Artist research for Vision project

Wendy Arnold
Wendy Arnold has traveled all over the globe for long periods of her life and art career and is evident throughout her work; you can clearly see a variety of different cultural influences throughout it all. She was born in New Zealand, studied in Australia for many years and explored the globe, working for the fashion industry becoming familiar with materials she then became highly recognised for her work. She is also a very skilled painter and has sold out many galleries in her time.
I absolutely love her work because I can easily gather inspiration off it, it's exactly what I'm after with my current project, collage, feminine beauty and essence and beautiful colourful pieces that don't need to be explained but rather admired.
To see more examples of her work click on this link http://catherinelarose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/wendy-arnold.html 
Here are some examples of some of my favourite pieces of Wendy's:

 This is one of my favourites of Wendy's work. Even though I am not fond of the fact that the women themselves (The faces/ features etc) are not detailed or correctly proportionate I absolutely love her work. This is the sort of image I would be happy to end up with in my own artwork, I love the use of materials, collage and contrast in colours used. They have a really happy and creative atmosphere about them that I love and are always very feminine and appreciate the female form. This image in particular would be very easy to recreate because it's just simple images, no real 3d texture to it or anything and I believe it could be easily re-done and I want to create something that looks complicated and layered.

 This piece is clearly oriental-inspired and is absolutely beautiful just showing that you can involve culture into artwork that involves collage and women, visonary art and many various themes and it will still come out professional looking and over all stunning. I love the small harsh touch of red at the bottom of the page against the pale mystical blue and the tea stains in the top corner. Everything about this image is elegant especially the female figure which is something I tried to to in my last project but failed. It's a very innocent image and is hauntingly beautiful I absolutely love it and has given me huge amounts of inspiration when it comes to my own work such as using simple shapes such as the figure on this image and mixing it in with the complicated features and patterns such as the china effect background and flowers that looks like paint spatter.

 This image is something else I would call a goal in my aspirations of my project, using collage as body art, beautiful visionary patterns on the body which looks perfect. I'm looking at involving natural imagery in my work and the branches, flowers and leaves in this image aren't overwhelming but are forever present everywhere you look in this piece of art which I think is very hard to do. My favourite thing about this piece is the faint images used in the background and on the body, barely visible yet they make the whole image, it's a perfect technique and a good skill that I'm definitely willing to try.

 Again this fits into the theme of tattooes/body art and collage and also refers to the cultural inspirations she had used previously that I'm very fond of. The only thing I would do though if it was my work is put more detail/tone into the actual woman and make her look more realistic...

 The colours in this piece are absolutely fabulous! I really love the harshness of the red against the pale pink and defined black writing along the side of it. I also love the involvement of using materials such as lace in the work and I don't think people realise the size of her work... these pieces are all nearly the size of Wendy herself which is amazing to imagine and I would love the opportunity to see it in person I think they would be overwhelming to see this amount of detail all in one piece.

This is also one of my favourites because the figure of the woman in it is clearly more detailed and life-like than the others, it's a very feminine piece and the colours in the background are beautiful and you can clearly see she is very skilled with watercolours. Aso, again, there is materials used in it, like a mesh white fabric which looks brilliant against the quality of the 2d painting behind it. As you can see she has used complimentary colours blues against pink and used white to highlight tone on the skin, to shape the breasts and highlight certain areas of the body and over all is a stunning piece of art...











Here are some more images by artists that I like that fit into this theme:

 Wendy Ortiz
I absolutely love this artist, she's feminine, uses a running theme of nature in her work that can almost compare to visionary art and is wonderfully skilled with oil paints whilst working on a number of different surfaces.
If this piece was covered in natural imagery like Pablo Amaringo or Martina Hoffman's work this would be the sort of thing I am after, and I'm not good with oil so I would be working with acrylic paints... Her work is beautifully done with realistic tones and physical accuracy but involves so much imagery that could be involved with visionary art such as the keyhole and the eye in the centre of a flower and many more things which is perfect inspiration for my project. Also, I love how feminine everything is with her work and even though there may be naked women involved it's not a sexual thing, it's all very spiritual and natural which is one of my aims but also to involve art on the body maby mixed with collage.

 Andre Castellanos
I don't know that much about this artist other than he works with digital and fine art, but I came across this image and absolutely loved it and it's raw nature. It's simple. Just an image of a woman in the sand with this beautiful body art all down her back, the dark grey tone creates a moody atmosphere that I absolutely love and the detail is incredible and is the kind of detail I'm after especially when the visionary imagery comes into it...I want to create detailed visionary art instead of all this amateur rubbish I keep coming across.

Serena Rose
I couldn't find out much about this artist either other than it's all mostly watercolour that she works with, I just like this one image though and it's simple, innocent nature. I love the mixture of colour with the red in the water against her fair skin and dark blues and greens in and around the water.