Wedding Vancouver BC Canada

I have to say the last time I made a demo reel was for my 2004 Vancouver Film School Demo Reel back in 2004 and it took three months with less sleep.  Today I would say my Fantasy Wedding Photography Demo Reel is taken me more than three months of the making;  I would proud to say my art work has taken another step forward.  As music goes I have chosen “Send me an Angel” by Real Life in the 84;  this is a song that I will never bore.  As you notice I do like angle in my photography (I’m a lucky guy;  I do have an angel at home that look after me) and that is why the song is selected.

I hope the slide show will inspire you folks out there as a lover, photographer, artist or just passer by.  If you do enjoy my work please leave me a comment how I can improve.

Thank you and enjoy

Wayne Lam

Traditional Artist meets Digital

http://www.fantasyweddingphotography.com/

"Minimal Palette Landscape", Oil on Canvas.

Troy Swangstu

10 a.m.-7 p.m.

ARTichokes
10557 Mission Road
Leawood, KS
913.322.9481

Hours: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday
Runs through: Feb. 6, 2010

Gallery site: http://www.artichokeskc.com

Troy Swangstu comes from a family where everyone is “The Creative One”.

Older brother Eric is an oil painter. Holly, their sister, creates textile art that looks like abstract painting. And Troy, one of a group of artists featured through early February at ARTichokes in Leawood, has been working in oils since he was 15.

Unlike with, say, the Wyeth clan’s body of work, there’s no family resemblance among the Swangstus’ art. Troy’s style is his own; even unsigned, his paintings are easy to recognize. They’re strong, Expressionistic and closely tied to the land.

That suits. Swangstu, an Iowa native and Kansas City Art Institute alum, lives and paints on a working farm in Miami County. He’s as comfortable and knowledgeable discussing grass-fed beef as he is talking about his art and his curating experience.

Swangstu’s Midwestern upbringing shows, too, in the way he colors his landscapes. Sometimes — in the fall, perhaps, or after a few days of spring rain — this can be a fairly colorful region, and a good part of Swangstu’s work reflects that.

At other times, usually when it’s overcast, everything shows up in yellow, dull green and gray. Swangstu is adept at capturing the look and feel of those days, too, as today’s featured piece, Limited Palette Landscape, demonstrates.

(In fact, had Swangstu not called attention to the limited palette, it wouldn’t have been obvious to most viewers. The piece simply looks like eastern Kansas on a cloudy afternoon.)

A balance between the subjective feeling that marks Expressionist work and a resonance with viewers isn’t always easy to achieve. Swangstu pulls it off with a deceptively simple, rough-hewn grace, creating work both personal and accessible.

In a family full of creativity, he has created and defined his own space — one as big as the Midwestern landscape he depicts so well.

IKTHUS

Oil on canvas

16″ x 20″

2006

I’m going to backtrack a bit and write about a series of still life paintings I’ve been doing over the past 10 years.

The Yearning

This series started when I was without a clear direction for my next painting.  I wanted to play and explore to find some inspiration.  I gathered some objects from around my home.  I forget all the items, but what turned out to be the key pieces were my wife’s herbal eye relaxer (that looked sort of like a child’s puppet) and a wooden box crafted by my old friend Jeff Lee.

Here is the first painting using those objects:

The Trap

As I manipulated the objects on my drawing table, I became intrigued with the notion that the stuffed puppet could be a stand in for the viewer.  It’s features were undefined; it looked a bit like a sheep, but it was impossible to really say what creature is.  I thought by putting the puppet in a variety of poses and settings, it could express a range of human conditions and emotions.

This series has turned out to be my most popular.  Folks who visit my studio are drawn to them, and always have questions and comments about the paintings.  In my next posts I will talk about some of the paintings in this series.

]]> http://oilpaintings1.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/the-great-art-revolution/ Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:47:10 +0000 oilpaintings1 http://oilpaintings1.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/the-great-art-revolution/

 The great art works of the world have always had a hold on us. We price their unique inspiration, the immense skills with which they were created and their reflection of not just their times but us at their time or even, when they are best, they capture some of the eternal essence of what it means to be human.

The value of great art is transcendent, and even in the most dire times of crisis, we still remember their uniqueness and their value. One only have to look at the Second World War for an example. During this great time of crisis, the US army created a special unit to help protect the cultural treasures of Europe. Nicknamed the Monument Men by the troops, it was their jobs not only to seek out the many art treasures looted by the Nazis but also to help ensure that only minimal further damage was caused by the war actions. Among the latter is the bombing of the rail yard in Florence 1944, which was carefully planned as to avoid hitting historic buildings and sites. Among their first were the recovery of huge amounts of art Hitler’s personal hoard deep in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps. Of course today, in more peaceful times, the high value we place on art and our cultural heritage is easier reflected in auction prices as buyers happily pay $140 million for an original Pollock or $135 for a Gustav Klimt.

