game’s end is when Stella is finally ready to move onto the death realm, resting in peace.

I really admire how much care they have in this game. They focus a lot on the story and it shows. Each of the characters’ stories are very touching and it’s a very nice game.

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James Turner is an artist who famously worked at Game Freak as the first Westerner to ever design Pokemon for the company. This image is one he posted to his Twitter featuring some of his favorite Pokemon he created.

James Turner previously worked at the studio Genius Sorority for 8 years, a team most famous for developing the game Pokemon Colosseum on the GameCube. He landed a job at Game Freak in between the release of Pokemon Platinum and Pokemon Black and White. He would go on to create some of what I would call some of the most interesting and unique designs in the series, such as Golurk, Trevenant, and Obstagoon, as well as act as the art director for Pokemon Sword and Shield.

He left Game Freak in 2022 to start his own game studio called All Possible Futures and released a successful game called The Plucky Squire.

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Cameron is one of the Victorian era's most famous photographers. She was connected to the Pictorialism movement, which concentrated on soft focus, composition, storytelling, and evoking emotions. I think her work shows the movement of photography into art away from science. Interestingly, she said that her distinctive blurred style came about unintentionally, from using a lens with a narrow depth of field. However, because she often made tableaux of mythical, historical, or religious scenes, her style ended up helping create a dreamlike aesthetic. She took up photography later in life at 48, was well-connected, but she was criticized for trying to profit from her successful and popular work.

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I am aware that this is super basic when it comes to artists that art students look up to, but I truly love Van Gogh's work.

Van Gogh's battle with mental illness is what truly had me incapsulated in his work. Especially after seeing his work in the MFA and reading the letters his friend sent to Van Gogh's brother updating him, I saw a different side to this artist that most don't get to see. I also find it interesting that he was not recognized as a good artist when he was alive. Only after he passed away, his art became recognized as something more than just paintings. Also the way that he uses the oil paint amazes me. A lot of his paintings aren't very blended which is something I hadn't considered to do while using oil paints. In general I am a huge fan of not only his work, but the stories behind it as well.

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Mimi Choi is an incredibly talented makeup artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Choi’s realistic, illusionary artistic style has gone viral on social media over the past decade. As written on Choi’s profile, she is heavily influenced by “patterns and textures from her surroundings, photoshopped digital art, and surreal paintings from illusionary masters such as Salvador Dali and M.C. Esther.” Choi “also suffers from sleep paralysis - a condition in which her mind is conscious, but her body becomes temporarily unresponsive while waking.” This causes her to experience “vivid and often frightening visions,” yet these visions have served as inspiration for several of Choi’s “more morbid and distorted face looks.” She is perhaps most well known for her striking makeup look on actor Ezra Miller for the 2019 Met Gala. Just hours prior to the prestigious annual event, Choi succeeded in creating multiple sets of eyes on Miller, ultimately generating a trippy effect.

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Creative illusion makeup looks by Vancouver, Canada's Mimi Choi (@mimles).

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The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me by Brand New

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The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me by Brand New

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The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is the third studio album by emotional post-hardcore band Brand New, released in 2006. On the record, the album leaves behind their pop-punk origins for a darker, more mature sound. Frontman Jesse Lacey sings about religion, sickness, guilt, and death. Some specific subject matter of the songs include Lacey's own relationship to and perspective on Christianity, the death of a child in a drunk driving accident near the band's hometown, and meditations on characters from The Godfather. The album includes two instrumental tracks, both of which match the haunting and somber tone of the album as a whole. It was extremely well-received and influential, with comparisons being made to rock juggernauts like Radiohead and even Nirvana. As a whole, the album is very tonally and artistically cohesive, which is one of the most important things an album can be in my opinion. A criticism sometimes made towards the Emo genre is that it's juvenile, whiny, or that it all sounds the same. Brand New proves this wrong with their introspective, moody lyrics and instrumentals, and unique sound.

The cohesive artistic visions that Brand New brings to all of their full-length albums is extremely inspirational for me, as is the dark and moody atmosphere. I'm especially compelled by the way Jesse Lacey portrays guilt across his work, as it's something I'm interested in depicting in my own art as well.

