Leaves Crayons by Shion Ito

I adored getting a new box of Crayola crayons when I was a child...the promise, the colors, the smell, the idea that I could draw anything I could think of with them. And I loved the bigger box with the sharpener at the back!

Japanese product designer Shion Ito has taken that love and mixed it with a regard for the natural world in his new Leaves crayons. Like a fallen autumn leaf, each one contains flecks of secondary colors to the main hue.

https://shionito.com/leaves

"COLORS" by Thomas Blanchard

"COLORS" is an experimental dreamlike video rocking us smoothly through circular moves. The visual compositions have been created out of paint, oil, Oat milk, remover, bleach, and soap liquid.

 

https://thomas-blanchard.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Alena Aenami

Just look at the colors Alena Aenami uses in her images of sunsets and evening skies. Astounding! What skill to be able to conjure up the light and intense glow of a red sun on the horizon.

Top to bottom: 7 p.m.; Any Minute Now; Away In Silence; Draw Breath; Dreamer; Endless; From This Moment; Horizon; Sketches 001; Sketches 003 Nightfall; Sketches 003; Walls; You

https://www.instagram.com/aenami.art

BEAUTY: Painting--Golnaz Afraz

I have been craving color and I found it in the lovely work of Golnaz Afraz. Her heavily populated narratives feel like dreams and memories of places and crowds and gatherings and friends and family. I love the colors and the composition but there is also an intriguing, palpable, emotional depth. The cumulative effect is touching.

Top to bottom: Colors of My Dream; Find HereFrom There; Last Summer; Le Fête; Le Reflet du Monde; Life Elsewhere; Somewhere; The Dream Upside Down; There Is No Way

http://www.golnazafraz.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Terri Loewenthal

The photography of Northern California artist Terri Loewnethal reminds me of the classic 70s film "Zabriskie Point" by Antonioni (previously here)--the different views of California landscapes superimposed on top of one another, all drenched in acid Kool-Aid colors. Indeed, she has titled this series "Psychscapes." "I was referring to these images as psychedelic even before I made them," she says. "To have a psychedelic experience is to free your mind from its normal constraints. When I had the idea for these images, I was able to shift the colors of the natural world in my mind."

Top to bottom: Psychscape 09 (Buck Creek, CA); Psychscape 18 (Banner Ridge, CA); Psychscape 26 (Rock Garden, CA); Psychscape 41 (Lundy Canyon, CA); Psychscape 48 (Lookout Mountain, CA); Psychscape 61 (Yosemite); Psychscape78 (Obsidina Dome, CA)

http://www.terriloewenthal.com/

BEAUTY: Installation--Katharina Grosse

German artist Katharina Grosse doesn't paint images of the world, she paints the world itself. Her most recent installation which was on view through last December 3rd at South London Gallery was entitled This Drove my Mother up the Wall. Grosse said of the piece, "It’s about the reactions that you might have to other people’s actions. What might be interesting to you might transgress somebody else’s limits of acceptance and enjoyment. It’s this steady confrontation between individuals. Within family life you often have to negotiate how you live and how you accept one another. It’s a saying in English, isn’t it? To drive your mother up the wall. It’s also what children do with felt pens, to make little drawings or notes on the wall. For me, painting can appear anywhere in our world. It doesn’t have to be on a canvas or the space above the sofa....In the middle of the installation is a glaring white void, created using a Styrofoam stencil, that can only be reached by walking across the painted edges of the room."

Yet at the center a cut out in the stencil allowed paint to create a little triangle.

http://www.katharinagrosse.com/

Multicolor

I usually post a meditation on a color (for example here, here, here, here, and here) but here is a meditation on them all!