Still, today most of these great pieces of art are to be found either in private collections or in museums. For the ordinary valet, they are not directly available, unless a picture or possibly a print can suffice. If you want to see the real painting, if it is even publicly exhibited it is most probably at least a plane ride and a heavy entrance fee away. The worlds art treasures are indeed not always immediately available for your viewing pleasure.

The wind of change is blowing, however, especially in the form of the internet. Go to art reproductions and all of a certain the artistic achievements of the ages are available right there and then (at least the paintings). And not only that: You can actually order your own museum quality reproductions of your favorite paintings and have them shipped directly to your doorstep. Gone are the days where you had to rely on posters or prints to recreate your favorite pieces of art. These days you can have a highly skilled artist reproduce your favorite painting for you. Whether you like Van Gogh, Renoir, Klimt or other, they are now all within reach. And while what you receive is not the original painting, it comes so dangerously close that it can be hard to spot the difference. A website like Art Reproductions actually picks artists that specialize in the concrete styles of painting of the artists they reproduce so the resulting artworks are just amazing and, as is also claimed by them, truly museum quality.

This creates new opportunities for lovers of classic art, as even with the originals are hidden away in private collections, vaults and museum collections, it is actually now possible to have your own reproduction of these timeless pieces right there on the wall. It is the democratization of art and it is making the classic masters finally available to the public. It also helps us ensure that a new generation can become aware of the unique beauty of the art world, as we are able to finally bring the arts home with us.

Oil on Rives BFK Paper, 3.75 x 5.5″, 2009

sunrise on a winter morn by marilynn z. nielson, 12 x 16 oil on board, unframed  $475, or custom quality framed $650

We awoke one morning to discover the ground covered with a heavy snowfall.  We grabbed the camera and headed some 15 miles from home.  We didn’t know exactly where we were headed, but took a dirt road down a ravine into the river bottoms.  The sun was just coming up as we rounded the bend by a stream and I shouted, “Stop the car.”  This painting was the result of what we saw.   I loved the light on the bank and the weight of snow on the foliage.  Winter scenes are my favorite to paint and this sight was a joy to me.  As we looked to the left we saw another beautiful scene, which will probably be the subject of another painting. ~ marilynn

18×24 inch oil painting

my Etsy

my 1000markets

my main art Website

SMELL FISHY

Oil on canvas

11″ x 14″

"Balloon Patterns III", Oil on Canvas.

Nancy Todd Roberts
Balloon Patterns Series

10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Images Gallery
7320 West 80th St.
Overland Park, KS
913.232.7113

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

Artist’s site: http://www.nancytoddroberts.com
Gallery site: http://www.imagesgallery.org

The new year is still more than a month away, but Nancy Todd Roberts has already broken out the balloons.

Okay, so the balloons she paints are of a different sort — hot air, rather than helium — but her Balloon Patterns Series, part of the opening group show at Images Gallery’s new location, is most definitely festive.

The center front of Images is given over to bold patterns in bright primary and secondary colors, all on the bag-and-gondola theme.

It’s a departure from much of Roberts’ other work in oils. She has long favored a chiaroscuro style, playing light and dark against each other to deepen her paintings, but these are all about sunlight illuminating ripstop nylon.

Roberts has retained her trademark realism, though, and there is still plenty of depth in the balloon pieces because she has continued her practice of adding layer upon layer of color, each showing through the layers above it.

Some canvases depict groups of balloons. Others — like Balloon Patterns III, today’s featured piece — take a close-up view. Whatever its scope, though, each work is marked not only by an attention to pattern but by a glow partly physical and partly emotional.

The former is due to Roberts’ skill at painting light. The latter stems from humanity’s long fascination with flight.

Whether or not one has ever been in the gondola of a hot air balloon, there’s something in the human spirit that resonates with the idea of soaring above the earth, carried along by the winds, and enjoying a panoramic view stretching to distant horizons.

Roberts’ balloons might not mark any holiday … but the freedom to soar, even vicariously, is certainly reason to celebrate.

We leave at once (oil) 6

Oil over blue book tile

4.25 x 5.25″ x .5″

2009

Number six in a series of nearly identical paintings.

$200

leaving durango by janice trane jones, 8″ x 16″ oil on canvas panel unframed, $375.00

My husband and I were driving our car to New Mexico to deliver it to a buyer. Along the way just outside of Durango, Colorado we both were awestruck as we rounded a curve in the road and viewed this scene.  The mountains seemed endless and the road to the farm was inviting and serene. We stayed for a few minutes while I made my value sketches and took in the 360 degree breathtaking vistas then proceeded to our destination.  Days later I couldn’t stop thinking about that farm and decided I had to paint it because it made such an impression on me. ~Janice

Learning to paint fruits is something that just has to be done. Luckily, this one came out fine. I just had  a stamp-size photo in a fat instruction book to go by. It was painful to keep peering into that tiny shot all the time, but it’s come out fine in the end.