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Doron Langberg is one of my biggest sources of inspiration at this time. I'm constantly awed by the way he handles paint and the subtlety in rendering just enough to give us the bare minimum information of what we're looking at but still making the viewer work for it a little. I also get a lot of satisfaction from the process of looking at his paintings from first being struck by just beautiful colors and textures and then starting to see the forms and after all that you realize that you've actually spent all this time looking at a painting of usually a literal butthole or two gay men fucking or other imagery that would otherwise be considered overly sexual or obscene. Naturally, I don't connect with his imagery much and his work is far more sexual than work I have interest in making but I do love how he paints and that he paints scenes that people take great pains to call disgusting (at best) and turns them into paintings that are so beautiful and captivating that you can't help but want to look at them forever and even lose yourself in(or at least I do).

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Doron Langberg, born 1985 Yokneam-Moshava, Israel, is a painter based in Queens, NYC

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Signalis is a survival-horror game made by two people, Yuri Stern and Barbara Wittmann. They spent 8 years making this game. It's set in a futuristic world where multiple planets are colonized. There are different types of robot people, Replikas, that co-exist with humans, assigned different tasks. Each type of replika is a carbon copy, the only difference being their relationships. LSTRs are made to travel through space in solidarity, looking for new planets to colonize. We follow LSTR-512, commonly known as Elster, as they arrive at an institute for other replikas on Pluto, trying to find someone important. Elster's goal is to find who they're looking for and remember why they're looking for them. I don't think I can say anymore without spoiling the game, but trust me, you should play it.

DON'T WATCH A VIDEO ESSAY, JUST PLAY IT, TRUST ME!

also, im crashing out, the tiktok that i linked for land of the lustrous got taken down and i cannot find it anymore.

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Monica Bradburn is a sports photographer for the MLB and the NHL. She is who truly inspired me to strive for the major leagues in the future. She documents her process on social media and shows that her job can be super fun. She shows how she has developed relationships with the players that she photographs. I think I am drawn to her content because it shows what I could have someday and helps be continue to strive for my goals.

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John Singer Sargent is mostly known for his portrait paintings but my favorite works of his are his figure drawings and general sketches. his use of subtle angles in shading creates a strong sense of form and texture which is something I've spent a long time trying to capture myself.

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If you’re a fan of horror manga, chances are you’ve read at least one of Junji Ito’s works. Once I started reading them myself, I couldn't stop, primarily because of Ito's painstakingly realistic, peculiar, and creepy illustrations. Fascinated with horror manga and spooky stories since his youth, Ito credits fellow horror mangaka Kazuo Umezu, Shinichi Koga, and Hideshi Hino as major influences. Uzumaki and Tomie are his most notable manga, although Gyo is probably my favorite. In recent years, Junji Ito has also gained popularity thanks to his meticulous attention to detail and eerie storylines centered on psychological horror. Although balancing horror and beauty may seem initially ironic, Ito effortlessly masters emerging those two concepts into his own signature style. Beware…I guarantee you’ll be hooked.

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Interview with Junji Ito: Into the Abyss of Darkness - RetroFuturista

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Junji Ito's psychological horror delves into fear, paranoia, and human obsession, offering unsettling narratives that challenge the limits of terror.

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I've been thinking and studying a lot of Anne Harris' work this week. I'm really fascinated by the way that she sees and paints the figure. The way that the figure seems to emerge out of the surface through the way that she pays attention only to the parts of the body that come forward and almost doesn't render the parts that fall back at all is captivating. In my mind I compare her work to Marlene Dumas' but with more of an emphasis of softness in her almost angelic forms but one still might be uncomfortable calling them beautiful but not ugly either. They're very honest depictions but at the same time she also is emphasizing the parts of her that maybe she might be the most uncomfortable with like the wildly inflamed looking red watery eyes she paints all of her figures with. You could almost say that she paints herself with such brutal honesty in the way she sees herself that they circle back around and become dishonest and not true to life.

