Phantasmaphile

Adela Leibowitz

Adela Leibowitz "Buttercup"  2004

The paintings done by Adela Leibowitz are perfect for winter.  Chilly and pretty, they depict desolate forest scenes replete with peculiar little girls. 

Ashley Snow Macomber

Ashley Snow Macomber "Abduction" 2005

I have never seen work like that of Ashley Snow Macomber.  She uses dissonant animal and object imagery and creates harmonious forms that are both exquisitely beautiful and slightly chilling. 

Tiffany Bozic

Tiffany Bozic "Secret"

Tiffany Bozic paints elaborate botanical-human hybrids on wood panels.  Birds, flowers, roots, and the female form all entwine into strange and beautiful organic beings. 

Camille Rose Garcia

Camille Rose Garcia "Golden Castle Princess"

Camille Rose Garcia is one of the crown jewels in the lowbrow tiara.  She paints murky fairytales - a perfect blend of cake and cyanide.  She also has a new book out, called The Saddest Place on Earth.  Must get my paws on it.

Nicolas Lampert

Nicolas Lampert "Untitled" Meatscape Collage

Nicolas Lampert has an amazing series he calls Meatscapes.  You'll see why.  This appeals to both my surrealist side and my carnivorous side! 

Via

Heather Nevay

Heather Nevay "Beneath the Table" 2005

YES!  I adore the work done by Heather Nevay.  Never seen her before - so happy to have discovered her.  I love the translucent, pink creatures which populate her paintings.  So strange and so lovely. 

Via

Brook Caballero

Brook Caballero "Girl with Antlers" 2004

Brook Caballero is one of those happy discoveries I've made utterly accidentally.  I stopped by a bar on the Lower East Side where I was considering hosting my birthday party last year.  While I found the bar to be less than dazzling, a little stack of postcards containing this image was left amongst the usual leaflets and fliers.  I love stumbling upon gems like this, especially when I least expect it.  His work is delicate and otherworldly, and is available through Julie Baker Fine Art.

CHANGE ME

www.gettyimages.com/changeme

This is for a great cause. Go to this site, and choose an image, then tell how it has affected you. Getty Images will donate $10 to the ONE organization (an organization which fights AIDS and poverty globally) for every submission. There is some pretty powerful stuff that's up there already.  A real testament to the ways in which imagery has the power to influence and inspire.

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden "The Magic Circus"

If the pop surrealism art movement has an emperor, then it would have to be Mark Ryden.  He has an imagination that could swallow us whole.  His technique is meticulous, and his work is at once charming, unsettling, and awe-striking.  One of the true masters of our time.

Dreamy Music - Part 1

Here's a list of music to marvel at.  Perfect for late-night reveries.

Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain (lush, cinematic noir)

Bjork - Vespertine (shimmering, gauzy intimacies)

Animal Collective - Feels (soft psychadelica)

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Out of Season (warm melancholia)

any album by The Books (sonic collage)

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Bavarian Fruit Bread (languid sweetness)

Mary Timony - Ex Hex (modern mythology)

Helium - The Dirt Of Luck (Mary Timony's old band.  fairytale rock)

anything by Mazzy Star (Hope Sandoval's old band.  somber glitter)

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (fantastical folk and brass)

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (sunset sounds)

Nick Drake - Pink Moon (guitar secrets and lullabies)

Elliott Smith - Roman Candle (loveliest heartbreak)

Rasputina - How We Quit the Forest (cello metal for princesses)

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground (sleepy, silky, and sad)

Tom Waits - Beautiful Maladies: The Island Years (drunken cabaret dreams)

Colette Calascione

Colette Calascione "Travelling Hermit" 1999

Colette Calascione is such a delight.  Her work is theatrical - almost as if her characters exist within dioramas.  She'll be exhibiting here in New York at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery beginning April 22nd.  So excited!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to the Glorious Matthew Freeman!

Will Cotton

Will Cotton "Untitled" 2003

Will Cotton paints pictures of nude or semi-nude women splayed out in luscious candy fantasias.  I'm sure his work is rife with implications about consumption and indulgence and sexuality and exploitation, but what I really care about is how friggin gorgeous it is. 

Amanda Wachob

Amanda Wachob  "Meat Babies"

How can you not love Amanda Wachob's paintings?  Hmmm?

Required Reading

Looking to read something that will blow your brain wide open?  Look no further than The Power of Myth.  It's a book-length transcript of a conversation between journalist Bill Moyers and mythologist Joseph Campbell.  Or, if you're in a viewing mood instead, you can watch the DVD version.

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning of life.  I don't think that's what we're really seeking.  I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." - Joseph Campbell

Leyla Goor

Leyla Goor  "Allegorie de la Pensee"  2003

So happy to have discovered the work of Leyla Goor.  I especially love her delicate pencil drawings.

Words

"In my head, as a kid I always had this romantic idea of me in a lighthouse with a pipe organ, being a composer, and kind of doing it all by myself.  I didn't need any outside stimulus.  Also, because I enjoyed being on my own so much, I never really understood the word 'loneliness.'  As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature." - Bjork

 

The Clayton Brothers

The Clayton Brothers  "A Flash in Time" 2005

I love the Clayton Brothers.  I'm always impressed by collaborative art.  Where does one brother's work end and the other's begin?  No matter - it's amazing stuff regardless.

Horoscope dork

Yyyyeah, so I really like horoscopes.  GOOD ones.  For a weekly forecast, I throughly enjoy Rob Brezsney's Free Will Astrology.  I like the entire web site, actually, along with his book, Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.  For a monthly forecast, I go to Astrology Zone.  You know, in case you were wondering.

Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning "A Little Night Music" 1946

Another gifted female surrealist:  Dorothea Tanning. 

Prizes (Off Topic)

So, if you search through BLINGO (instead of Yahoo or Google), you could win free prizes.  The real deal.  No strings.  Take a look.

Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini "The Ends of the Earth" 1949

Leonor Fini is another incredible female surrealist worthy of attention.  Much of her work is represented here in New York at the CFM Gallery.

Female Surrealists

Remedios Varo "Nacer de Nuevo" 1960

Why surrealist painter Remedios Varo isn't as popular and ubiquitous as Frida Kahlo, I will never know.  Born in Spain, Varo eventually moved to Mexico, where she created most of her work.  (She was a contemporary of Leonora Carrington, another important artist in the canon).  Weaving imagery from dreams, alchemy, mathematics, and mythology together into intricate pieces, Varo is a true master.  She is, to my mind, every bit as important and talented as Magritte, Dali, Ernst, and all the other white dude surrealist "pioneers."  (As a side rant, check out artist-activists the Guerilla Girls, to add some fuel to your feminist fire.)