Contemporary Surrealistic Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (support base). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous.

-via Wikipedia

Painting is one of the most versatile mediums in visual art. It is also a highly personal medium. Painting styles are as varied and idiosyncratic as the artists themselves.

And so it is with surrealistic painting.

Contemporary surrealistic painting ranges from the nearly photographic dreamscapes of Jacek Yerka and Mark Ryden, to the abstract surrealism of Mohammad Zaza, from scribbles on linen to highly detailed horror artists like HR Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, to visionary artists like Alex Grey and Rudolf Hausner attempting to visualize the spiritual world or religious experience.

Stephen Gibb

Last Modified August 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Artist Statement

I imagine a world where the visually rich language of fairy tales and nursery rhymes extends into adulthood. The traditional nature of this kind storytelling is best presented with visual aids; simple, straightforward text accompanied by fantastic illustrations. In our culture, this is a conventional part of our collective upbringing and experience. These stories often convey lessons, which are coded in familiar, symbolic language, and are likely where we first encounter metaphor and allegory.

We carry these symbolic codes into adulthood—like wolf equals bad, pig equals good. The narratives I deliver in my paintings utilize this common trove of visual references; however with more mature and timely messages.

The intertwined relationship between language and image has always guided me in constructing my artwork—using visual puns, symbolic themes and literal translations from words into paintings. Often the compositions and assemblies of characters seem to clash in a surreal incongruence, but on some level, they relate by a verbal association or some idiomatic commonality. My aim is to exploit these visual conventions and present something visually arousing with dynamic color and compelling content.

The level of “payoff” sophistication that the viewer “gets” from the paintings is relative to their own personal experience and history. There may be universal themes revealed, and there may be idiosyncratic dead ends. There is no correct reading of the images other than what the viewer extracts on their own. Even my opinion and the depth of what they mean to me may change from day to day.

Biography

Stephen Gibb lives and works in the small town of Amherstburg, in southern Ontario, Canada and maintains a second studio in Windsor. He earned a B.F.A. in visual arts from the University of Windsor and is currently represented by the St. Germain gallery in Toronto. Among the cities he has exhibited in are San Diego, Sacramento, and Hollywood— the hotbed of California’s Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism community. His work is collected around the globe and has gained widening interest since working on the album art for hip hop artist Trippie Redd.

Links:

facebook.com/bubblegumsurrealism/
instagram.com/stephengibbart/
stephengibb.com/gallery/

Nam Das

Last Modified August 15, 2019 Leave a Comment

Nam Das (b.1989) creates visual stories by arranging figurative elements like an assemblage forming a central idea. An idea which plays around the different archetypes of the collective unconscious or mythologems observed throughout history.

He began to work as a full-time painter at the start of 2019.

Sites:

https://hnamdas.wixsite.com/paintings
https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1229023
https://www.instagram.com/thenamdas/

Allen Linder

Last Modified August 13, 2019 Leave a Comment

Artist Statement

Whether creating sculptures or paintings, it is a desire to fall deeper and deeper into my imagination that compels me. A desire to be surprised to discover what I am actually dwelling upon in the often obscured parts of my being. I like to strip away at what arises in my vision until it makes a kind of complete sense although I may not understand it quite yet. I work until the image somehow resonates with my life and speaks of something that I actually know through experience. It must be real in my life to hold any lasting interest for me. I have sometimes thought that I am taking what is ordinary and extraordinary in my life and refocusing it through a lens of symbolic form. That way it can speak to me on all levels at once. I never think too long on a title for I simply call it what it is.

About

Allen Linder has been a nationally exhibiting fine artist for over 30 years.

Please direct all inquiries to lindersculpture@gmail.com

Biography

Thinking In Stone:

Employing the archaic philosophy and methodology of direct carving, Allen Linder sculpts contemporary artifacts—solid works embodying the present, extolling life and preserving the human spirit.

The act of carving and grinding away at stone, wax and bronze is an intuitive practice: ideas and images stimulated by life events emerge from Linder’s subconscious mind. The objects are a complete syntheses of his personal narrative and mythology, directly connected to the awe, beauty, joy and mystery of daily existence, namely the infinite possibility of experience and personhood. There are many narratives present; the work is left open and becomes a sort of spiritual fiction.