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Land of the Lustrous follows Phosphophyllite as they try to find their place in the world. In this world, people are made out of gems and have the same attributes as those gems in real life. Another species who dwell in the sky hunt these gem people for the gems themselves. Phosphophyllite, or Phos for short, is one of the weakest gems in their community. They shatter easily and they cannot hold a weapon to protect themself. Finding themselves useless when contributing to the protection of others, they try to find ways to make themself stronger, altering their body and slowly losing who they are as a person. What I love about this mangaka is just how they write Phos.

(Spoilers from here :) PLEASE READ THIS I AM SO NORMAL ABOUT THIS MANGAKA)

There are three species in this mangaka who represent the bones, the flesh, and the spirit/soul of the human body. The gem people are the representation of bones, shown through the lack of natural death and the lack of empathy. As Phos tries to alter themselves, they collect bits and pieces of the other species. They have a leg from the flesh and the eye from the spirit/soul. Slowly, they continue to alter themselves to find out more about their world but they lose who they originally were. There is so much about the depth of Phos that people have compared it to many things, such as Icarus, Judas to Jesus, Lucifer’s betrayal, the hanged man, and the sin of sloth, just to name a few.

If you don’t wanna read the entire mangaka, they did get part of the series animated, but I would highly recommend reading the mangaka. And I would also recommend looking at the analysis of Phos’ character in this TikTok post. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMLj54Wh/

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Alien Stage is a sequence of animated YouTube videos which are always accompanied by original music. The series touches on what life would be in an alien-filled world where humans are seen as pets who are prized for their singing voice. It takes place on the Alien Stage where humans are put against each other and if they win their round, they can move onto the next one. Every layer of the series is beautifully crafted: the characters, their dynamics, the music, the animation, and the story. Each character represents the way they view love, especially when growing up in a corrupted world. The animation also has so many details that I highly recommend looking out for. The music, produced by STUDIO LICO, is also very catchy and I find myself listening to their songs on a daily basis. I highly recommend watching the entire series (START FROM ROUND 1 PLEASE! THE PLAYLIST HAS THE VIDEOS IN THE WRONG ORDER) and taking a look at the extra comics that are posted on their Twitter. (Translations are often in their comments)

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Eric Ogden was my mentor in high school. He is one of the people who made me fall in love with sports photography. He taught me the basics and helped me get into school here at Lesley. He shoots for local high schools along with Husson University in Bangor, Maine. He shoots every sport in the programs of these schools along with hosting media days and doing school pictures for my high school and others in the area. Eric is a huge influence in my life and I am so glad I got to work with him while I was in school

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https://www.toshikotakaezufoundation.org/about-toshiko

I find Toshiko Takaezu’s ceramic works uniquely fascinating. While most of us tend to think of ceramic objects as solely functional, Takaezu challenged that assumption by creating her signature massive, often rotund closed vessels solely for aesthetic purposes. The Japanese-American ceramicist from Hawaii even drew inspiration from her travels to her home country of Japan, which she then applied to her abstract artwork. According to the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation's website, she saw “correspondences between Abstract Expressionism and the spiritually infused traditions of East Asia, such as calligraphy and the tea ceremony. She combined these cross-cultural influences into a powerfully resolved synthesis”. What I find most inspiring about Takaezu is that she didn’t hesitate to take risks and experiment with her creative processes, something I strive for myself as an artist and budding ceramicist.

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About Toshiko — Toshiko Takaezu Foundation

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Kira Sabin is an artist who participates in the Federal Duck Stamp competition each year. They documents their journey on different social media platforms. I personally have been following them for around four years. They work with mainly oil paints to create realistic duck portraits.

The duck stamp competition is judged in two days. The first day is deciding who will advance to the second round. During the first day the judges decide if they will vote "in" or "out" if the piece gets at least 3 ins it advances to the next day. The second day of judging, the ducks get a numerical score from each judge and the duck with the highest score wins.

Kira Sabin has always been "real" on social media with their struggles. I like following them because they never portray that working on art is easy. I think they are definitely an inspiration for me.

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Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-1865) was an amateur photographer in the mid 19th century. She was Scottish and married an Irish viscount, with whom she had 10 children. Her children, especially her daughters, and the landscapes of her family estates were her main subjects. She worked mainly in albumen prints from wet-collodion negatives. I find her work very intimate and compelling, and I think it offers a unique glimpse into her life.

