This is Glen. My new addition to what will at some point be my bird sleeve. by John Anderton at Nemesis.
The rest of it is here http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvnefjcSho1qzabkfo1_1280.jpg
Meagen Segal
The second youngest, and last girl, of seven children, Meagan Segal was born in Anaheim, California in February of 1986. The daughter of a doctor and a nurse, she developed a love of art early on, a genetic hand-me-down from her late paternal grandfather. With support and encouragement from her parents, she began exploring the vast creative world, landing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2004.
As a painting major, Pratt is where Meagan began to delve deeper into her inspiration, and explored how and why she should express the results. Ultimately, she had to look no further than her own upbringing. Surrounded by medical imagery and doctor shoptalk, yet simultaneously never having an ache or pain that was taken seriously, Meagan’s interest in the anatomy and physiology of the human body to develop along with a good dose of hypochondriacism. Since a child, Meagan often distrusted her body, not believing that it could function independent of her help. She thought of bodies as fragile equilibriums, where there are too many things that can go wrong, and what is to stop them from doing so?
This investigation in combination with her attraction to all things visceral is what led her to begin a series of hyper-realistic still lifes in oil. She was increasingly drawn to such imagery, attracted to the luscious colors, slimy surfaces, dripping fluids, overall squishiness. However, she could not abandon her other love of all things pretty and delicate, and so worked in ornate patterns and dramatic lighting, a la the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. The result was an intrigue fed by the fine line between the grotesque and the beautiful, the relationship between repulsion and fascination.
She has continued to follow this vision for several years, through the completion of her BFA from Pratt in 2008 and her subsequent return to Los Angeles, and the work has evolved along the way. Of late, Meagan has begun a series of works on paper, working in a more illustrative style, combining anatomic souvenirs with lavish flourishes and flora, free of an environment or any indication of dimensionality outside of the objects themselves. Romantic Baroque textiles and furnishings, along with Victorian illustrations of specimens and natural curiosities, were the archetype for this manner of portrayal. While the imagery is certainly less startling and gory, the desire of expression remains the same: to depict these fragments of our internal make-up as being every bit as beautiful and worthy of investigation and veneration as any other commonly admired subject or object.
(vía abrahammx)
Laurel Garcia Colvinʼs work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in several New York City galleries and galleries throughout the United States including Illinois, Texas, New York, Florida, Connecticut, California and New Jersey, as well as galleries in Spain and Ireland. Her work has been included in art fairs in New York City, Miami and Boston. She has been awarded a Saltonstall residency, Puffin Foundation grant, and Project Room solo exhibition at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. She has received many positive reviews of her work in the New York Times and other tri-state newspapers. Her works are in private and corporate collections in England, Ireland, Brazil, New York, California, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Florida,Illinois, Ohio and Texas.
Ms. Garcia Colvin received her BFA and MFA with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin, and did post-graduate studies at Pratt Institute. She was on the art faculty of UT Austin where she taught drawing and art education courses.
Artist Statement
In the practice of my art I explore what it is to be a human in this world, both individually and collectively. I am interested in how the human psyche perceives and constructs reality, subjective experiences, illusion and disillusion. I render narrative figurative images, often in a fragmented way, to evoke emotional, psychological, or spiritual states and suggest human vulnerability when facing the discrepancy between desires and reality.
In my recent series of mixed media drawings I use the French 18th century designs of Toile de Jouy as the starting point. I juxtapose the background printed fabric narrative of a pastoral past populated by idyllic figures with a foreground of contemporary situations. Homelessness, gun violence, and other current controversies are in direct contrast to the nostalgic, sanitized, leisurely decorum of these historical toile patterns. The overlay of silhouettes and detailed renderings of figures inhabiting this fragmented world create visual commentaries on the contradictions, changes and complexities of contemporary life. With undertones of foreboding, wanting and dismay, these works delve into the world of reality and fantasy, and provide a visual space to reflect on and reconsider the relationship between what remains, what is scrapped and what is made new in society’s collective consciousness.
(vía abrahammx)
