ARTISTS
Van Arno
Van Arno was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri . . . As a young illustrator his work appeared on album covers, video game box art, and nightclub posters around the city. By the late eighties, he began producing large ‘cut-out’ paintings blending cartoon imagery with portraits of cultural and historical icons. These early ‘cut-out’ paintings used black lines and luridly cartoon color to depict characters ranging from John F. Kennedy to Herman Goering to Othello. His guerrilla installation of a 12 foot tall Angel ‘cut- out’ could be seen hovering over Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood Christmas 1992. In the early 90s he became fascinated with the calendar of the ancient Maya, and traveled to Yucatan to see the ruins at Chichen Itza, Coba and Tulum. At the same time, he began to create heroic figurative works featuring religious and folk heroes from Christian, Mayan and American history (St. Francis, John Barrymore, Joan of Arc, Nat Turner, Nellie Bly) in cell vinyl on masonite.. . . He has frequently been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine since 1999. . .
In the fall of 2000, he painted a 36-foot billboard for the East Side Artcrawl entitled ‘Abolitionist Goat War’ which received local news coverage for its indictment of pimp culture. …
More recently, he has been exclusively painting in oil on canvas and wood panels. He continues to push the human figure into more and more extreme postures, causing him to name his painting style Uber-Mannerism.
SOURCE:http://www.shootinggallerysf.com/media/artists/pdfs/van-arno.pdf
Marina Bazos
Bio coming Soon.
Chris Cooper
Coop is a hot rod artist working from Los Angeles. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1968, and describes his occupation as “Insensitive Artiste.” His work consists primarily of barely clothed Bettie Page-style 1950s soft pornography and/or B-movie monsters, with the female characters often taking the role of “Devil-Women”. The image most often associated with his work is however slightly more tame: the face of a grinning devil with a smoking cigar clamped in its teeth.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop_(artist)
Kalum Teke Dan
Kalum Teke Dan has been painting for 20 years. His work reflects his personal reflections and observations surrounding the spirituality of his people and the energy around us.
Kalum, who originates from the Blood Tribe in Southern Alberta, is quickly becoming one of western Canada’s up and coming Aboriginal artists. Although being raised in the big city and mostly self-taught, Kalum credits his family and traditions for creating strong influences in his early life. Creating works of art in oil acrylic and watercolour, Kalum has become known for his strong portraiture and stunning wild life depictions. He bases his painting on real people, those who portray the strength and pride as a whole. With the animals he paints, Kalum manages to depict a spirit on canvas.
His work is in the personal collection of several Premiers, international leaders and many of Canada’s leading corporations. His work can be found in galleries across Canada and the United States.
SOURCE: http://emi090.wixsite.com/kalum/bio
Tristan Eaton
Tristan Eaton pursued street art as a troubled teenager and during this time he painted everything from billboards, to dumpsters in the urban landscape. He lived and painted in London, Detroit, and New York. He is a self-proclaimed skateboarding punk who as a teenager was arrested for various crimes including shoplifting and tagging with graffiti. During these times, art became his saving grace and it often allowed him to get off fault by providing artistic evidence to judges, principles, and other characters of authority.
Tristan Eaton designed his first toy for Fisher Price at the young age of 18. Since then, he has become an entire icon in the designer toys world. Tristan Eaton is also recognized as a creative leader in the world of advertising; he regularly consults with brands such as Hasbro, Pepsi and Nike. One of his most successful projects includes the creation of Dunny, a designer based trading figure. This figure is 3 inches tall and made from Roto-Cast Soft Vinyl.
Ron English
Ron English was born 1966 in Dallas, Texas. Mr. English has exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide for over twenty years, influencing a generation of artists and art lovers with his unique sensibility, in which the familiar is reflected through funhouse mirrors into something disconcertingly new. Recently his commentary and art were featured in the hit movie “Supersize Me,” widening his audience beyond the boundaries of intrepid art seekers, and he has appeared on television in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan. He is also the subject of an award-winning documentary, “POPaganda, the Art and Crimes of Ron English.”
SOURCE: http://www.shootinggallerysf.com/media/artists/pdfs/ron-english.pdf
Rodney Gabrielson
Rodney Gabrielson is the greatest and toughest artist in Calgary, with a standing will to fight any other painter in town, no holds barred. Queensbury Rules.
Jean Labourdette (Turf One)
Turf is somewhat obsessed with Victorian-looking midgets sporting dandy facial hair, Russian icons, dead things of all sorts, carnival sideshows and seedy vermin-infested theatre stages. Technically, his paintings are reminiscent of the 15th century Flemish Primitives.
Kind of.
Jean Labourdette, as his mom still likes to call him, has forged a unique artistic vision and signature aesthetic over years of compulsive creation. In the late eighties he began his journey on the streets of Paris as a graffiti artist renowned for his distinctive and surreal characters. Over the years, Jean evolved into a prolific and sought-after multidisciplinary artist working as an illustrator, comic artist, filmmaker and painter. Today, he spends most of his time painting in a messy studio that Bacon would have been proud of, sipping on espressos and wine and talking to himself.
SOURCE: http://jeanlabourdette.com/bio/
Marla Lawlor
Bio coming soon.
12 Midnight
“A fascination with the mythical dichotomy that exists between so-called high and low art has driven me to constantly blend techniques and approaches. An admiration for psychological advertising techniques and the rebellion against them led me to the streets and alleyways as an illegal street artist promoting my particular political bent towards pro-human / anti-establishment symbols of personal and societal resistance.”
