Just taking a quick break at the #HamiltonFarmersMarket to cool off and grab some much needed sustenance and flipping through these great #zinesfrom @labelobscura – two of which feature my artwork on the covers! Pick a few up today while you’re at #Supercrawl2016 at the Label Obscura booth and say hi!
New piece by yours truly to commemorate the best time of year – the start of BBQ season. Let the feasting begin! 🍔🍻
Feel free to contact me at abominableink@gmail.com for all your art needs! I do graphic design as well as illustration and specialize in pop art portraits. Here’s an example I created for a client who wanted to turn their kitty into a Gatsby girl… The Great Catsby! If you want to get it in time for Christmas, you’d better hurry! Time is running out!
I had such a blast working on live art alongside some truly talented artists at the January Art Crawl at Club Absinthe for Anthony Hayley’s A Very Merry Unbirthday party last night. Lauren Olson of Temper Temper, Petra, Dan Rivero of Abstract Visions, Olga Pankova, Juliana LaChance, Nick Dub, Jennifer Henderson and of course Anthony Hayley all created some really awesome twisted Alice paintings. It’d be cool to get together and do it again sometime!
Here’s a few shots from my corner if you missed it… and yes, the original is now up for sale and prints are coming soon!
Just wanted to share some of the new works I’ve been exhibiting around the Greater Toronto Area lately. Take a look at what I’ve been up to if you’d like…
Check out my “Fazooli Prints” page to get all the details and see what’s available! Any feedback is greatly appreciated since I’ve only started doing this since May of 2014. There’s only room to grow from here on out!
Ray Anthony Barrett, “Porchmonkey Pawns For Manicured Lawns Jockey For Position Without Inquisition (Battle Chess), from “Porch Monkeys” (2014)
Los Angeles artist Ray Anthony Barrett likes to play with 90’s hip hop vernacular and transform words into literal interpretations using anthropomorphism with pen and ink on paper. The animal faces serve as masks, shielding the true identities of the subjects in question, and further exploring the idea behind society’s incessant need to commodify native themes and exaggerate the very spectacle that has become infotainment.
Manipulating paradoxes found in the language of hip hop, Barrett combines his own brand of dry humour as well as poignant critical observation. Drawing from his own freestyle verses, he creates a mirror-like dynamic through his stream-of-consciousness between the words on the page of his notebook, with the lines that extrude from his pen on the page of his illustrations. The fun part is that he dissects the derogatory using this technique – and reveals it’s anthropomorphic nature – only to link it back up to their origins in African-American cultural folklore.
“Hip-hop is a trickster vernacular — it’s full of hybrids, playful, always shape-shifting, and as soon as the society of the spectacle, to borrow Debord’s terminology, gets a hold of it, it’s already changing into something else — a new word is born from the source of the hip-hop lexicon and the old one remains an empty commodity to be consumed. Like jiggy it’s got no juice anymore, and hasn’t for a long time. With nearly eight million definitions, the open-sourced Urban Dictionary is an example of how the rules of “combat” demand more of a personal, micro-level engagement — like guerilla warfare, but with the alchemy of words.”
– Ray Anthony Barrett
Check out an amazingly-in-depth interview with the artist on Hyperallergic.
And to find out more about Ray Anthony Barrett, check out his website.
“Bear Bare-backing Buck” from Ruff Ridin’ (2014)
“Crazy Horse” from Treaty Treatises (2014)
“While Jungle Bunnies Hip-Hop the Doom Broom” from Porch Monkeys (2014)
“Unseeing Eyes Glued to Inflated Boobtubes”, from “Boobtubes” (2013)
“From No Place, To Home”, from “Dakar” (2014)
For Tokyo-based illustrator Shohei Otomo (aka Hakuchi), the famous cliché is very à propos – the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. His body of work is primarily created using only fine ballpoint pen, working meticulously line-by-line. What was once a cost-effective practice is now a trademark style, often depicting what are known as “furyo”, or Japanese delinquents in both typical Manga and traditional style, and flavoured with somewhat vulgar, sexual and violent elements. I love that his work is bold and simple, which is what makes it so striking and dramatic.
