Category Archive: ART

Wyatt Mills: The Naked Truth

When you take a drunk and a slightly paranoid individual and send them running into a fun house where an evil clown awaits, you come out with New York's new premier artist Wyatt Mills' stark and intriguing works of art.

Honest and a bit surreal, Mills creates shockingly blunt paintings on canvas. As a 22-year-old painter who lives in Los Angeles, he emerges on darker issues plaguing society. But don't be fooled, Mills still takes to the sunny beaches and loves surfing, eating out and music. His canvases are merely a creative reflection of what exists around us all. He attempts to expose our fears and utmost anxieties. He accomplishes this feat by finding his own creative voice through anger, frustration, fear and lots of observation.

As a young artist illustrating such deep issues, it would appear Mills' insights are way beyond his years. "I forgot who said it, but I once read ‘anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity," he told online art forum platinumcheese.com. As creativity goes, Mills' art proves to be ever flowing and full of statements.

With nudity, caked makeup faces, bold lines of nightmarish realities and pleomorphic images, the up and coming artist poses a challenge to society's standards. In a very confrontational way, Mills opens the door to questions of everyday values. What sets his work apart from other artists is his inhibitions. From looking at the work, you'll know within seconds if you're offended, inspired or creeped out. He claims that his honesty is important.

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Nathaniel Mary Quinn: The Silver Lining

Paul Gauguin, a French Post-Impressionist artist, once said “I am a great artist and I know it. The reason I am great is because of all the suffering I have done.”

There is no truer case than Nathaniel Mary Quinn, raised in the projects of Chicago, Quinn is no stranger to suffering. However, through the pain and loss, he managed to find inspiration and create moving pieces of artwork that eventually found  its way to famous galleries in London and New York.

Many nights Quinn would wake up to the sounds of gunshots ringing through the streets. Peace was  pleasantry not readily available to Quinn in his childhood. He started creating at a young age, with a little bit of help from his mother, “As a child, my mother allowed me to draw on the walls of our apartment. She would just clean the walls and let me draw again, repeatedly,” he told the Huffington Post. It was these walls that sparked the creative genius inside Quinn, starting from copying comic books to creating masterpieces on canvas.

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Amy Sherald: Painted Dreams

Weeks before graduating with a masters in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art, Amy Sherald was told her heart was only functioning at 18%. But cardiomyopathy (a rare heart disease) didn’t stop her from painting. So she carried on, painting day and night while she waited tables five days a week to pay for treatment. That is, until a routine stop at Rite Aid for art supplies almost turned deadly. What seemed like an ordinary heart flutter caused Sherald to blackout in the aisle only to wake up in a pool of blood underneath her head. But even as she was rushed to John Hopkins Hospital in an ambulance, she held on to her dream. “I’m not going to be afraid, it’s all going to be okay,” she told herself. Even as her heart dropped to 5% functionality, she wanted to paint. But overcoming the heart transplant wasn’t so easy. Due to physical ailments and the depressing side-effects of the medication, she could not paint for a year. “I told my friends, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ It felt stupid and selfish,” she explained in an interview with the Baltimore Sun. But as the effect of the anti-rejection heart transplant meds lessened, Sherald reconnected herself with her six-year old inner child that dreamed of becoming a painter.

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Bill Rauhauser: Motor City Alive

If this brilliant Detroit photographer never laid eyes on the exhibit of the legendary French photographer Henri Cartier- Bresson, photography as we know it would be much different. Bill Rauhauser is known for his classic black-and-white photographs that captured the significant beauty and simple elegance of Detroit throughout several decades. Prior to seeing Cartier-Bresson exhibit, Rauhauser had no idea that his hobby of taking photographs could turn into a full blown career.

His photographs over the decades depict the simple moments in Detroit life. Whether it is a photo of a woman gazing off to the side as she enjoys a cigarette on an outside Detroit plaza while wearing a lavish peacoat and string of pearls, or a photo of pedestrians walking across a street with their heads intently focused on what’s in front of them as a young boy accompanies them with a balloon in his hand, Rauhauser’s photographs show us that,  as a society, we often don’t notice simple moments the world presents to us.

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Steve McCurry: Capturing the Deeper Truth

The 21st century has marked some of the most heightened technological advancements. Who would have thought that Facebook would lead to quick international communication? Or that the "selfie" would actually become a part of everyday language? Through social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook have created a world of photography for the everyday person. Though unprofessional and mainly edited using filters, people are constantly communicating through the lens of their iPhone, making human connections that exemplify what relationships can become.

For one man, American photographer Steve McCurry, this is exactly what the evolution of photojournalism is about. Born in 1950, McCurry has documented over 30 years of evolving photography, clinging to people-centered art. The connections, the emotions and the words that are silently projected from his work are eloquently depicted in years of travel and experience.

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