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David Cronenberg is a Canadian film director mostly known for his sci-fi horror work. He's known as being one of the pioneers of body horror, but his films go beyond just the visually grotesque. He intertwines themes like sex, death, humanity, technology, and the body. His most well-known films are mostly from the 80s and 90s, when CGI effects weren't really an option. The use of practical effects in his films is astounding, it feels as though you could reach through the screen of your computer and feel the oozing blood and pulsing flesh.

While Cronenberg has several films inspired by or adapting the work of various authors (Dead Ringers being based on Twins by Bari Wood, Crash being an adaptation of the J. G. Ballard novel, and Naked Lunch being an adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel of the same title), Videodrome is an original work of his. Despite being released over forty years ago, many of the themes of Videodrome ring true today, notably the line "We live in overstimulated times". It follows the story of the president of a sensationalist television station as he searches for something new and shocking to broadcast, finds a plotless show consisting of people being tortured and murdered, and gets involved in the world of people who believe the way to solve the cultural decay of the western world is to kill anyone obsessed with sex and violence. While the plot of the film itself is surreal and feels like a fever dream, its visual spectacle and imagery is unique and striking. The surreal nature of the film lends itself to the recurring elements of dreams and hallucinations, and the boundary between reality, the mind, and the digital.

This film has been a major inspiration for my art since the first time I saw it. The perverse obsessions with violence and sci-fi surrealist setting investigate things I've always been interested in, and the look of practical effects being not quite hyper-realistic but not quite uncanny either, and using that to create bizarre scenes of corrupted, distorted flesh are not only awesome in the literal definition of the word, but grotesquely beautiful.

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Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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I just finished reading this book and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Vuong seems invested in the exploration of the same concepts that I am and explores them beautifully in this novel. It was really interesting to read about his lived experiences that could not be more unlike my own but still relate to everything he's talking about on a conceptual and personal level, despite the very different perspective. He's unpacking very complex relationships and the duality of love and pain and finding comfort in things because of the harm they bring. It's an exploration of intimacy and grief but not in any way a glorification or idealization of his relationships to his mother or Trevor. The reader is then given no option but to admire and find beauty in how he handles the ugliness and brutality and truth of his past and his relationships to these two people, completely void of the superficialities we've come to expect.

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Read 36.8k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Writ...

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A somewhat outdated photo of TWRP. Sung and Meouch have had costume updates since then.

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TWRP are a Toronto based band that I have been a long time fan of. I've seen them every time they've come to Boston since the Synth Force 7 tour, and I adore their aesthetics, music, and vibes. TWRP's genre of music is a bit tricky to place down because they tend to try new things with each album, but I would describe their general sound as "disco rock". They're extremely 80's inspired, drawing from classic SAT AM cartoons for their costumes, with each of them looking wildly different from each other. The yellow one is Doctor Sung, who does synths and lead vocals for the group on talkbox and vocoder. The red one is Lord Phobos, the guitarist. The lion is Commander Meouch, the bassist. The black and white one is Havve Hogan, the drummer. My favorite song of theirs is Ladybug, which I already talked about in class, but other favorites of theirs include Bright Blue Sky, Hidden Potential, and A Human's Touch. Overall, they exude good vibes and unflinching positivity with their music and greatly inspire me.

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John Singer Sargent is one of the most famous portrait artists ever. I thought about his work as I worked on my piece this week, even though he was working in a different medium than I would be, and I was painting a dress from a different era than his prime. Many of the Sargent portraits I saw at the Met this summer inspired my plans for a dress I want to make soon for a ball in October. Even though he was frequently portraying clothing rather abstractly, he was often painting some of the most stylish people of his time, and I took inspiration from elements of several of his portraits for my upcoming dress design. In regards to painting techniques, I really admire how he can create such an accurate impression of fashion with so few brushstrokes. Many of his paintings include elaborate lace, beadwork, ruffles, and more, and I get such a distinct view of them from a distance, then get closer and realize it's only a few simple shapes. I would love to be able to draw or paint something so accurately with so little visible effort, but it takes a lot of skill and practice to make something look that easy. I think this is a skill shared between many Impressionists and cartoon/caricature artists.

