JOHN HIMMELFARB : UNSHAKEABLE

Unshakeable is a documentary about the art and life of Chicago-based artist John Himmelfarb. John began exhibiting his work way back in 1968, and has made it his living ever since. In that time, art trends have come and gone by the dozens, but John has never chased them. Art is his business, and he’s done it his way. It’s time to share with the coasts what the Midwest has known for decades, John Himmelfarb’s work is UNSHAKEABLE.

The film is being funded by artists and like-minded supporters of the arts on Kickstarter.org. See the project: UNSHAKEABLE, and if you want to be a film producer, put in $25 or more towards the production of this film about the great artist John Himmelfarb.

YANA BYSTROVA: PARIS EN FLEURS

Yana Bystrova is giving new meaning to plein aire painting these days by French frying the great outdoors in a kind of liquid neon. The world should look this cool. The Paris-based, Kiev-born artist walks out into her own Strawberry Fields and serves up these fertile lands in a very hot juice. The results are graphic, hard-edged works that glow with an intensity that would have easily buzzed Van Gogh during his famous swoon in Arles.

A visit to Yana's Marais studio is a bit like an acid trip stoned on summer sunshine and lavender loaded breezes. Vibrating flowers, rolling and tilled fields populate the two-level loft creating open windows onto scintillating landscapes.

Newer works on round canvases fill the lower area, along with large Rorschach-test inspired canvases (pictured above) that combine abstract patterns with anagrams. Everything spills over in pop color, intimating seemingly drug-drenched puzzles that double as interior psych sessions. These canvases are a sweet industrial magic and light show for high IQs looking for a work out, a stroll through the magic mushroom kingdom.

But these are self-conscious art works, objects in and of themselves.  And Yana has long aimed at this kind of visual poetry, without the aid of any kind of hallucinogens.

The works also borrow from a range of printing notions and several of these works feel like they've been silkscreened or produced using woodblock printing. But no, says Yana, they are all done in "the middle of some field by my own hand."

These canvases typically sell for between 1000 and 3000 euros. You can contact the artist directly if you'd like to arrange a visit: Yana Bystrova Website.

Yana's electric landscares are currently on view in Champagne, France from 8 - 28 July in a group exhibition with the controversial theme of : Revolt of the Wine Growers.  Well it's actually Centenaire de la Révolte des Vignerons 1911 - 2011.  To visit: Coopérative Les Coteaux du Landion 10200 Meurville, France.

Francis Bacon On Painting

The artist talks about his methods, Muybridge, and motion from the particular madness that is his London studio. (Thank you, Timothy Buckwalter).