Shane Devries

Shane Devries' cute-as-fuck pop Surrealism, because sometimes everything is ok.

Chris Aerfeldt

 

Chris Aerfeldt is one of the best painters dealing with nostalgia today (and that's saying something!). By recombining photos, toys and her parents recollections of their native Estonia she creates these dream-scapes. I think a lot of children of migrants will look at these and feel an instant kinship. Throughout their childhoop their parents have projected the land of their birth into this fairytale place- a utopia hybridized from their best memories. Aerfeldt puts this down on canvas, and the result is sadly absurd, but the beautiful rendering stops you from feeling too bad about having had the fantasy.

Adam Tullie

 

Even if Primitivism is dead (and a bit racist), Adam Tullie's drawings are still good.

Alice Leonards

 

 

Drawings with a faulty selection tool by net artist Alice Leonards

David Keeling

 

I'm a fan of David Keeling's newer work (the ones above were done in 2005), but there's something so great about these garage-sale still lifes.

Keeling is primarily interested in the environment and conservation- most of his paintings extremely naturalist, delicate forests. Keep a particular eye out for tiny leaf-shaped landscapes suspended from the tips of gum branches.

Sam Weber

 

More illustration, this time by Sam Weber. Sometimes I think it's too easy to relegate the really good ideas that happen in illustrator's work to the 'just pretty pictures' basket. This is an attitude you bump into a lot around 'serious' artists- just illustration, too graphic, too detailed.

And to some extent I agree. Like that top one, a poster Weber did for a theater production. 

The blossom things bother me. Why are they there? So do the PS filters and faux-scratching. But to ignore the good things happening is just ridiculous. It's only when a piece is nothing but prettiness that it should be designated a failure, I reckon.

BLU

 

I debated with myself whether BLU was obscure enough to warrant a post. After all, millions of people have probably seen MUTO, the incredible wall animation done in an abandoned building.

Still, why not, I guess. 

BLU's walls are elastic and sprawling. They never seem constrained by a particular thematic direction (borfyou, Isoe etc.) and their messages are never embarrassingly obvious (Banksy :p). Maybe there are way more inspiring people further underground, but hey I don't really know that much about street stuff. I just likes what I likes. Sorry if that sounds disrespectful.