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Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

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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.

Interview with Face-Melting Visionary Artist Vincent Fink

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Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store. This is part 3 in a 3 part series. We have previously covered Vincent Fink’s Iterations project and his Atlas Metamorphosis Project.

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Surrealism Today: Where were you born?
Vincent Fink: Houston, TX

Surrealism Today: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Vincent Fink: A Renaissance Man. Like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

Surrealism Today: Is there an artwork here you are most proud of? Why?
Vincent Fink: I am usually most proud of my most recent work because I am always improving and pushing myself to be better. But I would have to say out of the Iterations, 77: A Fleshy Facade, A Cryptic Charade because its the most surreal and strange. It was also the largest at 4ft x 5ft and was a commission piece based off a sketch I doodled for fun, never intending it to be a large painting, so it really stretched me in new directions I want to continue to explore. And for Atlas Metamorphosis, I’d say Stage 1 of 4: Emperor Egg cause it was the last piece in a Tetralogy that took almost 10 years to complete. Feels good to have that kind of closure.

Surrealism Today: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? What is the worst?
Vincent Fink: The best advice is definitely this: to work hard and find a mentor. Don’t wait for inspiration or the right time, just get to work. The worst advice was to take it easy and just let things happen. Nothing ever happens, or not much when you aren’t pushing at 100%.

Surrealism Today: Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?
Vincent Fink: My father, because he was my hero.

Surrealism Today: Where is your favorite place? Where is home?
Vincent Fink: Wherever I can truly be me. For now that seems to be my studio. I moved back into the house I grew up in for now, and it sometimes doesn’t feel like home anymore. I don’t think I have a home other than wherever I am. As long as there’s shelter from the rain. I would rather be constantly moving but that is not feasible at this juncture.

Surrealism Today: Who are your biggest influences?
Vincent Fink: Rene Magritte, M.C. Esher, Rob Gonsalves, Peter Gric, Alex Grey, Mark Ryden, Marion Peck, H.R.
Giger.

Surrealism Today: What wouldn’t you do without?
Vincent Fink: A pencil and lots of paper. A guitar.

Surrealism Today: What is your dream project?
Vincent Fink: I want to make Atlas Metamorphosis
books and eventually movies, among many outlandish ideas.

Surrealism Today: What’s your favorite artwork?
Vincent Fink: I think this might be impossible to answer.

Surrealism Today: What is currently on your playlist?
Vincent Fink: A lot of people say they listen to everything, but then I ask if they like Death Metal and they say no.
I actually listen to every kind of music but I lean heavily towards
metal and rock. I have been jamming Vivaidi, Cannibal Corpse,
David Bowie, Scars on Broadway, Lotus Effect, Bon Jovi, Jonathan Davis/Korn, to name a few… I listen to my own songs too.

Surrealism Today: What are your last three Google searches?
Vincent Fink: I don’t use Google anymore because they spy, sell your info, and rig the search results to hide things they don’t want you to find. So I use a safe search engine and I suggest everyone do the same. I use
DuckDuckGo or Startpage. I have been researching galleries, finding more ways to make a living doing art such as finding patrons, so it would definitely be something related to that.

Surrealism Today: What gives you life?
Vincent Fink: Creating something beautifully different that
I’ve never seen done before. Expanding my knowledge of useful
subjects. Also, being one with nature. I love the great outdoors
and want to start Decentralizing my life by learning to live off the
land a bit more. I think it is important to become self-sustaining
and not depend on any government to take care of you.

Surrealism Today: What is your superpower? Kryptonite?
Vincent Fink: I have an infinite amount of ideas and ways of expressing myself. It is also my kryptonite because it makes it hard to focus on one thing or to do the analytical work that it takes to successfully run an art business. So I have to tame my creativity while extracting the best out of it. I have more ideas than I can ever get to, so I have to be selective.

Surrealism Today: If you could visit any artist’s studio, whose would you visit and why?
Vincent Fink: Peter Gric. His house looks fabulous.

Surrealism Today: What was the last thing you bought?
Vincent Fink: Art supplies. Always. That’s about all I ever ask for.

Surrealism Today: What is your favorite piece of clothing?
Vincent Fink: My Point506 hoodie or one of my many Point506 T-shirts. It’s all about that .506 gear.

Surrealism Today: What is hanging on your walls at home?
Vincent Fink: I have a lot of small local artist’s work. My favorite originals are by my deceased friend and amazing artist Michel Draper. Also, I love my Kevin Peterson giclee print of the painting he did that got used for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album cover for The Getaway. Kevin has a studio right down the hall from me and gave me some excellent advice about how to advance into galleries a few years back so I have great respect for him.

