The b-uncut blog

b-loud: Carolyn Jordan–With a Wink and a Smile

// December 3rd, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

Meet British born artist Carolyn Jordan, a figurative and expressionist painter currently living and working in Provence. Carolyn’s art has a strong mediterranean influence and her accomplished draughtsmanship belies the underlying solitude of people, whether alone or in groups, facing the inevitability of their lives. She is a widely acclaimed artist, having exhibited her work internationally. We caught up with her this week:

“Born in Suffolk, educated in London at the Lyçée Français de Londres, then private schools in England and Switzerland, Carolyn Jordan won a scholarship to study at St. Martin’s School of Art.  An allergy to sewing led her to spend more time in the life class than in the workroom and the following year she left England for France. Her portraits are rugged, realistic and uncompromising in their individuality.”
( Extract from The Osborne Gallery public relations, Grosvenor Street London WI – 1986)

“Probing, analytical portraits painted with a gritty ‘clin d’oeil’ (wink) that never leave the viewer indifferent.”
(Extract from ‘The London Portrait’.)

She has since shown at major galleries in London, Paris, the U.S. and been interviewed by Arte (French TV), France Culture (French radio), La Rai (Italian TV). Her works have appeared in many art journals and magazines across the world.

b-uncut: what was your first artwork?

CJ: The first artwork I remember was a painting I did of a circus for an art competition in a national newspaper that to my joy, I won. From then on there was no looking back. Although to my knowledge the work is not hanging on any museum wall my path was set in stone.

b-uncut: your favorite artwork?

CJ: Usually the latest because I feel I’ve moved on.

b-uncut: your most “hated” artwork?

CJ: Sometimes the latest one month later because I’m not certain I have!

b-uncut: what did it take to make it to where you are now? and who helped you along the way?

CJ: Blood, sweat and tears!  I was a rebel daughter to very formal and disapproving parents. Mother preferred boys but to her dismay gave birth to two girls!  I was expected to marry well – the ‘Season’ was, and still is an upper class invention akin to a marriage market from which  I ran away (still a minor)  to France, only to fall into the clutches of my ex-husband who continued the tradition of forbidding me to paint – only a little more violently. So it wasn’t till three children and one divorce later that I was, at last, able to PAINT !

I owe an undying debt of gratitude to my old friend and mentor, Jaro Hilbert who was never complacent in his criticism but who egged me on relentlessly. His confidence in my future as a painter, in spite of my ups and downs and the added difficulty of being the single Mother of three small children, gave me the impetus I needed at that time.

b-uncut: what are your methods? Your inspirations?

CJ: My inspirations are the human condition. My methods? as for a stage setting, or choreography, choosing the people I wish to represent then sometimes ‘placing’ them in a very different environment that may be in total contrast to their lives but I think the notion of solitude is omnipresent. My chaos series is a more journalistic approach to the gratuitous violence that threatens our civilisation and anger towards complacency.

I believe the personality of an artist will nearly always be there in the paintings – there has to be sincerity in art. I cannot find any sincerity in the so called works of art pushed down our throats and glorified by clueless and cynical art market  profiteers calling themselves ‘experts’!  Marcel Duchamps and Brit-Art have a lot to answer for…

b-uncut: the swear word you like the most ?

CJ: I haven’t made a decision yet but anything with a lot of hard consonants sounds satisfying.

b-uncut: the flaws you find most seductive in a man?

CJ: Oh, a man with no flaws at all – I will make up the difference for two.

b-uncut: the parental advice you didn’t follow?

CJ: In our family there was no advice – just commands that I did my best to disobey.

b-uncut: your least welcome talent?

CJ: getting too good on my computer – I already spend too much time on it and it takes me away from my work.

b-uncut: the person you’d like to be hated by ?

CJ: I’d hate to be hated by anyone – if there’s someone out there who does, I don’t want to know !

b-uncut: where do you see yourself in…

5 seconds?

CJ:Still trying to answer your questions.

5 minutes?

CJ:May have finished so back to my studio at last.

5 days?

CJ: Watching the sale of one of my paintings at auction and trying not to think of all the ridiculous things I’ve said in this interview!

5 months?

CJ: Hoping I don’t catch this infernal flu so I can go on painting

5 centuries?

CJ: If we haven’t succeeded in blowing ourselves up – hanging on museum walls of course.

Do we know you….Through my works, a bit perhaps but I look nothing like my paintings so people are thrown off course when they meet me.

Should we know you….I prefer to be known for my work. Even being photographed at my own shows (or being interviewed) brings me out in spots – I would prefer to be invisible.

Will we know you…. That depends on you – I am not very sociable.

b-shots: Warning! The world’s been invaded!

