Gizem Vural

Gizem Vural was born in Istanbul in 1988 and is currently attending Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Turkey studying Graphic Design. Her illustrations are minimal, imaginative, and carry a nostalgic naivety that pulls you into her own little world. In her own words, "Minimalism is cute."

Her visual diary is a fun way to follow her work. She was also recently featured in an issue of Blue Canvas magazine.

Alexandra Grinevsky

Alexandra Grinevsky was a stage actress when she married Russian-born artist, filmmaker and illustrator, Alexander Alexeieff. She took up etching when Alexeieff was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. Alexeieff was sought out by Claire Parker after she had seen his illustrations in a Paris bookstore. She came to stay with them and he had an affair with her. Of course this resulted in his divorce from Grinevsky. The interesting thing is their aquatint etching styles are almost identical begging the question of who influenced who.

The illustrations posted here are for Valery Larbaud's "Deux Artistes Lyriques" from the collection of Richard Sica. Richard Sica shared these images from his collection with A Journey Round My Skull.

Rosemarie Fiore

Rosemarie Fiore creates art out of a volatile medium: fireworks. Enveloped by sulfurous clouds, she resembles a latter-day magus casting spells, donning heavy gloves and a gas mask. The idea came to her on the 4th of July, 2001 when she accidently dropped a smoke bomb on the cement floor and it created a perfect line of dots. Her latest works, "Firework Drawings," is a collaboration between herself and the explosives, an unpredictable and violent working relationship.

Ian Davis

Ian Davis creates large scale paintings reminiscent of New Yorker magazine covers. His subject is maleness, whose omnipresence, ineffectiveness and herd instinct he conjures up in small identical figures that he deploys with the marshaled repetitions of a Minimalist. The figures can be businessmen, hundreds of whom sit passively in convention halls or stand on banquet tables with their hands raised, as if enacting some inane ritual. Or they can be British redcoats who march across fields of graduated grays, or strip trees of their branches for no apparent reason. Somewhere in the twentieth century men are gathering . . . waiting and watching.

Patrick Leger

North Carolina artist Patrick Leger creates action oriented pop art illustrations under the influence of printmaking and comics. Most of his linework is done with either ink and brush or a felt-tip brush pen. All of the vintage-like coloring is actually done digitally. Color is often placed off-center, overlapping another value to create the not-so-perfect feel of an older art. His current work is editorial. The artist says he's never illustrated a comic, though one may be in the works.