Strange but beautiful.

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Mark Ryden is more than a genius painter. Mark Ryden is a period in art. You have classicism, neo-classicism, impressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism, Mark Ryden, pop art, dadaism, and whatever else. That's how it is, friends.






















Mark Ryden has this carefully crafted and balanced universe inside his mind, which he is currently mapping, painting by painting. He deftly mingles with themes of the beautifully macabre, the childish, the absurd, the grotesque and the fragile, in the same delicate way that a swiss maître horloger would craft the elaborate machinery of a miniature clock.

Each scene, each character he creates, is part of an odd story that one could never tell - yet a story nonetheless. When looking at his paintings, you cannot do anything but admire each of the incoporated elements: whether it's joy, fear, sadness, the stark austère pause of a bleeding child inside a 1800's portrait or a strange animal crying in a little girl's hand in a wistful countryside scene -- for a few minutes there, Mark Ryden owns you.
























Here's an excerpt from Mark Ryden's website : "Upon first glance Ryden’s work seems to mirror the Surrealists’ fascination with the subconscious and collective memories. However, Ryden transcends the initial Surrealists’ strategies by consciously choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation. His dewy vixens, cuddly plush pets, alchemical symbols, religious emblems, primordial landscapes and slabs of meat challenge his audience not necessarily with their own oddity but with the introduction of their soothing cultural familiarity into unsettling circumstances. Viewers are initially drawn in by the comforting beauty of Ryden’s pop-culture references, then challenged by their circumstances, and finally transported to the artist’s final intent – a world where creatures speak from a place of childlike honesty about the state of mankind and our relationships with ourselves, each other and our past."

Mark Ryden has produced some album covers for the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("One Hot Minute") and Michael Jackson ("Dangerous"), and even has a theme CD, appropriate for the contemplation of his "blood" series, or something like that (Music For Mark Ryden's Blood, on Amazon).

If you want to buy a great book about Ryden, I recommend The Art Of Mark Ryden: Anima Mundi, available on Amazon.

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The first sentence in the "info" part of the Shinybinary website is "Nik Ainley is a UK based web designer who also has a passion for producing personal art and illustrations. After teaching himself Photoshop in his spare time while gaining a degree in physics at Imperial College London...". Now wait a second here. This guy actually taught himself Photoshop "in his spare time" while educating in rocket science, and is now producing incredible illustration work using software (which he probably taught himself as well) like 3D Studio max, Cinema 4D, Bryce, Poser and Xara 3D ? Became listed as the "Top 10 up-and-coming creative talents of 2006" by Computer Arts magazine? Made the top covers of many popular books, websites and magazines ?

Now I call that genius. Talented genius. And there's no denial that, from the care and detail shown in his work, our man truly has passion for what he does.

Nik creates carefully crafted environments, well-defined by any superlative in the dictionnary of modernism. Some creations feature mechanized portraits in knot-like metallic arrays, others feature strange abstract nebulas that loom inside a dark atmosphere, or gigantic cumuli-type clouds in colourful spaces. Waltzing from the abstract to the representative, Nik Ainley seems to have a sculptor's imagination, trapped inside the mind of a crazy impressionist painter.



The results are impressive indeed. Wait no more and check out Shinybinary.

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Funky, powerfully explicit and vibrant colors, images filled with life and almost vibrating elements, social statements and opinionated imagery - sometimes just feelings, sometimes more figurative - and masterpieces you could see gracing the inside of any self-respecting bar in Shibuya, Tokyo - this describes (in surface) the art of Drew Flaherty.



Drew points to this link in his F.A.Q. : Lucid Dreaming - this state of dreaming while knowing you are dreaming - which I found to be most interesting. I take it he inspires himself from lucid dreams (funny, because I had one last night...crazy how we are all connected somehow) to create his highly expressive art - and it truly pays off. I like how he mingles with different media, and how his creations are easy on the eyes, and absorb you inside different little universes.

Drew is available for hire, and he sure is a name I'll keep in my little black book. Check out Drew's website here.

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Here's the online portfolio of artist/illustrator David Foldvari, from UK. Most of his (quite inspired) work features monotint illustration, making use of shadow and light techniques - sparsely visited by inspired colour interventions. Just like I did, you might already recognize some attempts at imitating his style from various sources, nowadays. And yet, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the poet said - and I'm sure he takes it all in good sport. Or he sues the bastards. Who knows :)

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I don't know Serge Seidlitz personally, yet I'm sure I could draw a quick portrait of the man: loves confusion, grotesque and absurdity, mixed with flavourful, colourful and vibrant illustration. Loves homemade stuff. Probably has been smoking a bong or two, if only in dreams, with people like Andy Warhol, Terry Gilliam, or anyone working at Rolling Stone magazine - all that while listening to Liz Phair, White Stripes, The Rolling Stones themselves and The Kinks. He must have a crazy sense of humor. His mind must be like this huge toybox in which you throw stuff as kid, and re-discover when you're 30 or so. But like, everyday.

Of course, this is all subjective. But what's not is the work this man produces: you can feel creativity bursting from every stitch, everywhere in there. He's done stuff for MTV, Cingular, Computer Arts, Fused Magazine, Honda, The Cartoon Network, and more. I just look through his stuff and it gives me the profound need to DO MORE.

I call that brain food.

Visit Serge Seidlitz's place here.

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This is simply awesome. At TypeDrawing, you get to create your own crazy bauhaus/80s design type drawing, using a simple and intelligent interface. This is the perfect example of "creating an artistic experience" for the user. In advertising or in art, I salute things that create experiences for people, that draw people inside new horizons they didn't expect to see, and help them connect more neurones together for increased thought harmony. Wow. That sounded good. And I didn't smoke.

Create your own piece of typographic art! Visit TYPEDRAWING.

This is what internet is about. TV shows you can manipulate.

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Today is officially Inspiration Day : where, for no particular reason, I celebrate talent in design and art direction by showing some great work from around the world. You might also consider this some sort of aspirational endeavor to push forward every people's ideas and visions on art and communication.

Without any further oscar-emcee comments, let me start with Virtual Hitman Designs. I actually stumbled on this site by pure chance, and I must say the work there is nothing short of inspirational. Urban themes, unknown faces, consumerism themes, expressive gestures upon silhouttes - sometimes dark, sometimes beautiful. All this composes the oeuvre of Virtual Hitman Designs. To paraphrase a great critic of this first 21st century, mr. Peter Griffin: "This is freakin' sweet".

Check out Virtual Hitman Designs here.

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