Artists profile: Maia Ibar

Maia Ibar, born in 1982, is a part French-Basque part American painter, musician and artists. She currently resides in New York.

About her work in her own words:

"I am Investigating the process of painting, video, drawing, and of making music as rituals connected and related to mind body and spirit. The journey and process are a way to teach my higher sub-conscious, revealing my deepest emotions and my path through life.

Spirits appear to me with personalities and character. They grow inside of my head organically like a plant. It starts small and little by little the pieces grow from each other like a tree. There is something bigger out there that I'm trying to connect to: Maybe it's the cosmos or maybe it's the unknown. There is balance and unbalance. I believe my mind fluctuates between these two points. Sometimes there is order, in composition,in color harmony,order in my emotions that translate directly into clear symbols. Other times, I am not in control, I cannot even begin to describe it here because that would mean that I know it and that I am in control of it. It is the unbalance in me, it is the unknown in life, in what we don't understand, in the issues that are destructive to balance. The un-aesthetic, the chaos, life and death,the frustration of what isn't good, what isn't beautiful; This is the side that fights me and that I have to express through my art. I seek to let myself trust what I don't know. That is what I am trying to get to when I am working. It is the thing that makes us be, the automatic sense that makes us breathe. It is what makes us trust and continue."

More of her work here.

Artists profile: Ari Pelkonen

Here Is a part of a interview with Ari Pelkonen, a young artist from Finland by Arlinda Sipilä. You can read the rest at designfinland.fi.

What year did you start working with woodcut and painting?

I have worked with woodcut and painting since 2004. Both techniques are important and they inspire me to use them in new ways and to invent new ways to build up the art works. Combining techniques is an inspiring starting point and way of work. Painting is something that I keep as a very important part of my working even though it effects only in the background. I choose some parts from painting that I think are important, but painting never will stand alone in my works. It effects the way of making woodcut and also the other way around, woodcut effects painting. With two techniques I can choose what is important to me.

Care to shed some light on the process of your work?

I first paint on canvas and then I 
attach my woodcut prints on canvas. Thin papers that 
I use are transparent and painting shows through. So, there is thin layers of paper on top. Painting is a way to add 
something into the prints to give them more depth. Print is part of the painting and the techniques are blending. With painting I can be fast and spontaneous and with woodcut I can use time and
 think what to do – plan things. In the esthetic way, I think that the techniques are very close.

What influences your art?

Self-portraits, landscapes, planned and unplanned, moods, layers, made impressions are things that tell something about my works and ways of working. Roles, play, masks, excitement, never ending stories effect and are kind of starting point for my new works.

Artists profile: Tamara Gonzales

Tamara Gonzales b.1959 Madera, California. Her paintings and installations play with Day-of-the-Dead, porn-mask weird grand street brooklyn found-toy imagery, among other things. She has shown at PS1, the:artist:network, and most recently, Party Expo. Currently she is collaborating with poet Jerome Sala on Prom Queen, a chapbook to be released fall 2010. When not in the studio she teaches yoga classes at Abyhasa and walks her dog Bear.

Check out more of her work here.

Artists profile: GJ Kimsunken

GJ Kimsunken is a Korean artist born in 1985. He lived and studied in Australia from 2005-07 where he got his BFA in Fine Arts. In 2008 he moved to New York to study at the New York Studio School of Painting and Sculpture, of which he graduated from this spring of 2010 with his MFA in Fine Arts. GJ works in oil, acrylics, styrofoam, crayons and pretty much anything else he can get his hands on. He currently works and paints from his Brooklyn studio.

"I believe in the possibility of paint and painting. I see many people including myself, who have important relationships with painting in their lives.

My art is about an entrance. It is about experiencing the place behind the entrance. When passing through it, there is a possibility of finding yourself in an eternal place. This place is of love, joy, courage, and fulfillment. It is home and heaven. It is salvation"

- GJ Kimsunken