Images via here
Art by James McGrath
Collection: Dutchman's Dream-folds
The moment I saw these images I loved them.
The shades, the flow, the history connected with modern techniques.
And of course the hint of flowers in each piece.
Simple gorgeous.
From the website
"Art is an illusion, a facsimile, a representation of a heightened reality. Artists of the 16th and 17th centuries mastered these illusions of reality as no other artists in Western history. With the advent of modernism (modernism or post modernism?) at the start of the twentieth century artists began to challenge what we knew to be true. James McGrath is one of these artists who combines contemporary printing and digital techniques with 16th and 17th century historical and artistic traditions.
To create these works on canvas and Plexiglas McGrath uses familiar artists’ tools such as drapery and folding, color and perspective. But it is McGrath’s use of drapery that is exceptionally innovative and dramatic. Artists in the past in both stone and paint have always created illusions of cloth or rich fabric that were supposed to and did startle the eye by their sensual reality. McGrath takes this notion one step further. “I think of drapery as alive or malleable as the human figure,” he says. “I believe drapery can be fragmented or abstracted in the same way as what Picasso through cubism did to the human figure.” The reason this can be done is due to the idea that fabric can be seen as the second skin, so it can be fragmented or abstracted in the same manner as flesh. It is this philosophy that gives the works their very contemporary presence as well their connection to art history. And that is another aspect of the works that is quite 17th century (reminiscent of the 17th century etc). Baroque artists made a fetish of teasing the eye of the beholder, tricking the viewer into imagining that space was where it was not, that something was falling when it was still, that paint was
flesh. McGrath’s works deliciously play on optic tricks, as well as recalling the glories of Dutch landscape painting"
To create these works on canvas and Plexiglas McGrath uses familiar artists’ tools such as drapery and folding, color and perspective. But it is McGrath’s use of drapery that is exceptionally innovative and dramatic. Artists in the past in both stone and paint have always created illusions of cloth or rich fabric that were supposed to and did startle the eye by their sensual reality. McGrath takes this notion one step further. “I think of drapery as alive or malleable as the human figure,” he says. “I believe drapery can be fragmented or abstracted in the same way as what Picasso through cubism did to the human figure.” The reason this can be done is due to the idea that fabric can be seen as the second skin, so it can be fragmented or abstracted in the same manner as flesh. It is this philosophy that gives the works their very contemporary presence as well their connection to art history. And that is another aspect of the works that is quite 17th century (reminiscent of the 17th century etc). Baroque artists made a fetish of teasing the eye of the beholder, tricking the viewer into imagining that space was where it was not, that something was falling when it was still, that paint was
flesh. McGrath’s works deliciously play on optic tricks, as well as recalling the glories of Dutch landscape painting"
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