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!).
