Karin Jurick

            Karin Jurick is a painter known for her works of patrons viewing artwork in galleries. She paints many other different subjects as well such as people reading, still life, and animals. Jurick originally wanted to become an illustrator. However, after both of her parents’ deaths she had the weight of owning their shop. She stopped doing art for about 15 years until recently in 2004 when she began painting and selling her work on eBay. This has helped her to own her own gallery.

            Her paintings are based off of photographs of people in moments of time. She is self taught and did not attend school because of her parents’ shop. Jurick is part of the Daily Painting Movement where she posts daily, small, and affordable paintings on a blog.

            I love her work because she is able to capture beauty in something so simple in daily life, like a person drinking wine at a restaurant or a couple admiring a work of art. It is a reminder that the people in her paintings are everyday folk that you could see just about anywhere. She is able to take an ordinary moment and give it more life.

Susan Abbott

            Susan Abbott is a painter born in Takoma Park, Maryland. She grew up in an art environment, seeing the art scene in Washington DC and with her father being a graphic designer. Abbott would spend her free time as a child drawing, painting, and reading art books. She attended the Maryland Institute’s College of Art to study painting. Afterwards, she studied printmaking in Iowa. Since then, she has been a full time artist. Her work has been exhibited all over the country. She has even been commissioned by Oprah Winfrey. Currently, she lives in Vermont.

            Many of her drawings consist of landscapes from places that she has visited all around the world. They are mainly just studies of light and how color interacts with the environment. Abbott’s work can be seen as somewhat more abstract that observational since some of the lines can be ambiguous. Her work has been described as Modernism. Abbott’s most recent work consists of landscapes around her home in Vermont.

            Her work somewhat reminds me of Thiebaud’s landscape paintings in that they use saturated colors and the way she uses smooth brushstrokes. They also capture certain nostalgia for American Life that Thiebaud is always able to capture so well.

Jim Holland

            Jim Holland was born in 1955 in Schenectady, New York. He was first inspired by art from looking through his parents’ art history books as a child. Holland attended Dutchess Community College with a degree in Graphic Design. After school he worked as a graphic designer and then a few years later decided to paint full time. His inspiration comes from artists like Edward Hopper. Currently he resides in Massachusetts.

            His artwork consists mainly of tranquil landscapes and interiors. He would paint scenes from trips he went on (such as a trip to Cape Cod). The spaces that he recreates are stripped down to a bare minimum in order to give a sense of solitude, such as that of Hopper’s work. Holland plays with use of lighting and color to alter the mood in each piece. His artwork has been displayed all over the United States and Europe.

            I love his work because of the isolation in each piece. I love how he plays with natural lighting and is able to create a narrative even though each painting is devoid of any living thing. I think it is amazing how much lighting can change the mood in a piece.

Monica Cook

            Monica Cook was born in 1974 in Dalton, Georgia. She attended the Savannah College of Art and Design for painting and also went to several other schools. Currently she resides in New York City making a living off of her artwork and creating murals. Cook’s work has been shown in galleries all over the world.

            Her most recent work shows oil paintings of women (Cook acts as her own model) covered and tangled in food, such as fish and fruit, creating a sense of repulsion and eroticism. She chooses food that is slimey and food that reminds her of human flesh. The paintings show off a primal sense of compulsion in humanity. The glazed skin from food and sweat and saliva are physical expressions of emotion. The expressions on the women’s faces range from emptiness to an elated smile. These impulses and emotions are what Cook wants to bring out in her artwork because it’s something that people try so hard to cover up. I find her work inspiring because it lingers in between aspects of beauty and something grotesque. 

Lauren Kaelin

            Lauren Kaelin creates oil paintings of internet memes from Grumpy Cat to the Dramatic Gopher. Kaelin is from Brooklyn and graduated from Smith College. Her artwork is inspired by the Walter Benjamin theory that art loses its value with reproduction. She does the exact opposite of this theory and paints images that we have seen dozens of times. The first meme she painted was the Ikea Monkey. She posted it onto Facebook and got such an overwhelming response to it, possibly because it is easily recognizable or because she took a meme and gave it some elevation. From there, she painted more she was already familiar with and then some that were gaining popularity that would make the series more complete. I find her paintings to be fun and a more modern form of Pop Art.

Cara Thayer and Louie Van Patten

Cara and Louie Collaboratively Painting

            Cara Thayer and Louie Van Patten are two painters that actually collaborate together to create a single piece of artwork. Their goal is to create works that look unified as if done by only one artist. Painting alone is difficult enough but two artists painting on a canvas seems much more complex. They create subjects mainly of the human skin. The figures are shown in a traditional way but under modern (florescent) lighting giving it an updated appearance.

            Thayer was born in 1981 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Van Patten was born in 1985 and received an Associates degree from the Des Moines Area Community College.

            Watching the video of them collaborate on the piece is pretty awesome because of the fact that they actually paint on the canvas at the same time, which was unexpected. The link is above and I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

            I find the fact that they are so young to be an inspiring factor. Seeing all these artists who have been creating for forty years or more can seem intimidating. However, these two artists have shown that it is possible at any age to have solo exhibitions and make a living off of art. 

Ben Schonzeit

            Ben Schonzeit is a painter born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. He currently resides in New York City and has received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union. Ben has been a huge part of the SoHo movement in the 1960s as well as the Hyperrealist movement during the 1970s. His artwork has been displayed in hundreds of exhibitions and shows.

            When he was younger, he first found his inspiration from the National Geographic magazines that he would find at his aunt and uncle’s home. Many of his drawings that he started out with are from the magazines he collected.

            His work ranges from Hyperrealism to Surrealism. His subjects vary from food, still life, animals, and flowers. Schonzeit’s acrylic paintings can be completed in a mere day or can span across months. His paintings are made at very large scales.

            I think his work is interesting because of the amount of detail captured. Adding such detail helps to remind the viewer why we are attracted to those objects in the first place. I also love his variety in subject choice. His work looks like photographs, which can especially be seen in his series of flower paintings that appear to be blurry, like a camera out of focus.