A symbolic combination of realistic elements that do not belong together - dreamlike unity.

1. How does she use colour, light and arrangement to create the image?

   
   

   Beth Hoeckel, a minimalist indie/abstract collage artist, uses elements such as colour, light and arrangement to form artworks with realistic elements in unrealistic unity. She typically has normal people at the front and centre of her pieces, surrounded by large-scale backgrounds - space, mountains, impossibly large plants, etc. The people and their clothes are typically contrastive of the background, in both size and colour - almost as if she's comparing the humans to the larger scale of the landscapes of nature around us. The arrangement of the mountains and star-lit galaxy and abnormality of the land, as if not on Earth, provide a sense of abstract, dream-like harmony.

   
   

2. What do you like or dislike about it?

   
   

   The contrast of colour between a white-red human, brown-green-blue pit and grey-black-white mountain range and space scene, as well as the decreasing relative size, provide a realistic sense of depth in the painting, and the setting and objects provide a unique, interesting reverie. There's no specific detail I dislike about this one painting, perhaps just the plain colour scheme and lack of incredibly unique features (some other paintings have people sitting on enormous plants, or the moon).

3. Give a brief explanation of what is in the image - include things you can see, use of space, use of illusion, the way the character or scene is laid out, colour scheme, etc.

   
   

   In the foreground of the image is a man or boy in a red cap, white shirt and shorts, holding a black bag with three green bags next to him. There is a large blue dust pit or ravine, surrounded by brown, green and yellow dust. In the background, a lunar mountain range and space-view of the stars. The painting is nearly evenly distributed between foreground and background, combining realistic, familiar elements in a fantasy-like, unrealistic state/collage.

4. Beth Hoeckel's surreal artistic collages follow the surrealistic art movement by displaying real landscapes, people and objects, but in such a composition that is realistically impossible - often depicting impossibly large plants or landscapes, people on the moon without a spacesuit, people with objects replacing limbs, etc...

5. Salvador Dali and Beth Hoeckel's surreal artistic creations share similar qualities and elements - real objects in fictional scenarios, impossibly large plants and animals, large open landscapes such as mountains and the moon, and distorted human faces and bodies. The difference would be that Beth prefers constructing collages from vintage materials of the natural world, whereas Dali prefers hand-painting and artificial scenes.

6. Beth Hoeckel's work attempts to capture the grandeur and beauty of nature's creations and the great size of the universe, and either the impact we can have on it, or how small we are in comparison. Her artwork does convey emotion and her ideas: standing out with creativity, using the resources in your every day life, to respect the natural world, that we are smaller than we may seem in our minds.

Part 1:

Question 1:

Christian Schloe's portraits and digital creations follow and add to the surrealist movement by combining realistic elements in an unrealistic, dreamlike or surrealistic way - butterflies and birds surrounding people, distorted or misused objects, strange size scales, etc...

Part 2:

1. The image displays a man walking a tight-rope balancing a brain and a heart on a stick, with a white-and-blue void in the background. "The Balance" is largely dominated by the heart and mind, then the man in black and the rope, then contrastive empty blue and white space.

   
   

2. The different light and sizing in the image provide a sense of space, the man and his balancing stick are close and the rest of the seeming void is farther away from the viewer. As well as this, the background is a gradient of dark and light blues and white, completely contrastive of the frontward red heart, pink brain and dressed-in-black man. While all elements are all real, they are composed in a way that is impossible, dreamlike; surreal. Eyes instantly take to the heart, brain and man.

   
   

3. The focus on a man balancing a mind and heart creates a metaphorical understanding in the reader that the man is balancing his thoughts and feelings on a matter or throughout life - perhaps we are the person portrayed. The message is likely to find the right place in your balance, or designed because Christian needed to find this balance somewhere on whatever matter.