// November 5th, 2009 // View Comments // b-street

Fear not though, Space Invaders are friendly creatures decorating many streets around the world – they’re very retro and they don’t bite (not that we know of anyway!)

Space Invaders are the brainchild of French Street Artist Invader who pastes up characters from and inspired by the Space Invader game, made up of small coloured square tiles that form a mosaic. He does this in cities across the world, then documents this as an “Invasion”, with maps of where to find each invader.

He started this project in 1998 with the invasion of Paris, the city where he lives and the most invaded city to date – and then spread the invasion to 35 other cities in the world. We found this invader just under the train bridge next to Southwark Cathedral on Borough High Street.

Space Invaders are a little bit Pokemon – gotta snap ‘em all!

So what’s b-uncut about then?

// November 4th, 2009 // View Comments // b-hind the scenes

We thought it was about time we took you on an intimate tour of b-uncut, just because we’re nice like that!

- b-uncut.com is our main home and the place where you can find our virtual online gallery. The gallery puts art lovers and buyers within one degree of separation of an infinite number of talented international artists, whether you’re looking for painters, photographers or digital artists. Social Media is about being transparent so we wanted to point out that our artists keep 80% of the total amount of the pieces they sell, whilst the remaining 20% help us run our website, blog and do things like put on events.

- The b-uncut store is THE place to get personal with art. Wearable art. Drinkable art. Usable art. Whatever or whoever you’re buying a gift for come and browse our online store and buy something affordable and unique, while supporting our great artists’ talents. This is not another opportunity for us to greedily line our pockets by selling art on products; we like to give a little nudge to our emerging talents and help them work in a studio instead of selling transgenic chicken burgers at McDonald’s. The b-uncut store is an opportunity for artists to create and for you to gift and decorate.

- b-uncut.net is the cool place to hang out if you’re an artist: meet fellow artists, have a chat and share your art with the rest of the community. We have forums for artists, blogs, you name it! Artists have the opportunity to develop and grow in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere.

- The b-uncut blog is dedicated to the coverage of international art. Each week, we spotlight notable and emerging artists, exhibitions, events, and trends, bringing you the best the art world has to offer in an easily digestible format. Subscribe to our RSS feed – what are you waiting for?

You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook – are you following us? Good!

b-loud: Meet painter Marie Kazalia

// November 3rd, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

The artist under the spotlight this week, is US-based painter Marie Kazalia.

Marie was recently honored to have a small artwork in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art part of the Book About Death, an exhibition at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in New York City. Pretty impressive if you ask us!

A poet of some renown in the San Francisco bay area in the nineties, her art combines the subtle flavours of her travels and experiences, which is evidenced in terms of gesture, form, colour combinations and layers. Marie has two sides to her personality, a yin and a yang: she’s both introspective (her current phase), searching, reading, seeing, studying, trying to learn how to do new things…and then she has her wild side that she left (mostly) in San Francisco. Oh and of course there was that lost year in India. Really she only meant to do a short trip to Tokyo and somehow she ended up wandering off and well perhaps we can delve into that another time.

Marie consistently creates a complex ground on canvas or panel, by using overloaded acrylic image transfers from found images or collage, over which she layers transparent and semi-opaque acrylic. She then finishes her compositions by using oil and alkyd paint. At the end of the process of layering acrylics and images the canvas is left with what she calls a visual texture.

Marie’s Splash series of paintings began when the rainwater on a tree in her garden soaked a bark and dripped into a vessel she had placed there accidentally.

Marie explains: “After the rain stopped, I discovered the vessel contained the light ‘tea stain’ and understood from my study of natural dyes how to make use of it. I collected the tannin water and returned to my studio to pour the liquid onto a paper support surface, over and over; as the water of each poured layer evaporated I collected and poured more, building layers. Then I began to paint the tannin “tea-stained” areas with watercolor paint, acrylic paint glazes, finally adding details with markers. That was how I came to create the first of the Splash series of paintings. My father was quite ill and then passed away shortly after I painted this first Splash.’

When I did return to the Splash painting two years later, it was as a quite different me; I was unable to recreate my approach. I worked from real tea stain make from store-bought tea bags, and as my forms for my Splash paintings expanded and developed I began to use other art materials, such and acrylic mediums and alkyds, and pour my mixes directly onto stretched canvases. I feel many of my color choices are influenced by advertisements –American, Japanese, Chinese–influences from my travel and expat years in Asia.”

We’re seriously loving these different influences conveyed through Marie’s pieces, and well her work is continuing to move in interesting directions! You can check out Marie’s splash series and some of her more recent paintings in the virtual gallery, or if you can’t quite afford her beautiful paintings, why not purchase a little something from the store instead?

