►Michael Aaron Williams - Portraits Painted with Coffee

►Artist Michael Aaron Williams has been working on a beautiful series of portraits painted with coffee on found sheets of used ledger paper that dates back to the 1920s and 30s.

►Shintaro Ohata - Sculpture and Canvas to 3D Paintings

►When first viewing the artwork of Shintaro Ohata up close it appears the scenes are made from simple oil paints, but take a step back and you’re in for a surprise. Each piece is actually a hybrid of painted canvas and sculpture that blend almost flawlessly in color and texture to create a single image. The cinematic figures are sculpted from polystyrene while the backgrounds are made from traditional painting techniques. 

Via his artist statement:

Shintaro Ohata is an artist who depicts little things in everyday life like scenes of a movie and captures all sorts of light in his work with a unique touch: convenience stores at night, city roads on rainy day and fast-food shops at dawn etc. His paintings show us ordinary sceneries as dramas. He is also known for his characteristic style; placing sculptures in front of paintings, and shows them as one work, a combination of 2-D and 3-D world. He says that it all started from when he wondered "I could bring the atmosphere or dynamism of my paintings with a more different way if I place sculptures in front of paintings". Many viewers tend to assume that there is a light source set into his work itself because of the strong expression of lights in his sculpture.

►Adam Hunter Caldwell - Evoking paintings

►Adam Hunter Caldwell, born 1963 Framingham, Massachusetts. Education BFA with honors CCAC in 1998.

Artist's Statement...

My paintings and drawings juxtapose elements of abstract expressionism and classical figuration. During my training at the California College of Arts and Crafts, I began to create collage drawings that layered disparate images on top of one another; I now use oil paint in a similar way, starting with an abstract background and then adding more photo-realistic details, allowing the work to dictate its own construction. The resulting palimpsest of figures and abstract shapes represents the conflicted and paradoxical emotions that underlie my work. My paintings evoke the tensions between mind and body, self and other, present and past. They also raise questions about the nature of identity, particularly concerning issues of gender and sexuality. I am deeply concerned about the world around me, and my work reflects my reactions to social issues such as war and consumerism by contrasting images from American advertisements and popular culture with images of rituals from around the world. 

The eclectic nature of my work reflects my wide range of interests and influences. My figurative painting and drawing has been influenced by the realistic yet expressive work of Odd Nerdrum, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Antonio López García, Jenny Saville, and Barron Storey, whom I studied under at CCAC. Theories of consciousness by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett have also informed my art work. I am inspired by my grandfather, author Erskine Caldwell, and his commitment to representing the unseen and marginalized members of our society. I am also heavily influenced by music, movies, and comics, all of which have shaped my identity. I am an accomplished guitarist and martial artist, and these disciplines also inform my artistic perspective. 

One of my most important areas of inspiration is the community of artists I surround myself with. Painting in particular can be a very lonely and isolating practice, so I make a point to attend drawing groups and I share studio space with David Choong Lee. Although the process can be solitary, I paint to commune with others and allow them entrance into my interiority. Painting connects me to my world and times and culture. I always hope to create work that will invoke in someone else the feelings I have had before great art. 

http://www.adamhuntercaldwell.com 

►Spunky Zoe - Captivating mixed media

►Spunky Zoe (Seungyea Park) is an artist based out of South Korea. Spunky Zoe creates large scale pieces using mere ball-point pens and acrylic on paper.

►Vanessa Dakinsky - Anecdotes of everyday life

►Vanessa Dakinsky is an artist based out of France. Dakinsky creates interesting oil on canvas paintings that comes straight out of her unique art world.

"Through painting lens, I explore undefined spaces, mixing realistic elements with dreamy ones. My work comes from combinations, like an echo between anecdotes of everyday life, my obsessive taste for pictures and a more general curiosity for contemporary mythologies and life. Each painting is a living place for contradictory elements. I avoid to simplify or reduce, and prefer opening the enigmae, shady scenes, their reverberations."

 http://www.vanessadakinsky.com/

►Lou Ros - Non aesthetic painting

►Lou Ros, 26, began painting at the age of 17. Based in Paris, France, he started with graffiti for fun with friends which soon became a real addiction to him. His art represents the visible and not so visible worlds. With paint brush in his hands colors fly, dance and rejoice with pleasure and passion. Learning to paint without going through an art school, Lou felt the limits of his street art, admitting himself that:

"There is an ethics of aesthetic beauty and repetition that eventually bores me. Painting beautiful is boring, while making a painting that has strength is quite another thing. So I started painting at home. "