I'm a big fan of Padraig MacMiadhachain and had the good sense to buy a couple of his oils a few years back (my mum has a houseful!) - my paintings don't photograph too well so here's a couple I pciked off the web. Stone Memories in the Temple of the Sun, Macchu-Picchu, Peru Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! winter harbour st ives Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! He reminds me quite a lot of Paul Klee - only with more depth and texture to his work - he has similar obsessions to me as well - harbours and ancient temples (and women)
I'm not sure if this is a painting, however it is one crazy image, so I'm going to put it here anyway. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ~String
Like what if instead of heaven, jesus ascended into a game of tetris? I agree that's a pretty badass concept.
One piece I like, I don't remember the name and I can't find it, but it has a women at her make up station and everything together makes a skull if you view it a certain way
I'm a huge fan of Van Gogh. I used to have an actual, painted re-creation of "A Starry Night" but I gave it away to a friend as a going away gift. Thing cost me like $200. The second one is by MC Escher (similar style as Peacock), the last one is by Picasso. ~String
"Thatched Cottages at Cordeville" is one of my all time favorite paintings. I find it warm and inviting. I grew up in the country-- the REAL country. My neighbors raised cows. The family across the street properly rotated their fields, but it usually consisted of winter wheat, soy beans, wheat, corn, and fallow-straw for one year. My family had a smallish farm with a few hogs, chickens, two ponies, a horse, and other sundry animals. I remember picking our own berries and fruits. My house was the "original" house on the block. See, I live in Ohio which was set up within the Northwest Ordinance and each city in Ohio was originally set up (for the most part) 5x5 miles squared. The farms south of the main road (cutting it north and south) were large farms. The northwest quadrant (where I live) was set up to orchards and the northeast quadrant was to be smaller housing, some farms, but also the graveyard and other sundry buildings. So, in Ohio you see this pattern repeated regularly throughout the state (though, of course with time, much has shifted and changed, but the original patterns can still be seen easily from the air). My home was built in 1878 and my parents still live there to this day (with substantial additions and remodelings). Years ago the large orchard which our house commanded was broken up and sold off piece-meal during the depression, but my home retained a small orchard, a grainery, a large barn and some property worthy of a large garden. I loved when summer would come and we'd go to my uncle's farm and pick strawberries, cherries, black & raspberries (nothing like these manufactured nonsense sold in grocery stores). On our farm it was a few apple treas, peach trees, walnut trees, and plum trees... and my absolute favorite: the concord great vines!!! Everybody hated those grapes, I absolutely adored them to this day (and can rarely find them). Only one, ancient, walnut tree survives to this day (who's fruits I painstakingly harvest for a ONCE a year walnut pie treat); the others having been sacrificed through the ages to various bon fires and home expansions. Each fall my neighbor would bring us over a HUGE mountain of straw and put it down next to the barn. My brother and I would play in it for days. I remember climbing to the top and then dipping down into it only to squirm out the bottom off to one side... covered in hay, dust and dirt. The painting "Thatched Cottages at Cordeville" reminds me of those days. The fact that it makes a rather impressive entry, some 25,0000 years into the future, in my favorite series of books ("The Dune Chronicles") only confirms this paintings importance to me. ~String
I really love this, it shows the fading colors of beauty in chaos, yet still on a deeper level of beauty, a transformation in essence.
The Waterhouse painting I already posted ('The Lady of Shallot') is quite similar to this one, but I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and John Everett Millais (the artist responsible for the painting below) was one of its founders. 'Ophelia' Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I love the ethereal, fairy-tale quality of his paintings. An emphasis on aesthetics is, ironically, undervalued in the world of art. Millais was a precursor to modern artists like Alan Lee, who illustrated the beautiful edition of 'The Mabinogion' by Charlotte Guest. I'm lucky enough to have a copy of it at home Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. I can't find many of my favourite paintings from the book on the web, but I did manage to find this one (the colour is a LOT better on paper): 'Pwyll in disguise' Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!