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Ever since viewing his exhibit at Lesley University’s Lunder Arts Center last fall, I’ve been drawn to Scooter LaForge’s quirky paintings and alternative fashion designs. For those who have yet to see Laforge’s distinctive artwork, it’s best described as influenced by graffiti art in conjunction with Jean-Michel Basquiat. While his works have gained the attention of and have been worn by several high-profile celebrities (Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, and Beyonce, to name a few), I admire LaForge’s easygoing sense of discipline; he regularly goes to his studio without giving it much thought. In other words, he gets to work without feeling like it should be work. There’s also an idiosyncratic element to much of his works as well, a spontaneous nature that unfolds as he lets a brush on the canvas do the talking or he transforms found objects into something new entirely. My creative processes tend to share a similar spontaneity, as I may have an idea of a particular work at first (be it a sketch or simply an idea), but it could change as I bring that idea to life. Life can mirror art and vice versa; the end result may just surprise you.

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Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Scooter LaForge is one of New York City's most mysterious characters. A friendly, approachable painter with an easygoing style, he constantly code-switches, weaving his fascination with words and everyday details into conversations that are often about conversation itself. His painting works on the same principle. The brushstrokes are the point-frozen movement that reveals moving targets of "meaning." In his Gesamtkunstwerk apartment, the artist answers some of our questions.

Interview Jorge Clar Photography Christian Trippe

JC: Good day! How are you?
SL: Good day; I am well, thank you kindly! And yourself?
JC: I am well, thank you kindly. Are you going to the studio today?
SL: Yes, I am going there shortly.
JC: How wonderful. What was I going to say... Is it important for you to have a separate space for painting?
SL: Yes. For me, it's important to have a sense of discipline. But a discipline that comes easy. I don't really think about it. Essentially, I wake up, and I feel the need to paint. The studio provides a framework. I paint practically every day of my life. I have a cup of coffee with half and half, eat oatmeal, and then I'm off to the studio.
JC: And your apartment is all covered with murals...
SL: Well, in 2020, I stayed mostly in my apartment for about three weeks, and I was looking for something to do. One day, tidying up, I found a wooden box full of paints that was put away under the sink. The paints were dried up, but I brought them back to life and got to work. I had already painted a portrait of Dave Gahan, the lead singer of Depeche Mode, wearing a crown, as he appears in the Enjoy the Silence video. I started riffing from there...painting characters and environments. I remember how I painted a candle and a teacup next to a 1940s table. When I took a picture of the vignette, the table and the wall became one.

JC: How do the news and social media affect your decisions in the studio?
SL: I like listening to the radio. Sometimes I listen to 1010 WINS-AM in the morning. I have certain radios I like to use. I love pocket transistor radios; my dad gave me a General Electric Superadio that picks up distant signals. It's a wall of sound for me. I don't really listen to the news. Nowadays, information surrounds us everywhere, and topics sometimes flow into the work. Lately I've been reading books on stoicism that ended up informing what I do-giving me a certain freedom, a spontaneity...

"My energy goes into painting, and it attracts people. There are no coincidences."
JC: Do you plan your canvases very much?
SL: No, I sometimes have a theme-more like a point of departure-in mind. I dip the brush into the paint and let it move. Lines turn into faces, or trees, or birds; I anchor the composition, and off I go. Automatically. My Sculpture show at Theodore gallery came out of the blue, after having worked on large-scale paintings for a few months. I collect things from the street: old shirts, scraps, so-called trash, small objects, and they become something else. I suppose it is all infused by a Calder-like spirit...invention with the available. Finding a sense of balance, going against it, and then starting over. Some people say I "attack" the canvas with the esprit of a graffiti writer.

JC: How do you define "career" as a fine artist?
SL: Hm, I don't consider the idea of "career" very much. Painting is what I do. I know there is free will, and I have chosen to do this. It keeps me concentrated on developing something, on creating. I enjoy meeting people and seeing what they do; every person is in their own world. My energy goes into painting, and it attracts people. There are no coincidences. When I'm satisfied with a particular work, a door opens for it to be shown. The idea of "networking" is about being in the moment and having a connection... Talking about anything: the weather, the color of socks. Observing the way a person talks and moves provides much information. I'm like an antenna.