Surrealism Today: We all love a movie night, so what is your favorite film of all time?
Vincent Fink: Either The Matrix or Waking Life. I like movies that change the way you see the world. Ones that open the 3rd eye. You are never the same after those movies.

Surrealism Today: What is your favorite art gallery in the world and why?
Vincent Fink: I would say Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome and London because they seem to have the best in surrealism today. I am under a consultancy with their owner, so you might see my work there at some point. Her professional advice has been invaluable. But for now, I have to give it to Corey Helford Gallery in L.A. for the same reason but also because they have actually dared to have my work in a show later this year!

Surrealism Today: If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and why?
Vincent Fink: Other than dead people, I would love to collab with Mark Ryden on something like a public art sculpture. I was influenced by his
Dodecahedron when I made my 1st and 2nd Dodecahedron, the 2nd of which is temporarily on display at Heights Blvd. in Houston until this December. Large-scale geometric public art poses a huge challenge for me but it is extremely rewarding to pull off. Having created it also spawned my new performance art series inside the structure in response to the Covid-19 lockdown. I can only imagine what Ryden and I would cook up together. It would be insane!
Or Peter Gric because I think I would learn a lot from brushing shoulders with someone who has such a refined process to his art. I think we would see a little more eye to eye and connect more as humans so it would probably work better with him.

Surrealism Today: What is next for you?
Vincent Fink: So many things are on the horizon its hard to isolate what is next. I am pivoting in light of the lockdown so hopefully, that won’t cause me to just become an off-grid quaker, but as far as projects go; I’m refining my process and developing a new series of work that will synthesize everything I’ve done in the past into something fresh and different, yet at the same time, more consistent. I recently started experimenting with 3D software again so I’m thinking about stuff like augmented reality, but we’ll see if I ever get to that. Even though I’m ever sharpening my focus I still foresee more multimedia works of public art, murals, performance art, clothing design, tech-based stuff like animation, and sculptural/3D works. But definitely more shows featuring the drawings and paintings I’m working on right now.

This year is still my year in spite of all the chaos. This decade is ours to make of it what we want. I want to look back on this decade as the time when I finally put it all together and worked hard enough to make something truly marvelous that helped elevate the human condition.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all had that
mindset?

Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store.

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Vincent Fink: Surrealistic Iterations

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Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store.

Shop Vincent Fink Prints

Artist Statement

In the pursuit to better redefine modern surrealism, I often find myself indulging in the vibrancy of color and concise composition with flaring elements of Sacred Geometry. The same level of intense detail is implored in all of my work but this series attempts to focus on the singularity and realism of the objects in my visions. I want to convey the world through another dimension: To see the hidden geometry that makes up everything in the universe. My education in 3D animation comes back in a surprising way as I break down complex organisms into their most basic shapes much like polygon modeling.

Allowing myself to fully run free in my mind, I travel to any environment or vacuum my heart desires. I am traveling everywhere I want to go, so I can be closer to my dreams and become better at actualizing them. This project has been an awakening of my true self that needed all previous lessons to attain.

Iterations have proven to be my strongest vehicle for exploring my fascination with shapes and dreamlike imagery via oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and panel. Dreams represent a higher dimension of consciousness to me, documented by Edgar Casey to be a medium of infinite insight, problem-solving and premonition. It seems only natural for one to explore this realm of higher consciousness on a 2 dimensional medium with the higher spacial dimensions, where Platonic Solids, Archemedian Solids and other geometries seem to unlock a representation of the underlying structure of nature.

The work also has hidden implications to the impact of evolution and attaining knowledge, for better or worse. We yield so much potential with recent discoveries, but as a race, we seem to be struggling with the same concerns of our ancestors. Survival is an on-going theme in my work especially in the face of misused information. I’m concerned with the persistence of imbalance in a technological age that could unite the world in abundance. The artwork will definitely cause a lot of progressive thinking and discussion about the unification of art and science, power and knowledge, predator and prey.

My goal is to blend the surreal with the real. To walk the lines of what is a thought and what is a movement, and mostly, to reach a higher state of mind through art.