Having originally studied oil painting at the university level, he’s cast aside all semblance of complication in his works. Using only black, white and red as his palette (much like the traditional makeup of the geisha), the subject matter he often plays with includes images derived from anime, punk, geisha, samurai culture and youth stereotypes. With these paradigms in mind, and a strong sense of dark humour, he uncovers the reality behind the commercial and subcultures of the urban world. Though his style seems so effortless, his work takes quite a bit of time and patience – as he painstakingly renders each drawing with fine detail and well-honed technique, physically juxtaposing the traditional Japanese intuitive way of creation and the Western logical perspective. In that sense, East truly meets West both in his imagery and execution.
And a little bit of trivia for you – Shohei is also the son of Katsuhiro Otomo, the globally famous Manga artist who was behind the creation of “Akira”.
Visit his website to check out more (hope you can read Japanese!).
Inspired by a passion for music and the world of art, Taj Francis is a name to start looking out for. At only 22 years old, this Jamaican artist and illustrator has been honing his craft through traditional and digital means for “as long as he can remember”. His mastery of pen, brush, ink and spray paint is really incredible and though he’s still in school at the Edna Manley College School of Arts, he’s already been sought after for advertising and has even started his own clothing line. His talent can only push onwards and upwards and I hope to see more of his work spread across the globe soon.
Check out more of his work – including his traditional pen and ink illustrations – via his website.
The James Street North Art Crawl is a monthly institution here in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, where art, music and creativity are celebrated on the second Friday of every month. Last week I had the opportunity to spend both Friday and Saturday at the Supercrawl, which occurs once a year, usually in September, where artists, performers, musicians and gourmands unite in one big 2-day street festival. The streets are shut down and filled with massive stages, a multitude of food trucks and vendors, and all forms of artistic expression are on display.
One of my favourite highlights of this year’s Supercrawl was briefly meeting a couple of the guys from Montreal-based art collective En Masse, and watching them work over the course of both days. Friday, they had an installation in progress at the Design Annex, and Saturday they were busy all day creating a giant mural on the side of our popular record shop Dr. Disc. I managed to catch a few shots of them hard at work and was so entranced I kept coming back to see the progress over the course of the day.
I love the idea of having a diverse group of like-minded individuals, all collaborating on one big installation, off the top of their heads. The creativity unleashed is astounding – not to mention the technical prowess involved is top-notch. The group works entirely in black and white, and fluctuates in it’s membership, picking up illustrators here and there, so you never get the same atmospheric quality twice. The eye wanders throughout each piece for hours and continually finds awesome and interesting elements, so random, full of life and unique personality, which all tie in together to form a colossal achievement in unity. It’s the collective individualities meshing so well that you’d think it was all created by one person that make this form of art so magic. I am both in awe of their talent, and in dire need to jump in and take part. Maybe I need a little more drawing practice first…
Regardless, these guys have transformed part of our downtown and I would love for them to come back and cover some more terrain. If it’s one thing Hamilton’s got – it’s lots of wall space in need of creative expression!
To find out more about En Masse, check out their website (which is currently under construction, so please be patient!).
Join them on facebook and follow them on Twitter to see where they’ll pop up next!
To see more awesome works by En Masse, check out Kirsten McCrea’s article. Great photos!
Italian multimedia artist Alice Pasquini brings a distinctive poetical and feminine feel to everything she touches. Based in Rome, she has also lived and worked in the France, Spain, and the U.K. and focuses primarily on painting, illustration, creating installations, and animation, showcasing the idea of people and relationships amongst one another and strong, independent women in a modern world. She has spread her talent through her travels around the world, in various formats – on walls in the streets, in galleries, and even in graphic novels – usually in spray paint and acrylics, or illustration inks on paper and Photoshop.
What I love about her work is the immediate perception of human emotions in her characters – the vibrant strokes are dynamic and full of hope and passion. They truly evoke a real sense of both strength and the softness of femininity.
Check out her Flickr gallery and her website for more amazing work.
