Ben Nicholson

I decided to look at some modern artists and I found Ben Nicholson.

I could see myself making work like this. 

Javier Cruz

http://www.javiercruz.net/

Matthew Bourbon

"I’m intrigued by Matthew Bourbon’s square, half-representational, half-abstract paintings. Like David Hockney, Bourbon is adept at blending two modes of representation in one image. In The Words We Agreed Upon and A Bucketful of Lies, figures mutate into irregularly shaped fields of geometric swatches of color. His interiors and figures suggest thinking and a kind of intellectual cosmopolitanism that seems precious today. (I keep reading his abstract elements as thought bubbles emanating from figures.) I also love the mise-en-abîme aspect of A Bucketful... and the way it recapitulates its subject, a group of abstract paintings, by becoming the thing it depicts. Bourbon’s might be “desert island” paintings—works you’d choose if you could only have one thing to represent painting in 2010."

--Toby Kamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Menil Collection

http://matthewbourbon.com/work

His undergrad degree is from UCD and his MFA is from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Jave Yoshimoto

I'm drawn to these because of the incredible amount of detail. Haha, drawn. That's kind of a pun

Jann Haworth

Some of her stuff is at the MOA right now and it's awwwwwwwesome

Adam Bartos

Most of my work has involved ... some aspect of twentieth-century utopianism. --Adam Bartos 

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=3968

Ernst Haeckel

So good ol' Ernst. He was a biologist who did a TON of illustrations of living species. He lived from 1834-1919 (pretty long life!) and  was German/Prussian. The wikipedia article is pretty interesting, I'm not going to summarize all of it but he was a pretty radical dude (radical meaning innovative and crazy).

Tom Bamberger

These are all photographs mounted on aluminum. He shoots a particular segment of a landscape and then repeats the same segment in order to create these panoramic and very repetitive scenes.

Chris Hadfield: Photos from Space

Cool vid

http://www.theavantgardediaries.com/en/article/299/SALLY+SILVERSTONE+%26+LINDA+LEIGH/Biosphere+2

Eva Lundsager

This looks like an ocean landscape, huh?

I don't like these all that much, but I like the fact that they look like landscapes in a weird sort of way. 

http://www.evalundsager.com/

Alexander Gorlizki

Lordy Rodriguez

This guy is super interesting.

Lordy Rodriguez's works start with a geological source and the human urge to locate/define oneself by charting our environment in precise detail. Using the language of cartography, he makes drawings that go beyond map-making into abstracted, imaginary terrain.

A desire to remake the world motivates his drawings. For several years he's been working on a series that redraws the boundaries and locations of the 50 United States and the cities within them (and adds 5 more states). Other works paradoxically use the specific vocabulary of topography to chart invented lands.

The Geological series is a new body of work that pushes the iconography of mapmaking further into abstraction. These works omit the text that is so crucial to cartography. Without text, the map loses its utility, and the void is filled by the viewer's own biases and experiences.

In previous bodies of work, including the Abstracted series and the America series, symbols and colors typical of road maps, such as highways, urban sprawls, and park versus city land, contributed to a certain recognition and sense of familiarity. With the Geological series, all that remains is the landscape -- magnified, fragmented, and devoid of context. Dislocation, a constant theme through his work, operates here on an even deeper level.

I really like them because of the ideas of displacement and boundaries.

He got his MFA from Stanford. 

http://www.hosfeltgallery.com/index.php?p=artists&a=Lordy%20Rodriguez

Reed Danziger

Here's a spiel about her from the Hosfelt Gallery.

Reed Danziger makes complex, intricately layered paintings that become worlds in themselves. Arabesques, mandalas, dots, and other ornamental designs co-mingle with organic shapes and patterns from nature. Like cells frantically reproducing in a Petri dish, their dense clusters seem about to explode from the surface.

As she builds each layer, Danziger interweaves stenciled patterns with free-hand drawing. She has long been fascinated with anonymous forms of design and decoration of ancient origins. Her process of layering silkscreen, drawing, and painting simulates the unpredictable ways in which these forms have morphed over the centuries as they have come into contact with new cultures and technologies. Yet her motifs also mimic nature in the way they mutate and regenerate as the paintings evolve.

Artist Statement:

In this latest group of paintings, I've continued to explore the shift towards greater abstraction through color and movement. The new work is more celestial, and the forms less clearly describe organic structures; rather they feel like the sum of entire universes. The particles that define these galaxies merge and shift, expanding and contracting, and each disruption reveals an ever increasing unpredictability. As the paintings progress, what is complex and what is simple becomes relative and continues to change with time. The tension I often feel when making the paintings is reflected in the cosmic chaos captured in each piece. As I continue to explore the folding and flexing of these abstract worlds, I allow myself to be more and more consumed by the random bursts of energy defined by the unique gravity of these paintings. 

Pretty awesome stuff here. 

A Continuous Probability, 2011

The Interference Equation, 2011

The Angular Dependence of Light, 2011

http://www.reeddanziger.com/

Allan West

Allan West does a lot of paintings on screens. He is American but lives and works in Japan. I saw one of his screens at the exhibition that just opened at the MOA and it was awesome - mainly because of the oxidation of like silver and gold pigments in the background. I have no idea how he did it and I wish I knew. Too bad I can't talk to him. I wonder if he would tell me if I e-mailed him......

http://www.allanwest.jp/galleries_c5.html