One of my Favorites, Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, Banksy, Chuck Close, Cai Guo-Qiang, all amazing artists, all innovative, creative, and damn well talented. These four artists are in the top spots for having created some of my most favorite pieces of art. But for this post, i am only to choose one. To somehow choose from Banksy's social statements and superhero like illusiveness, to Qiang's capture of raw movement in breathtaking explosive drawings.

For me this was an near impossible task. Though i have come up with the results. Vincent Van Gogh's classic, Starry Night.

This painting has always been a favorite of mine since i was really young. Van Gogh had created this piece while he was in the care of a psychiatric center in France.

What intrigues me most of this painting is that it was painted by memory during the day. The painting my be fairly inaccurate since Van Gogh had no reference but his own mind. But i believe that makes this painting remarkable. I gives us as viewers, a sense of what Van Gogh saw, a window into his mind if you will. Not to mention the gorgeous deep blues and glimpses of yellow and white that light up the night sky. Every aspect of this painting has always made me smile, making this painting an all time favorite of mine.

(image taken from www.paintingsite.net/famous-paintings-renaissance.html)

Plans for Creating My Artist Book

I'm an art student, so naturally i love art, but i also love explosions. Before this last year i never thought that those two very separate areas of my life could harmonize so well together. That was before i learned of Cai Guo-Qiang. Qiang is a Chinese artist that uses the medium of gunpowder and explosives to create amazing images on sheets of wood that singlehandily capture, in one point in time, the beauty, raw power and energy of an explosion.

Naturally i was enthralled by these immensely vivid drawings. I had been so impacted by his thoughts and his talent that i feel so pressed as to create my class artist book on Cai Guo-Qiang. He first came across the medium of gunpowder as a means of harvesting and accessing spontaneity. As well as a social confrontation to China's controlled suppressive traditional artistic style.

Qinag does an amazing job of capturing the single point in time at its most spontaneous. And portraying that moment with such elegance and grace, that one may almost the the action itself in motion across the page. I believe that aspect of Qiang's work is what hooked me. The fact that i can trace the path of the fire burnt wood sheet with my eyes, and see the sense of motion frozen in time is truly remarkable.

(images taken from dcdomain.org/blogger/dcdomain/2007/10/across-board-well-not-totally-less-is.php

and

www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/popup.php?slide=341)