"Lately I've been reading books on stoicism that ended up informing what I do..."

JC: How else would you describe yourself?
SL: I would call myself a tube, a conduit. The ego hovers as an interface through which I interact with "reality," that grand illusion. People talk about the coming prevalence of virtual reality, but I think technology-faced with people's awakening-falls into a balance. Reality is always virtual, in a way. Getting back to the notion of the conduit: from a void beyond the ego, information comes forth. This information gets translated through the paint. It is an often intangible language. I sometimes feel like my "heroes" move my body... I am, therefore, in love with the Old Masters; my work evokes certain aspects of them. Being a painter is a profession and a mission. As a professional, I might sometimes talk in terms of "as we like to say in the industry, this is a triptych, etc." But the mission is always a mystery.

"Essentially, I wake up, and I feel the need to paint."

JC: So if the line between art and life is indivisible, and you embrace art in all of its expressions, would you say you are always performing?
SL: Well, it's kind of inevitable, and it's also a good thing...all of us are performing constantly. What's different is the level of awareness, but ultimately we are all the same.

JC: What else do you think your painting is doing?
SL: It is alchemizing. Things are transforming before your very eyes. The painting holds space and transforms space. It honors aspects of life, holds them, and then lets them go.

Scooter LaForge Sculpture is up at Theodore gallery, Tribeca, New York City, until 18th June. Ethan Minsker's latest documentary, Scooter LaForge: A Life of Art, is in post-production.
Follow Scooter on Instagram for his latest work and updates.

Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Scooter LaForge is one of New York City's most mysterious characters. A friendly, approachable painter with an easygoing style, he constantly code-switches, weaving his fascination with words and everyday details into conversations that are often about conversation itself. His painting works on the same principle. The brushstrokes are the point-frozen movement that reveals moving targets of "meaning." In his Gesamtkunstwerk apartment, the artist answers some of our questions.

Interview Jorge Clar Photography Christian Trippe

JC: Good day! How are you?
SL: Good day; I am well, thank you kindly! And yourself?
JC: I am well, thank you kindly. Are you going to the studio today?
SL: Yes, I am going there shortly.
JC: How wonderful. What was I going to say... Is it important for you to have a separate space for painting?
SL: Yes. For me, it's important to have a sense of discipline. But a discipline that comes easy. I don't really think about it. Essentially, I wake up, and I feel the need to paint. The studio provides a framework. I paint practically every day of my life. I have a cup of coffee with half and half, eat oatmeal, and then I'm off to the studio.
JC: And your apartment is all covered with murals...
SL: Well, in 2020, I stayed mostly in my apartment for about three weeks, and I was looking for something to do. One day, tidying up, I found a wooden box full of paints that was put away under the sink. The paints were dried up, but I brought them back to life and got to work. I had already painted a portrait of Dave Gahan, the lead singer of Depeche Mode, wearing a crown, as he appears in the Enjoy the Silence video. I started riffing from there...painting characters and environments. I remember how I painted a candle and a teacup next to a 1940s table. When I took a picture of the vignette, the table and the wall became one.

JC: How do the news and social media affect your decisions in the studio?
SL: I like listening to the radio. Sometimes I listen to 1010 WINS-AM in the morning. I have certain radios I like to use. I love pocket transistor radios; my dad gave me a General Electric Superadio that picks up distant signals. It's a wall of sound for me. I don't really listen to the news. Nowadays, information surrounds us everywhere, and topics sometimes flow into the work. Lately I've been reading books on stoicism that ended up informing what I do-giving me a certain freedom, a spontaneity...

"My energy goes into painting, and it attracts people. There are no coincidences."
JC: Do you plan your canvases very much?
SL: No, I sometimes have a theme-more like a point of departure-in mind. I dip the brush into the paint and let it move. Lines turn into faces, or trees, or birds; I anchor the composition, and off I go. Automatically. My Sculpture show at Theodore gallery came out of the blue, after having worked on large-scale paintings for a few months. I collect things from the street: old shirts, scraps, so-called trash, small objects, and they become something else. I suppose it is all infused by a Calder-like spirit...invention with the available. Finding a sense of balance, going against it, and then starting over. Some people say I "attack" the canvas with the esprit of a graffiti writer.