Biography

Born April 1st, 1984 and growing up in the ever-crowding greater Houston area, Vincent Fink is an award-winning contemporary surrealist & full-time artist working out of his Winter Street Studio in the Arts District where he tirelessly adds to a multitude of expansive projects. His first series, Atlas Metamorphosis, started in 2010 with vigorously detailed greyscale sumi ink drawings spawned from a lucid dream. Since then, his art evolves from his series of Sacred Geometry Surrealism paintings, called Iterations, to multimedia public art and installations including sculpture and animation. The subconscious, with its symbolic story-telling, has always played a part in his cultural narrative message.

Hand Crafted Tetrahedrons

After attaining a degree in Media Arts & Animation from The Art Institute of Houston, he worked as a graphic designer searching in life for a higher purpose, a direction with his artistic abilities, yet was extremely lost. Then one night, with a sketch pad by his bed, he dreamt his future and immediately awoke to record it. In his subconscious state, he saw the first completed piece that would establish his art career. This series became known as the Atlas Metamorphosis and continues to take us through the 4 stages of an other-worldly, gigantic god-like beetle’s evolution. Each stage of its life cycle is accompanied by a new cultural empire or era of civilization.

77: A Fleshy Facade, A Cryptic Charade

This series won him the Talent Call Award, The Big Show – Best of, as well as a Hunting Art Prize finalist, twice, along with many shows and articles online and in print, but that is just one hemisphere of this, now, activated imagination. His second, most prolific series of acrylic and oil paintings called Iterations also garners equal prestige and focuses on his love for surrealism and sacred geometry.

03: Survival

Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store.

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Vincent Fink Elsewhere on the Web

Cheryl Frey Richards

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Statement

Recently, I have been exploring life’s destinations and how they are recorded. I am fascinated with how people have documented their memories; presently and in the past with social and pictorial fervor. My images deal with the contradiction of letting go but at the same time wanting to forever hold on. Filtered photos and high definition videos help create an over the top and almost “too sharp” memory. Continuous snapping and recording of day to day life blur important aspects while things that should be forgotten are in full color. What then does a goodbye truly mean?

Biography

Cheryl Frey Richards is a painter, illustrator, designer and art instructor living and working in Patchogue, New York. Cheryl’s artwork has been exhibited in several galleries throughout the Midwest and Northeastern United States. Her work is also a part of several national and international private collections. It is all about control. My work deals with controlling emotions: forcing a smile, face surface vs. dark underbellies, and controlling one’s situation at all costs. Each piece I create shoves the landscape into individual and discernible shapes and forces colors to commit to their given placement on the canvas. The paintings appear whimsical and bright with tension to them. I am a bit of a control freak and struggle with trying to simplify while maintaining control. My older work had a tighter grip on shapes and colors, but as my work has progressed, the colors and lines have loosened as I have learned to let go little by little.

Cheryl Frey Richards Elsewhere

Portfolio: freyrichards.com
Instagram: instagram.com/freyrichardsart
Online Shops:
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Arabella Proffer

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Series: Acids and Sugars

This series brings together my interests in botany, microbiology, space, disease, and the evolution of cells. I subconsciously explore the relationships between anatomy, biology, nature, and emerging sciences while creating from my own imagination. These paintings sometimes mirror personal metaphysical occurrences, and, at times, contain a slight nod to art history, such as hints of a baroque landscape or decadent still lives through distorted lenses. They are more virtual reality than actuality.

I delve into the practice and alchemy of oil paint dictating the direction, shaping aesthetic outcomes, and transforming emotional impressions as I go. Insects, flowers, human organs all come from the same process at the core, but within these works I am visualizing their fictional evolution at any given stage comes from instinct. I create my own fragile beings and nature within these little worlds; alien forms mesh with what might be seen under a microscope, or through a telescope. They are an artificial nature or a nature that is simply unknown to us, scientized and made more delectable. This is my biomorphic garden party.

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Manor House – by Arabella Proffer

Size: 10×10

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Slobodan Lončarević

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Biography

Slobodan Lončarević was born in Podgorica, Montenegro, during the Yugoslavia union, in 1960. He lives and works in Podgorica. He is a self-taught painter, who used literature from the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts and the exercises of Albert Durer for his art education. He studied art during a long period of early youth and was assisted by several renowned Montenegrin artists. He continues to study art, focusing on surrealistic art. He graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Montenegro in Podgorica.

Statement

I approach painting through fantastic forms in an attempt to draw out the human essence to the canvas. In the space between myself and the painting, I experience myself as a crucified man; neither on heaven nor on earth. For me, surrealism is a gentle fluid that breathes life into the limitless playground of reality.

Art Prints

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