Wednesday 23 October 2013

Egon Schiele

The National Gallery currently has a major exhibition examining the central role portraiture played in early twentieth century Vienna, and due to the fact that I blatantly won't be able to get down to see it, as I have kids, I thought I'd post a few of my favourite Egon Schiele drawings.

It's Schiele's clean line work that has always drawn me to his work rather than subject matter or overall emotional impact. And it's something that is pretty clearly visible in my own work. His lines hold an incredible amount of intensity and nervous energy which give an enormous expressive energy to his drawings.

I find it quite humbling to think that Schiele created this incredible body of work before his death in 1918 as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic, at the age of twenty-eight... a couple of years younger than I am now.

The exhibition, Facing The Modern: The Portrait In Vienna 1900, will be on display until 12th January 2014.










Wednesday 2 October 2013

Natalia Rak at Folk on the Street Art Festival, Poland

Here's a fantastic new mural by Polish artist and graphic designer Natalia Rak, painted at Folk on the Street Art Festival in Bialystok, Poland, depicting a young girl in traditional Polish dress watering the tree below. Simple, vibrant and massively effective.