Baseman & Kehoe

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In a strong attempt to crawl back some creativity into my life, after another terrible week at work, I decided to make the most of living in New York's dense gallery area and get some culture. Of course because of work I missed Gary Baseman's opening at The Jonathan LeVine Gallery, so Saturday would be my day.

Luckily for me there were two exhibits at the gallery, Baseman's Walking Through Walls and Andy Kehoe Strange Wanderings. There was a great contrast in the artists' work with Gary's almost monochromatic twilight colour scheme, children in ghost and Halloween costumes vs Andy's autumnal fairytale, Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-esque beautiful and painstakingly detailed paintings. Both equally lovely in different ways.

So if you're in the hood, please go and check it out. The exhibitions are on from March 5th to April 2nd, 2011.

Owls Have More Fun

I was recommended by a friend to go to the opening night of Owls Have more Fun, and as soon as I saw the show's title I couldn't agree more, I just had to go! Owls Have...is Lisa Grue's solo show in NYC, at gallery hanahou. The show runs from 25th February - Friday 26th March 2010.

For the show the Danish artist mixes bold neon colours with images of nature (and of course owls a plenty) to create beautiful designs for the home such as a very large rug; 80 one off hand-printed porcelain plates and an enormous custom made wallpaper mural allowing you to submerge into her fantasy world.

I adored the wallpaper and rug but I'd have to say that my favourite was the hand illustrated and printed plates. The contrast of owls, words, nature, neon pom poms with the black and white imagery is just fab. There is also something about seeing objects en masse that I just love.


"Lisa, known for her playful and sometimes shocking illustrations that mix girlishness with feminism, puts her spin on owl and nature motifs, surrounding viewers with a magical world via domestic objects...Lisa's powerful and fun illustrations remind viewers to never forget the magic in everyday life. In addition, they make a statement to girls and women that wisdom and beauty go hand in hand." - gallery hanahou

Lisa's works isn't all owl focused, she has designed many pieces for graphic design, illustration and fashion magazines and labels. However she chose owls as her subject for this show as she wants to encourage women and young girls to "take pride in being clever in general, instead of acting like stupid bunnies to get attention."

Lisa was recently honored as one of the new design talents of Denmark, with a grant from the National Art Foundation of Denmark. To see more of her work check out her website and her blog.

Scott Campbell - illustration exhibition in London, 4th March

There are a few things I miss about London, one of them being the cool illustration exhibitions. I'm sure that there are plenty in this creative hub of an apple, I mean I live right in the gallery district, but I'm talking the small intimate cool exhibitions. Anyways enough about me, let's talk about Scott Campbell.

Scott is a night owl (well I'm presuming he is) as he finds time to create these adorable illustrations as well as holding down a day job making video games! I'm certainly not the only one who likes his stuff as the London Miles Gallery are exhibiting his first European show in March and he'll be doing 2 comic workshops there on the 6th March (from 12.30pm - 4.00pm).


Scott C. (how he also likes to be known) is from San Francisco and now lives in NYC. A man of many talents: international comic book artist, painter, illustrator, and computer game designer...to name a few, will be showcasing over 100 of his watercolour paintings.

His style is light-hearted, often-humorous and his imperfect lines create supernatural creatures.

So go see the Scott Campbell solo exhibition: Everybody, all the Time, Thursday 4th March 2010 from 6pm @ The London Miles Gallery, 47 Mowlem Street (Off Vyner street) East London E2 9DR.

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P.S. Also happening in London is the Oliver Jeffers: In Conversation with Martin Salisbury exhibition with the AOI @ London College of Communication - 19th March 2010 at 2.30pm, Main Lecture Theatre, Elephant and Castle, SE1 6SB.

'This is a rare opportunity to hear the award winning children’s book author, illustrator, artist and New York resident Oliver Jeffers talk about his work and new book The Heart and the Bottle in conversation with children’s book expert Martin Salisbury. The event will comprise of a presentation by Oliver followed by a discussion of his work with Martin Salisbury then the floor will be opened for questions. Tickets will be limited so BOOK NOW.'

Missed Connections

Craiglist's Missed Connections are a good read on their own, but with Sophie Blackall's help they are a delight! For those not familiar with Missed Connections, they are online postings where strangers try and reconnect with someone they had a chance encounter with. They are usually romantic call outs of missed opportunities however Sophie has turned them up a notch by interpreting and bringing life to these random interactions. She has created a very funny series of paintings which are beautifully imaginative and very endearing, click on her blog here to see them. Here are the ones that tickled me the most (click on each of them to appreciate their loveliness):




Sophie Blackall is an Australian who as she put it "moved to New York [Brooklyn of course!] on a whim with her amenable husband and indifferent small children in 2000." She has also illustrated many children's books amongst many other things. She also keeps a blog which she updates showing the latest things she is working on, check it here.

If You Could - Exhibition

If you are in London this weekend then go and check out the If You Could...Collaborate exhibition at the A Foundation Gallery, Rochelle School, London E2 from 15th — 23rd January 2010.