He has appeared in a number of documentary films covering lowbrow/ hot rod culture including “The Lowdown on Lowbrow” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. He is also the subject of a short documentary titled “12 Midnite on the rocks…hold the ice” and has been interviewed about his work on both television and radio in the US and Canada.
Kathie Olivas
An internationally exhibited multi-media artist from New Mexico. Through her current body of work, the Misery Children, she explores society’s insatiable desire to assign ‘cuteness’ and our discomfort with the unknown. A dark blend of early American portraiture set in post apocalyptic times, Kathie’s paintings and custom toys are a satirical look at how fear affects our sense of reality.
Source: http://kathieolivas.com/about-kathie/
Henry Pearson
Pearson was known for abstract, multi-colored globes; ‘stochastic’ or chance-generated paintings; paintings modeled on Dogon (West African) sculpture; as well as paintings based on the map work he did in the army. In general, his mode was hard-edged abstraction, although not without traces of humor and whimsy. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Brandt Peters
A self-taught illustrator and designer whose work has garnered international attention from the fine art gallery circuit. His paintings explore the eras of ancient cartoons, Victorian toys and pre-WWI vintage ‘Pop’ ephemera; all fodder from being raised by a family of artists and antique collectors. A world composed of creepy sideshow icons, deviant Animalia, and “masked” glorified cartoon alter egos, these characters and cultures serve as the very antitheses of what is traditionally deemed innocent and socially acceptable.
Source: http://brandtpeters.com/about-brandt/
Christian Rex van Minnen
The briefest biography of any of our artists, from his own website, a man of mystery:
b. 1980 Providence, RI, USA
BA Regis University, 2002
Lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Greg ‘Craola’ Simkins
Greg “Craola” Simkins was born in 1975 in Torrance California, just south of Los Angeles. He grew up with a menagerie of animals including a number of rabbits, which often emerge in his paintings. He began drawing at the early age of three and was inspired by various cartoons and books . . . Simkins’ art continued to progress to the age of 18, when he started doing graffiti under the name “CRAOLA”. Graffiti art became his impetus for creating and gave him the confidence to paint large works. In addition it taught him perspective, color theory and further developed his artistic skills, which later translated into his work with acrylics. . . His art also can be found in a wide variety of industries from clothing to video games and has also come to life in the form of toys. His commercial client/collaboration list includes Disney, Mattel, Logitech, Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Upper Playground, Juxtapoz, To Die For Clothing, Clandestine, Vans, Converse, AFI, Saosin, Gym Class Heroes, Pennywise, Ningyoushi, Kid Robot, Zero Friends, Epitaph, Dark Horse, Iron Fist and Pulse International. In 2009, Simkins developed “IMSCARED”, his own brand of clothing, merchandise and accessories to further expand his art into more everyday mediums that can be worn and enjoyed by his diverse fan base. . .It is his careful weaving of pop culture, the old masters, nature, carnival kitsch, and (most importantly) his warped imagination, that makes Greg Simkins a sought-after surrealist painter today. Simkins’ artwork has appeared in museums and galleries throughout the world.
SOURCE: http://www.imscared.com/about/
Jon Strongbow
If I Were Elected Mayor: “I would not want to be the mayor of any city. I’d be a slave to people with money and clout. I don’t like baseball stadiums and the sports mentality. And TV should be banned. Also I hate that the city tears down beautiful old buildings.”
Strongbow is a well-known artist, musician and fixture of the Seattle Pike Place Market.
SOURCE: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-37-least-powerful-people-in-seattle/Content?oid=324
Tony Taylor
Tony’s collection of work is a reflection on politicians, leadership debates, the Royal family and G summit series and how they undermine democracy often leading to violently disrupting and infringing on the civilians and cities in which they are hosted. These well-publicized events highlight an opportunity for world leaders and corporations to bump elbows, share anecdotes and discuss economic philosophy, disregarding any opportunity for public participation or representation. For [Taylor] these events resemble a gathering of the animal powerhouse’s from the financial and political jungles where only the wealthy survive. [Taylor has] chosen to replace the faces of these leaders and corporate representatives with those of animals that [he] feel[s] reflect a truer sense of their character.
SOURCE: http://www.tonytaylorart.com/?page_id=131
Robert L. Williams
Robert L. Williams (born March 2, 1943) is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Williams was one of the group of artists who produced Zap Comix, along with other underground cartoonists, such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Gilbert Shelton. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery.[1]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(artist)
Oksana Zhelisko
Classically trained in Eastern Europe, Oksana began her career as an artist in L’viv, Ukraine. Oksana entered the Ivan Trush College of Decorative Arts in 1996. There, she studied all aspects of art and decided to make painting, especially of murals, her major. In 2001, she held her first solo exhibition at the L’viv University of Ivan Franko. It was in preparing her works for this show that she realized she had a love for the medium of oil. . . She finds it best to begin her work, not on a crisp, blank canvas, but on one that has been coloured, and or stained to allow her chosen medium to release its inner beauty and charm. Although aptly able to capture any image with an artist’s eyes, Oksana’s work as of late has revolved around the theme of woman in various stages, poses, and emotions. . . In her view, woman is neither crisp nor blank, but coloured and tinged; each being an image or an iconoclast that is warm, or perhaps cold, but always strong, alluring, full of mystique, and of course, true inner beauty. Her most recent works are displayed in Webster Gallery, Calgary. She currently resides in Edmonton.
SOURCE: http://www.zheliskoart.com