Friday, March 6, 2009

little wonders Creative works found on redbubble

About little wonders Blog

The owner of this blog "Damien Mason" browses his way through the redbubble.com arts website looking for amazing and creative works. As he put its his little wonders on canvas, paper, cloth and screen. His blog is a place for him to feature those works and people who inspire him. He has a great selection of art form the redbubble site. Each piece is carefully chosen and show that the author has a good eye for artworks. I urge you to take a look and maybe even visit redbubble and purchase a print of some of his suggested pieces.

Redbubble itself is a great place for amateur and proffessional artist to post there artwork for sale and communicate with others. It feels more grown up and less quirky than Deviant Art, whose audience seems to be mainly very young and alternative.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Three Roads of Artisitc Doom

Some artists are lucky and or skilled enough to be awarded Arts grants, but these grants are awarded by a very small group of people. So then an artist has to pander to the whims of these arts grant gods, producing art they hope will be what the current gods deem worthy. Being held up as the high art, yet knowing much of what they do is often derided by the masses and then finally thrown aside for the next big thing. With some luck they will have picked up enough money along the way not to have to make art for the critic and finally to make something they really wanted, only to find out no one likes the new thing. Not the critics and not the public.

Or to go the other route and attempt to appeal to the public and gain success in the hostile and cut-throat world of commerce, making art that sells to all, trying to keep some integrity, but knowing that the last painting was sold because it was just the right size and suited the customers new sofa and curtains. Working 50% of there time promoting and selling themselves.

Or do you take the third way where the art is made, but never designed for sale, and is rarely sold. Galleries taking hanging fees for the work they know won’t sell, yet the fees pay their rent and gives the gallery a bohemian feel. The Artist poring life saving and sanity into working, with only a romantic view that at some point in the far far distant future they are held up as a great master? But ultimately most of it will just be thrown out and left for the dustmen.

Meng Qiu

Review of Artist Meng Qiu Site.

The first page you get to is an opening page, devoid of anything other than the spinning graphic and only serves to waste time getting to the actual site. Once inside you are at first greeted with a bright, but well designed page, nicely laid out and professional looking. The site however is full of slightly odd witting of a semi-spiritual nature. Not quiet the impenetrable ramblings of the post-modernist. But it's certainly hard to follow and seemly made to give the art work some kind of validity. It's unclear if the artist wants to be a painter or a poet. But neither quiet hits the mark. The poems and ramblings fail to make the work any more appealing and in some ways serve as just a distraction and space filler. The work is interesting, but there is far far to little of it. The coloured paintings remind me of those children's colouring books, that start out black and a special pen removes the black to reveal the colours below. Given time this style could emerge into something better, but it does not yet feel like it's matured. With only three paintings on display its hard. The Print page, shows just the one idea that is essentially dull, semi abstract photography made blue and printed, and better examples of this kind of work can be seen in many other places, and executed far better by others. The page "collections" seems to be an odd and ends section and doesn't really tell me anything other than the artist has some sketches they uploaded.
In conclusion we are faced with another self elevated artist offering a few works but asking for far too much for them with the added insult giving change of $1 when buying his work for £10,000. A price I doubt anyone with any sense would pay for an "emerging artist" in these times of economic downturn.