If you could is the brain child of art directors Will Hudson and Alex Bec and this is their 4th annual exhibition. There are some amazing and hugely talented designer/illustrator partnerships and I'm absolutely gutted to be missing it, especially as Craig's work is being exhibited. Here are some of the great collaborations (there are about 33 in total):
Craig Ward, Sean Freeman & Alison Carmichael / Oliver Jeffers & Aaron Ruff / Fontaine Anderson & Deanne Cheuk / Mario Hugo & Micah Lidberg / Anthony Burrill & John Griffiths / Marion Deuchars & Margaret Calvert / George Hardie & Leonardo Sonnoli & Sara Fanelli / Rob Ryan & Michael Marriott / Jim Stoten & Andy Rementer...to mention a few!

The exhibition is a chance for creatives from all four corners of the world to partner (with a person of their choosing, regardless of their discipline) and get out of their comfort zones. It has no doubt challenged the way the artists usually work. There was no brief for this project, except to design something a little unexpected. I can't wait to see photos but here are a few tasters of the Ward, Freeman & Carmichael collabration - a type triptych of laser cut wood...

Check out the If You Could website for more photos.

Félix Girard

Canadian self-taught illustrator and painter, Félix Girand, was born into the artist world. Both mother and father are painters and he spent most of his childhood in a family workshop where he discovered different medias and techniques.

His main subject of choice are fantastical characters that he situates in surrealist backgrounds and landscapes. The strangely distorted character paintings all share similar warm hues and palette, which I thought was perfectly fitting to blog about on this wild and wet day.

There is something very fable about his style and when researching him I've read somewhere that he takes inspiration from comic books and illustrators such as Brian Froud but has lately become influenced by Renaissance painters such as Brueghel, Bosch, Dürer and Vermeer.

Justin Richel - sweet things

If I said to you draw a picture which incorporates cakes, coffee and furniture you'd first probably ask why?! Secondly, you'd probably struggle to think of what to paint, but not for Jersey born Justin Richel. Richel has a thing (I'm told it's almost an obsession) for these 3 strange concoctions, so much so that the main body of his paintings are just that. He also likes to draw birds, portraits, big wigs and history - but never mixes these categories in the same piece. I'm a big fan of cakes myself, so I was immediately drawn to his works. They are all painted in gouche, beautifully intricate and playfully composed. His series entitled 'sweets' is impressive, and I salute him for taking on such a challenge and being strict with his subjects, but annoyingly he makes it look so effortless...See his website and Esty shop for more of his works.

Graham Carter - East Meets West

Wow it has been a loooooonnnggg time since I last blogged. We've finally moved to NYC and settled down and it has taken it out of me more than I thought, so apologies for the lack of postings. Before we left the UK there was so many things I wanted to post from the exhibitions and quirky things I stumbled on, so I will try to keep on top of it now! Not to mention there have been so many fun things that I've found in the Big Apple, so I'm excited to talk about these things too...Anyway, that is enough of my ramblings...

Last week I popped into London to meet a friend for a farewell lunch when I decided to swing by the Conningsby Gallery in the hope of seeing something, and how lucky was I?! There is a lovely exhibit of Graham Carter's work (actually the exhibition finishes tomorrow - 12th September - so definitely work a peek...).

Graham's 'East meets West' exhibit is a homage to his adulthood influences of eastern cultures (such as Japanese mythologies, folklore and design) and childhood inspirations of western cultures (such as 1940s & 50s American comics). He has created some beautiful screenprints and giclee prints for this exhibition as well as some very cool 3D laser cut perspex images mixed with screenprinting (you can't really appreciate it from the photo below).

Whilst there I found myself completely immersed in his fantastical and nostalgic worlds of robots, origami creatures, yeti's, monsters and cute Eskimo styled characters. It was also helped by his choice of lovely muted colour pallets - every print contained no more than 3 or 4 colours. Needless to say we walked out with a print, we just couldn't resist!



I'm really going to miss this gallery, but I know that there are plenty more galleries for me to scope out in my new habitat.

Oliver Jeffers

I received a newsletter the other day from Belfast born, Oliver Jeffers, and that's when I realised that I haven't blogged about one of my all time favourite illustrators/artists/writers - shocking!

Jeffers is very well known for his children's books after winning many awards in 2006 for his second book Lost and Found. His mixed media techniques and paint textures are the elements of his work that I'm most drawn to. His painting style is extremely endearing, simple and sensitively composed.

My personal favourite is the The Incredible Book Eating Boy as I love the attention to detail he has put into it - the hardback book has a bite sized chunk missing from one of the corners; the backgrounds of the pages are made up of old musty books and book pages so that the text is just visible through his paintings. He has also used letraset on his pages, which I really like. It didn't help that when I went to The Illustration Cupboard in London (the worst place for a children's book enthusiast to go) that they had the original paintings from this book available to purchase...much will power was needed that day :(

Check his website out for his other works such as his amazing canvas and found or made object paintings and collages, such as the one below.