Linder “feels his way into form” in search of its center. His ideas play on a single scientific and spiritual metaphor: the need for resistance. The result of his process is hyperbolic sculpture in which content and form unite to distill existential thought using timeless, figurative gesture.

His sculptures explore physicality, the purity of material, and the construction of tactile, illusory awareness through his own psychological and transcendent reality. His work is at once somber and playful, comical and sublime, the posturing symbolic of life.

Links:

https://www.lindersculpture.com
http://www.facebook.com/lindersculpture
https://www.instagram.com/maninfreefall/
https://www.saatchiart.com/lindersculpture

Chris Leib

Last Modified August 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Artist Statement

Chris Leib examines our precarious path started long ago, through his cast of wise, tolerant bonobos and rambunctious astronaut children. While seemingly whimsical, the paintings are laden with hidden meaning and explore themes of heroism, Western folklore, and the schism of instinct and control. Weaving through the meticulous detail in these paintings, threads of symbols and narrative point to a collision trajectory of power, privacy and technology that threatens our delicate position in the evolutionary scheme.

Chris Leib is an American fine artist and graduate of anthropology, renowned for his iconography of bonobo chimps and astronauts and cosmonauts, often juxtaposed, with exquisite technique and scrupulous attention to detail. Transcending whimsy, his paintings are imbued with meaning and intellectual contemplation. Leib’s work explores themes of heroism, human endeavour and the sensitivity of human hopes and ambitions for possible realities of science-fact. His work challenges us to contemplate a collision of science fiction, reality and religion, this three-car pileup viewed from the vantage point of our evolutionary ancestors, who have quietly continued to evolve themselves.

Chris Leib was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and splits his time between Berlin and California. His father, an artist and teacher, encouraged him to draw from an early age. His love of science fiction and Star Trek was incubated in the 1970s in a dark basement while he watched black and white TV; his interest in primates began at the University of California Berkeley, where he studied anthropology. After college, while working as a furniture mover, he answered an ad seeking people who could sketch. Four months later, he was offered a job as an illustrator. He later studied at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, after which he apprenticed with the Italian portrait painter Roberto Lupetti. During this time he also began working as an illustrator for McGraw-Hill Publishing and exhibiting paintings.

Leib has exhibited his artwork across the United States as well as in Germany, France, Denmark and Australia. His art has been positively reviewed in Hi-Fructose magazine, Huffington Post, Kunst Magazin (Berlin), Supersonic Electronic, Village Voice, Beautiful Bizarre, and HEY! magazine. Leib has twice been an Artist in Residence at the De Young Museum in San Francisco and has received competitive grants from the George Sugarman Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission. His work can be found in important public and private collections in the United States and Europe.

Links

chrisleib.com
Chris Leib Prints
facebook.com/ChrisLeibArt
instagram.com/chrisleibart

Ruedi Eichenberger

Last Modified August 7, 2019 Leave a Comment

Ruedi Eichenberger is a Swiss abstract surrealist painter whose atmospheric landscapes straddle the boundaries of the symbolism and the abstract.

Artist Statement

Wallpaper patterns, plasterwork or just doodles have always animated my fantasies. I’ve recognized paintings in them and lost myself in the surreal world. Back in my childhood, those were the first contacts with surrealism.

When I was going to school, I used to draw doodles and sketches into my school books. It often started with a simple line that got embellished, shaded and like that everything found its place. One after another.

Letting things create themselves is an important step in my working. I start working without any plans, I let it arise. I don’t work with deadlines, the painting is finished when everything is its right place and I’m satisfied with the painting. I often only realize what it represents when I’m finished.

My goal is to represent the tremendous expressiveness of nature through my paintings. The power and strength of the wind, the dryness of the ground and even the humid air before a thunderstorm. In my eyes, nature is the mightiest of all artworks.

That’s when I combine nature with opposing motives. Surreal elements arise and join in.

First, the canvas is worked on with acrylic followed by multiple layers of oil paint. I mix the surreal and abstract with the intent to create an atmosphere.

I see my paintings as a window, through which you can glimpse another world.