Bowl of fruits on tablecloth

Yes, the composition could’ve been better – the bowl is dead center and kind of against guidelines.  Since  it was from a project book, I thought they should know what they’re doing!  In any case, I added two more embroidered flowers for the table-cloth in the right hand top and bottom corner  to  take the eye away.  Hope it helped.

Size – 12 * 16, canvas board.

I’m dying to get back into the studio this week, but i’ve been feeling a bit crook with a cold, so no creative energy.  Today feeling better, but have to work! boo.  Maybe there’ll be some time on Sunday.  Just as well i dont rush as waiting for glazes to dry on the one on the left which needed more depth in the foreground. It’s dry now.  So now that I’m satisfied with the depth  i’m ready to get at it and complete it.  The one on the right is just  a block in, but now i see that i have blocked in the little boat way too large, it’s not making the statement that i wanted at that huge size…so will re-block it in smaller before progressing onto the exciting bit, which for me is the water and reflections.  I haven’t chosen the palette for it yet.  Still thinking about that…My resource sketch took place in overcast weather so no real exciting shadows, but i think i will develop the pattern of the movement of the water…maybe exaggerate it a tad…or a lot.  My goal is an understated quietude of mood.  I really enjoy the time to perculate and ponder the directions i can take.  In this picture you can see my little menagerie of plastic farm animals perched on the ledge under the skylight.  They come in handy as models, adding a little life to  rural subjects.

The Alla-prima method ( all at once, mostly in one sitting) always appealed to me for reasons obvious to a newbie – to get a painting completed in one go. The normal layered approach  is sometimes oh-so-long! I’ve been painting only twice a week at most.  And sometimes there are long breaks for the kids’ exams, projects, falling sick and so on.  So,  it’s almost painful to have to wait for days or weeks before I get to see the final results.

Croissants, fruit and coffee.

I tried this small painting from a project book that I borrowed from the library. But I put in some changes in the composition by making it a round table with a part of the chair-back showing.  In my imagination, it’s at an al-fresco cafe. 

It’s done wholly with a bristle brush,  even for the finishing touches. Well, since I don’t have much speed, I had to do this over 5 sessions…. some alla-prima that! I just can’t be rushed, thats for sure.

Size – 10*12,  stretched canvas.

Scottish artist: John Kingsley painting 'Cap Ferrat'

Today’s featured Scottish Artist is John Kingsley

Scottish artist John Kingsley was born in Glasgow in 1956. He studied drawing and painting at Glasgow School of Art from 1973-77. His art tutors included James Robertson, David Donaldson and Geoffrey Squire.

John Kingsley has established a reputation as a leading Scottish contemporary artist. He was a finalist in the Hunting Art Prizes competition in London in 1989, 1993 and 1998, and was highly commended in the same competition in 1996. In 1991 Kingsley won the William Bowie Landscape Prize and in 1992 the Mary Armour Award the Paisley Art Institute. Since 1987, John has been an artist member of the council of the Paisley Art Institute.

Today Scottish artist John Kingsley has an international reputation with art works in many public and private art collections across Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA. His paintings are found in the art collections of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, Argyle and Bute District Council and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow.

Red Rag Gallery – Modern Art from British Artists , Irish Artists , Scottish Artists and Limited Edition Prints

Brought home my scenery on (22*30) stretched canvas from the framers. They’ve done  a  very neat job of  it,  but  my frame selection does not seem to have been quite right.

 It’s really so difficult to decide which one to choose from the range available. Sometimes the choice is bang on, enhancing the picture, and other times you’re left wondering if you did the right thing. I guess we learn from trial and error. Will know better next time around…!

Landscape- stream in woods.

In any case, since the wood textured frame looked too dark for the picture, I ended up lightening it by applying acrylic metallic gold paint sparingly on the ridges. Seems better now.

This one was done in class, from a Walter Foster book  by Anton Gutknecht.   I did what I could in the limited time given in class and  put in the  corrections after getting it home ( I found the book at a bookstore for the purpose) .

Size – 22*30, stretched canvas.

The Delegate is 36″ x 36″, oil on linen.

This painting is a continuation of my ‘Top Hat” series. In the 1880’s The Powers That Be in the United States Government would invite American Indian leaders to Washington. There they were given gifts such as clothing, flags, hats etc. The recipient would then use these items as they saw fit. This hat is decorated with parts of a flag, an emblem from a helmet, ribbons and feathers

tate barn by katrina madsen berg, 16 x 20 oil on canvas, $515 unframed.

The original Tate Barn was built over 100 years ago near today’s Soldier Hollow, the cross- country site of the 2002 Winter Olympics. It is also the home of the Soldier Hollow Charter School…intended  intellectual growing place of our kiddos.  (I really ought to get that application going…). 

Francis Tate built the original building. Over the years, the barn changed ownership. When a severe storm permanently damaged the building, and private organization raised the funds to replace the barn in the original footprint and architecture. The wood used in the new barn was taken from the original barn. The painting is just a small view of the beautifully restored valley treasure. ~katrina