Spanish street artist Escif paints short vignettes of bizarre happenings, surreal situations, and humorous moments. Drawn in a flat graphic style that would lend itself well to story book illustrations, Escif’s narratives embrace the unpredictable, free, dark, wild, and nebulous passerby’s on the street and transplants their stories on city walls.
Wow! I absolutely love the illustrations and design work by Grant Coghill! There isn’t much information oh his site as to what the medium is exactly but I loved the retro 80′s airbrush look mixed with dense and layered imagery. One of my new favorites illustrators for 2012!
Something is different lately. The Earth has shifted its axis and now everything seems to have moved to the right by a couple of inches. A dark wind blows. The birds aren’t flying south like nature normally commands them to, and you can tell the animals know something we don’t. These are Strange Daze, Beautiful/Decay’s revelation of the phenomenal and paranormal minds of artists. In a world-surreal, where every night holds a full moon, strange has become an adjective that plagues and ponders our daily existence.
Seek creative passage through the barren void in the company of this book’s featured artists, as we first find Olaf Hajek, a painter whose work holds séance to colorful spectre. Encounter Shamus Clisset, who plays host to a glimpse into his work and its otherworldly humor-macabre. Become self-aware of a hole in your head as splashes of psychedelic work by Fredrik Åkum drip onto your synthetic brain. Witness the chemical rainbow that glows around the work of Timo Vaittinen, pulsating its life and character. Uncover Hew Locke’s sculpture and its ability to pierce through joint and marrow, straight into one’s fifth eye. Examine Jeremy Dower’s visceral work, which will haunt you like a howling spirit through the realms of both the flesh and digital until finally Neil Krug, whose photography will leave you coma-bound in a visual fever.
In line with apocalyptic forebodings, celestial encounters, and unexplained experiences, Strange Daze presents an astonishing collection of artwork that is documented proof of many famous speculated phenomena. Never one to disappoint Beautiful/Decay Strange Daze is filled to the brim with works that will shake the foundations of human culture forever if released to the masses.
Also Featuring: Christine Gray, Michael Willis, Raymond Lemstra, LNY, Kira Leigh, Todd Ryan White, Jeanti, Justin Williams, Robby Day, Andrea Wan, Henry Gunderson, Berto Legendary H, Nicholas Kennedy Sitton, Ben Beshaw, and Brendan Flanagan.
Get your hands on one of the 1,500 hand numbered limited edition copies of Beautiful/Decay Strange Daze Books by clicking the links below!
Only 99 copies Book:8 will be available on the B/D Shop. Get your copy before we sell out!
Mark Hunter Brown is a truly dynamic individual. I have known Brown for the better part of a decade, and I am relatively positive that I will never meet another person quite like him. With each day functioning more like the next chapter in a bizarre novel, his zest for life is infectious. Luckily, Brown is also an amazing artist, and has managed to document his interests and experiences through countless drawings and paintings. Though he gains inspiration from his travels, the work is not limited to the places and people he has actually interacted with. Brown is also heavily influenced by the written historical accounts of different cultures and people, but the work is not about visually representing his source material. Instead, he chooses to focus on the importance of the moments recorded history has chosen to ignore. There is this dead zone in between the great scenes of history that also warrants consideration, and Brown is keenly aware of this. When asked why he is drawn to this type of situation Brown replied, “because life doesn’t look like a Delacroix painting – it’s just people walking around and eating sandwiches. These moments seem more real to me…they’re equally compelling.”
While these scenes are not infrequent in his work, Brown’s practice is not limited to this type of subject matter. There is far less literal material in Brown’s oeuvre, and his vivid imagination becomes readily apparent when looking at paintings of huge figurative fortresses or anthropomorphized coo-coo clocks snorting bones off of a table. When viewed in context these paintings start to function as some sort of bizarre allegory, but their meaning is never explicitly stated. There is such a rich diversity in the distinctive worlds that Brown creates, and no piece is less detailed than the last. Whether he is teaching at Columbia, backpacking through Morocco, or boar hunting with monks in the Italian countryside – the need to process the world into visually compelling images has remained consistent within Brown’s life. Lucky for us, his mind seems to function like an endless supply of Google image search results that I have no desire to stop looking at any time soon.
Chicago-based Andy Burkholder has been posting a consistant supply of mind-clearing one-pagers on his wonderful tumblr. He’s got something special going, and he’s just riding the wave real hard. His work outside of the one-page bits is just as impressive, but more focused on experimentation, as opposed to a formally consistent body of work. Check out his web, his flick, and visit him at CAKE. A buttery smooth man.
Craig Maher is an illustrator who works primarily for Sci-Fi clients such as Magic The Gathering and other role playing games that you’d find nerdy kids playing in poorly lit basements. Not all of his work is my cup of tea but in a small section of his site I found some amazing gems to share with you. Ironically enough all of the paintings in this section were Craig’s unpublished works. Go figure.
is a printed book series and daily art blog with a focus on experimental, grotesque, and groundbreaking art.
hat methi: these pictures are very... hat methi: these pictures are very...
pepa prieto: Thank you very much ! Amir+...
easton: Genius. I do not throw that term...
Ben: Awesome and devastating….
mark: they remind me of R. Crumb drawings
Amy gee: I love the softness of this art
Sadie F: perfection.
bill: cool images, nice interview!
Kris Bazen: These are INSANE!!! Made me...
