MO's 'Bad Painting'

Artist MO primarily paints her immediate surroundings, focusing on domestic interiors and everyday objects to communicate her feelings and emotions. Through the use of intense, discordant colours, distorted perspective and an energetic application of paint, MO seeks to convey the intensity of her moods and feelings. Gayle Drive is a typical example of MO's subject matter and style. She depicts her 1950's council house interior, the bright custard yellow walls, heavily patterned curtains and blue floorboards contrast with the often austere and bare interiors of the times. Talking about her work MO says"I am inspired by the work of the artsit Martin Maloney who practises deliberately "bad" painting where images are achieved with apparently inept draughtsmanship and crude painting ". Bad painting or not, art fusion is pleased to be working with MO.
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Following her move to England in 1990, Evelyne Glyne has been working from her home based studio as a freelance artist.

Originally from Togo, Evelyne was educated at both the Beaux-Arts Lille and École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et du Textile (ESAAT), Roubaix in France. Following her graduation she actively developed her work from drawing and textiles - towards the medium of painting. Her distinctive and accomplished work has been exhibited locally and nationally including Istanbul, Paris, Lille and London

Evelyne is currently working with artfusion on the design and content of her website which will illustrate her professional background and showcase some of her varied works.

Mr and Mrs Taylor

Mr and Mrs Taylor is a painting by Oxfordshire artist and friend of artfusion,Roger Shapley. Painted this year it was inspired by Hockney's Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy which depicts the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell.

Roger, who has recently returned to the figure, says of his new work "I not only strive to capture the likeness of my subject but more importantly the elusive qualities of spirit, mood and emotion".

The work is in acrylic on canvas, and measures 47 x 45 inches. and has been aquired by the sitters.

The case for black and white

If you wanted to make comparisons between black & white painting vs. colored painting, one can find no better example than the restored frescos of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. The ceiling had been shrouded in residue from clouds of dust and smoke for hundreds of years. As a result, his murals were "studies" of form in graduated and muted tones. Scholars and visitors looking at the frescos today have an entirely different reaction than those looking previous to the restoration.

Artist Holly Winterborn, who has recently commissioned Artfusion to produce some 2 metre square prints based on her series of black and white paintings, says "I feel that black and white paintings engage the viewer more and inspire more imagination from the viewer. Our brains instantly recognise colours and associations made from colour, ie: an apple is red, a sky is blue. When black and white is viewed, the observer is forced to study the image more and fill-in-the-blanks, using their imagination and building a personal relationship with the image.

However, many paintings that are black and white, are rarely black and white. The blacks are brown, yellow, blue or other shades of black; the whites cream, amber, rose or other pastel or off white. Holly says "Most important is the light. My series of paintings is about the light. Light is used to create contrast, model 3 dimensions, add mood and feeling."

Artfusion agree that painting in black and white is not the absence of colour, but the restricted use of colour with emphasis on other aspects of the image.

GARDEN CITY

Based in Wythenshawe, Manchester - one of the largest 'garden cities' in Europe – and in close proximity to Tatton Park and the Styal Estate, artist Hilda Mitchell paints beautiful floral and landscape paintings.

Talking to Artfusion about her work Hilda says “Wythenshawe was designed in the 1920s as a ‘garden suburb’ and I see my work as a kind of ‘regeneration plan’ that maintains that vision”. She paints intuitively using a variety of mediums including pastel, oil and acrylic. But it is her natural affinity for watercolour - with its essence of transparency, luminosity and fluidity - that so expresses her creative painting style.

You Can take a walk through Hilda’s Garden City by visiting her website at www.hildamitchell.com

Soho artist and poet..

The Colony Room Club has been a haunt for hard-drinking artists since the formidable Muriel Belcher founded the club in two small rooms up a staircase in Soho, and paid the young Francis Bacon £10 a week and free drinks to bring in the clientele. He did, and Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Patrick Caulfield and Barry Flanagan were among the Colony's regulars - as well as Bacon himself for whom the Colony was a second home.

The Colony's emerald green, nicotine-stained rooms also plays host to
Soho artist and poet Alyson Hunter. Alyson was born in New Zealand in 1948 and studied Fine Art at Auckland University before leaving for London to study at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art. Later working with her husband Hugh Stoneman, she promoted the use of photography in printmaking, and her photo etchings were bought by many public and private collections.

Artfusion is pleased to be collaborating with Alyson to produce a series of limited edition prints based on an earlier project the ‘changing face of Soho’. The series will include one her most iconic images ‘The Colony Room Club’ which depicts Michael Wojas looking out into Dean Street as the club opens at 3 o'clock on a summer afternoon in 1994.The barstools are worn with the whiling away of the hours by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and Dan Farson.

We look forward to posting more on this exciting project very soon.

You can find out more about Alyson and her work by visiting her site at www.alysonhunter.com