What’s your fav Marie Kazalia piece? Let us know in the comments!

b-wired:iPhone-art-on-the-go by David Hockney

// November 2nd, 2009 // View Comments // b-wired

Digital photography and photo-manipulation (aka photo-shopping) are now bona fide Twenty-First Century art genres. But what would you say if we told you that you can now create artwork with your iPhone? Better still, the artist who’s pioneered the iPhone-art-on-the-go genre, is 72 year-old critically acclaimed artist David Hockney! Don’t you wish he was your grandpa?

David Hockney uses a nifty little app called ‘Brushes’ to create his works, a natural media painting application that features an advanced colour picker, several realistic brushes, multiple layers, extreme zooming, and a simple yet deep interface. The Bradford born artist sees the iPhone as offering a new challenge, creating work on a small canvas that requires you to think about composition, texture and colour. It also offers the possibility to share artwork, work in progress and ideas instantaneously with anyone in the world. He actually has two i-phones full of works. Pretty cool, huh?

So yes, there is quite literally an iPhone app for everything, which is fantastic news for those amongst us who have inherited two left hands (and nope we’re not talking about our artists here!)

There’s also a pretty cool list of other iPhone apps for artists on Be your art

If you’re using any of these apps, why not email your creations over – go on, you know you want to!

Living in a ma-ma-material world

// October 30th, 2009 // View Comments // b-scene

The Tate Modern’s exhibitions never disappoint and their latest Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition has le “va va voom”!

It’s a fun and colourful trip through pop art’s greatest hits from Andy Warhol to Richard Prince to Jeff Koons to Damien Hirst. For a moment we felt like pulling some of our best break-dance moves on the dance floor. Pop Life takes us through a journey of decadence where media-obsessed celebs flashed their dollars to the world whilst indulging in a sinful life of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.

As superficially fun and sensational as this exhibition may seem, the fact remains that the Tate deals with one of the most controversial issues of contemporary art — what happens to art when it embraces the mass market, capitalism and money? — taking Warhol’s maxim as its point of departure, “Good business is the best art”.

The show starts well with a highlight of Warhol’s cynical late works including a number of works from his initially controversial series known as the Retrospectives or Reversals. Including a number of celebrity portraits he made of anyone for a set price; the screenprints of gems that glitter cheesily with diamond dust; and his classic guest appearance with his Polaroid camera in an episode of The Love Boat.

It then takes us to giggly moments — like Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami’s pop video of Kirsten Dunst singing the old Eighties hit Turning Japanese, surrounded by cute Japanese girls. Followed by more “dramatic” moments of do-not-miss art from artists such as Piotr Uklanski’s grid of stills of Hollywood actors playing Nazis.

Finally, just as we think we might have got Pop Art’s drift about art, mass and cash, a series of rooms dedicated to porn and drugs caught our “attention”. Two questions crossed our minds: how provocative can porn be in this context and what are those bouncers here for?!

b-shots: mapping out cool things in London and beyond

// October 29th, 2009 // View Comments // b-street

Ever strolled down the street, snapped a cool graffiti or a space invader of some sort and forgot where the picture was taken? We’re thrilled to introduce our very own map of ‘interestingness’ where we’ll be mapping out things that are worth checking out around London and beyond.

Our first addition to the map is the Samuel Beckett graffiti in Notting Hill by artist Alex Martinez, painted in 2006 to commemorate the centenary of Beckett’s birth in Dublin on 13 April 1906. These are last shots of a Portobello icon, now covered over for the last time. No more.

While Notting Hill squats are littered with yummy bankers and fashionistas the street yearns the return of the real. The art.

Photograph by Philip Letts available at Gallery Mark Hatchem, NY

I’ll have what the ghouls and zombies are having… Where To Find Killer Cocktails This Halloween

// October 28th, 2009 // View Comments // b-scene

Halloween is only a few days away, and we’ve scouted out the scariest, ghoulish-est, Halloween-est parties around:

- Very International People.net are calling you to their annual Bloodbust Ball at Dracula’s main residence in Hampton Court. The evening will kick off with a cocktail reception followed by a BBQ in the castle’s magnificent gardens. Dress Code: victorian horror, werewolves, ghosts, zombies, monsters, witches and warlocks

- The glamourous and trendy Alice House in West Hampstead invite you to the Nightmare at the Gallery Halloween Party. The Alice House will transform into the Haunted House on Hallow’s Eve with Killer Cocktails, Deadly Dancing and some Spooky Surprises

- Draculas, Demons, Dancing Dervishes, DJ Ronnkie Pop will be spinning the Halloween Scare/Dance Fest at the Flower Pot. Halloween costumes a must and don’t forget to look out for their special drink deals!

