Beautiful decay: the work of artist and designer, Evan Hecox.

It was a few years ago when I first heard of Evan Hecox.  I can't remember exactly how I came to find his work but it instantly grabbed my attention. The simplified, design-like style hit the same chord that illustration does with me. The paintings are almost cinematic in their composition. And it's this mix of recording the factual, physical decay of a city street while simultaneously reducing it to it's essential visible components, and turning it into a beautiful image, that I love so much.

He begins with careful observations of a setting and then progresses into concentrated, detailed drawings worked over a prepared, aesthetically textured ground. As a result the drawing floats on top of the surface, which remains visible through the drawing, creating a space between them that is at once tied to, and distanced from the image.

His more recent work has started to move towards abstraction with design coming to the fore. Presenting work with bold abstracted lettering combined with the urban landscapes of his previous work, often drawn over newspaper.

Evan Hecox lives and works in Colarado, USA.

Contemporary abstract art by Eric Blum

Born in Fresno, California in 1956, Eric Blum studied at UCLA and St Martin's in London.

Working with the difficult medium of encaustic he creates multiple layers of resin, watercolour and silk, applied gradually, often at one layer a day. The result is a distorted image: ambiguous forms with an almost infinite depth giving a sense of a fleeting, unfocused, light or movement hitting your peripheral view.

He currently lives and works in New York City.

Françoise Gilot: Artist

Françoise Gilot (b.1921) is well known for being the lover and muse of Pablo Picasso from 1944 to 1953, and the mother of his children, Claude and Paloma. However, fewer people realise that she is also an artist in her own right.

The work below shows her development from cubism through to her own style of abstract painting, a visually cleaner and brighter collection of work when compared to Picasso. Currently living in New York City and Paris, she continues to exhibit her work internationally, having exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery as recently as May 2012.