I want to paint like Charlie Isoe today. His mixed media portraits are especially moving. There's nothing particularly beautiful about them, except that they make me forget that I'm looking at a painting. The skin, the expressions, are so transluscent, I forget that I'm looking at paint on canvas or paper. I don't know what I can say about them technically. Technically they're just so much more than anything I understand about painting. How do you even do that with spray paint and charcoal? And the layering of surreal over real...great. Really great. I am enjoy the portraits of women the most. They're simultaneously sumptuous and misongynistic, sexual and messed up, pretty, not pretty. Sometimes I come across artists who remind me that I think inside a very small box. The opression, depression, the thin veneer of normal over inner crazy in the faces of his subjects reminds me of my own limits. What I really see here is his fine drawing and so much attention to detail, that he can afford to ignore it.
This snapped into my consciousness via Artistaday.com.