Terror Tales in the Dark – The Moulettes, Suzanne Andrade, Helen Bradbury and June Petersa will be sharing Ghost Stories in the gathering darkness of Green Park. Scared in the Park has a whole new dimension….

Too scared of things that thump in the night to go out – we’ve thrown together this Halloween Spotify Playlist best enjoyed in the safety of your homes. But don’t blame us if the zombies come knocking at your door…

b-loud: Ross Kerr’s Uncooked Trio

// October 27th, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

We touched base again with Saffa Painter Ross Kerr who’s cherry-picked “Uncooked Trio” to be featured on the b-uncut blog.

b-uncut: What went through your mind when you painted “Uncooked Trio” ?

Ross: “Not much to be honest with you! I simply had an awesome time painting the tryptich. I’m a huge Jackson Pollock fan, and this piece is about me paying respects to him and his painting style. Throwing, dripping, dapping and spewing paint in all directions, seizing the Moment, with a big capital M, and not attempting to think things through. Just…in the MOMENT of every brushstroke or hurling of acrylic paint onto the canvas-without a care in the world!”

“This painting is titled “Uncooked Trio”, basically because I used no reference material whatsoever, and I did not consider too much what would “work” so to speak. The materials in these styles of works are lots and lots of acrylic, ink and fixative to spread the ink around the canvas.”

Uncooked Trio is looking for a loving home, and can be purchased from our gallery. Alternatively why not treat yourself to a Ross Kerr mouse pad or a coffee mug to wow your colleagues – office stationary needn’t be boring and your purchase helps support our artists!

b-loud: Meet South African Painter Ross Kerr

// October 26th, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

Our second willing victim under the spotlight this week, is self-taught South African painter extraordinaire, Ross Kerr

Ross refers to his work as “Outsider’s Art”, as he taught himself how to paint and sketch as means of escapism and individuality. Ross’ artwork is uninfluenced by growing trends or fashion, in Ross’ own words, “I do not attempt to make an intellectual or sophisticated statement, but rather create my work simply for the love of art itself. My art is a visual extension of myself, a liberation into the unknown, without using reference materials as a guide”

Ross enjoys making use of “characters” in his paintings, sketches and designs-allowing people to interpret them in any way, and perhaps relate to them in some way. His career began in mid-2002, and he has since then exhibited in various galleries across South Africa including the Magpie Gallery, The Gallery At Duncan Yard, and the VEO Gallery.

Ross also recently exhibited for the first time of his career abroad at the DIP gallery in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Without further ado, here’s Ross’ exclusive Q&A

the b-you interview – face-to-face with the artist
b-uncut: What was your first artwork?
Ross: My first artwork, as far as I can recall, was a big, messy and free flowing picture of a butterfly – which my Grandmother still has hanging on her wall to this day.

b-uncut: Describe your favourite piece?
Ross: To be honest with you, I don’t have a favourite artwork, I pretty much love all my work! It may sound like vanity, but all my work is close to my heart. I believe my art awesome! You have to believe in yourself after all! I love my art and if anyone else frowns upon my work it is of no consequence to me.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
Ross: It took a LOT of mistakes, to get where I am today, and grandiose ideas about making it big. But amongst all that I have learnt a heck of a lot over the years, and have grown an awful lot as an artist, and how to operate professionally.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
Ross: What’s helped me most along the way is my insatiable need to create artwork, and a lot of persistancy. Here’s a little secret; I like to paint listening to music which is not particularly radio friendly, I like to indulge in happiness or depression, drawing inspiration for artwork from random shapes and colour schemes which I see in different places. But most importantly, I try not to get ahead of myself and to create art primarily for me. And needless to say checking out other artists’ work!

The b-quick interview – it’s all about being unconventional!
b-uncut: What’s your favourite swear word?
Ross: The swear word I use the most is, well, fuck! It’s a very versatile word!

b-uncut: What flaws should a woman have to seduce you?
Ross: I would think, um, a high libido! Although that isn’t much of a flaw!

b-uncut: Who would you like to be hated by?
Ross: I don’t particularly want to be hated by anyone, but if I had to pick it would be art dealers who don’t take my work seriously, because it’s unconventional, I suppose.

b-uncut: What’s the question we should never ask you?
Ross: Don’t ask!

The b-where interview: where will you be in…
Five seconds: Answering the blog questions!
Five minutes: Smoking a cigarette
Five days: Photographing new work, creating new work
Five months: Exhibiting overseas
Five centuries: An afterlife where I can continue painting

Thank you Ross, for taking the time to answer our questions; we look forward to discussing your art in more detail in tomorrow’s blog post. In the meantime, our lovely readers can head over to the b-uncut gallery to discover more of Ross’ work!