JC: How do you define "career" as a fine artist?
SL: Hm, I don't consider the idea of "career" very much. Painting is what I do. I know there is free will, and I have chosen to do this. It keeps me concentrated on developing something, on creating. I enjoy meeting people and seeing what they do; every person is in their own world. My energy goes into painting, and it attracts people. There are no coincidences. When I'm satisfied with a particular work, a door opens for it to be shown. The idea of "networking" is about being in the moment and having a connection... Talking about anything: the weather, the color of socks. Observing the way a person talks and moves provides much information. I'm like an antenna.

"Lately I've been reading books on stoicism that ended up informing what I do..."

JC: How else would you describe yourself?
SL: I would call myself a tube, a conduit. The ego hovers as an interface through which I interact with "reality," that grand illusion. People talk about the coming prevalence of virtual reality, but I think technology-faced with people's awakening-falls into a balance. Reality is always virtual, in a way. Getting back to the notion of the conduit: from a void beyond the ego, information comes forth. This information gets translated through the paint. It is an often intangible language. I sometimes feel like my "heroes" move my body... I am, therefore, in love with the Old Masters; my work evokes certain aspects of them. Being a painter is a profession and a mission. As a professional, I might sometimes talk in terms of "as we like to say in the industry, this is a triptych, etc." But the mission is always a mystery.

"Essentially, I wake up, and I feel the need to paint."

JC: So if the line between art and life is indivisible, and you embrace art in all of its expressions, would you say you are always performing?
SL: Well, it's kind of inevitable, and it's also a good thing...all of us are performing constantly. What's different is the level of awareness, but ultimately we are all the same.

JC: What else do you think your painting is doing?
SL: It is alchemizing. Things are transforming before your very eyes. The painting holds space and transforms space. It honors aspects of life, holds them, and then lets them go.

Scooter LaForge Sculpture is up at Theodore gallery, Tribeca, New York City, until 18th June. Ethan Minsker's latest documentary, Scooter LaForge: A Life of Art, is in post-production.
Follow Scooter on Instagram for his latest work and updates.

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Scooter LaForge: Life Is Art; Art Is Life - ZERO.NINE

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Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Scooter LaForge is one of New York City's most mysterious characters. A friendly, approachable painter with an easygoing style, he constantly code-switches, weaving his fascination with words and everyday details into conversations that are often about convers

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Bo Chen is an artist who works with Riot Games to create splash arts for characters and skins. What I find compelling in his art is the amount of detail that is put into the entire painting: from the small details to the vast backgrounds. What I also find compelling is how dynamic the poses are, using foreshortening to his advantage without distorting or disrupting the entire image. The colors and shades he chooses allow focal points to stand out against backgrounds. Not only does he choose the value for increased contrast, he also chooses it based on the personality of the characters and the skin line. For example, the Spirit Blossom Irelia splash art has the character in darker lighting, allowing for a large contrast compared to the background. This contrast also portrays how in the skin line, Irelia is now a demon, but was once the protector of a queen until she failed to do so.

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Spirit bloosom Irelia splash painting process

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I've been interested in Sasha Gordon's work for some time now. She has a new show opening this week and the new work that she's created for it, though not much has been shown to the public yet, seems like it will be diving in even deeper into the themes and narratives of anxiety, isolation, disassociation, and femininity that I find very captivating in her work. I think she really beautifully captures that strange contradictions of what it feels like to be a young person, and more specifically a young woman, in the world today. There's always the push and pull of trying to be a normal person doing normal stuff and live a normal life while existing in a unfriendly, tragic, dystopian environment. Her work at once feels intimate and threatening. It's not quite like a warning with a specific message but more so it feels like she's just trying to make sense of the world and what it feels like. I'm very interested in her because I find the themes of her work and the way she seems to think very similar to my own work though we end up with drastically different end products with very different styles of painting.

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Sasha Gordon Tells Lucy Liu Why She Paints the Things That Scare Her

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Ahead of her exhibition “Haze,” opening next week at David Zwirner, the 27-year-old painter joined the “Charlie’s Angels” icon to talk TikTok, tokenization, and putting her fears on the canvas.