Impasto Master Joshua Miels

Several weeks ago when I was looking around the web for information about the history of impasto techniques, I ran across a brand new (at least to me) artist named Joshua Miels. His impasto portraits totally captivated me.

Miels works out of a small studio in Adelaide, Australia, and has been making waves in the art scene there and all around the world over the last few years. He originally started out working as a graphic designer, but decided that he wanted to go full-time with his art, which is a challenge I can relate to. He dabbled a bit in digital artworks but seems to have been swayed by the power and beauty of the impasto style, as you can see from his portraits that I've included in this post.

There's something incredibly powerful and emotive about the way that he captures people in his work, a kind of raw honesty that creates a very strong emotional response. Much of his work is focused on the emotive ability of the face, and the information that it shares with the world - or just how much information the face can hide. In his website's About section, he quotes the famous poet E. E. Cummings, “The greatest battle we face as human beings is the battle to protect our true selves from the self the world wants us to be.”

Somehow, he manages to see through the masks his subjects wear every day, straight into the reality of how they actually feel - their true selves, as Cummings would put it. Not only that, but he actually manages to capture those selves quite beautifully in paint! His use of color is inspired, and his blend of brush strokes manages to balance out strength and delicacy.

To see more of Josh's incredible work, be sure to visit his site to check out his current portraits at http://joshuamiels.com/projects. You can also purchase pieces directly from his website, to help support him and his incredible talent!

Aggro Impressionsts: From Impasto to Palette Knives

So by now, it's no secret that my love of palette knife painting goes well beyond my own work. There's something about the way they apply paint to the canvas that just speaks to me more clearly than a brush does, no matter whose work is doing the talking. Following up on my recent post about impasto (say it with me again in your best bad Italian accent!) I want to share a bit more about how palette knife painting grew popular, and how it merged so perfectly with what the Impressionists were doing with impasto.

You'll probably remember from the earlier post that impasto has a long history, but it really started to become popular thanks to the Impressionists around the turn of the 20th century. They were laying the groundwork for modern art and all the weirdly excellent pieces that would grow up out of it. Even then, palette knife painting wasn't really new, since painters as far back as Rembrandt were already experimenting with the unique ways it let them apply paint to their canvases.

So when the post-Impressionists came along, all hell broke loose in the most expressively beautiful ways as you can see above! Usually, they're now referred to as expressionists, and they went all out in exploring new abstract styles. Partly this was because of their rebellious natures, and partly it was because new formulas for paint were being developed that gave rise to new possibilities that just weren't open to earlier artists. The colors were brighter, the paints were thicker, and they could be used immediately without a bunch of tedious messing around mixing.

The stage was set for the impasto knife painter ascendancy! A bunch of painters looking for new ways to break the rules all had palette knives they had been using for mixing, when they suddenly had access to paints that didn't need mixing - so what to do? Experiment, of course!

Painters like Jean-Paul Riopelle opened the eyes of a lot of young painters to the virtues of the palette knife, and the technique has been growing in popularity ever since. I'm going to be making a few posts in the near future about some of my favorite knife artists, so stay tuned to find your own inspiration!

A lot of my work is inspired by the Impressionist style with my own extra kick of impasto, but I always have a soft spot in my heart for the wild experimentation of the artists that followed in the Impressionists' footsteps. To see more of my palette knife paintings, check out my full portfolio here: theknifepainter.com or follow me on Instagram @trishaknifepainter for regular updates!

Why Impressionism Will Never Go Out of Style

Impressionism is an extremely unusual art form in one main respect: despite the fact that the style was first developed in the late 19th century, you can still find a vibrant and active community of artists working in the style today. I've been trying to think of another, but there doesn't seem to be any other genre that has stayed so firmly current throughout history.

What is it that makes Impressionism so special?

A lot of art movements start as a reaction to something that came before. At the time the Impressionist style was first starting to be used by artists, the traditional art of the day was more about deliberate realism in terms of forms and colors. Huge oil paintings depicting scenes in loving detail, all true to form (usually - there were always a few outliers, of course), with carefully balanced perspective, lighting, and size.

There was very little creative expression in these forms of painting, but they were exactly what the people wanted - and at the time, it was a lot harder for an artist to make it alone without a wealthy patron who supplied artists with materials and sometimes even room and board. All that was set to change.

Artists began to work without patrons, and their creativity became more and more unrestrained and they began to explore more creative and interpretive painting styles. They could paint their impressions of scenes, rather than faithfully reconstructing them. Artists finally began to feel free in their creative interpretations, and you can see how important this idea became over time.

So how does that stay relevant now? Surely the French Académie des Beaux-Arts isn't going to define good art as realistic now, is it? Creativity thrives and flourishes! You're absolutely right, of course - but what about one major technological advance: the camera.

It's now possible to capture a scene exactly as it appears to you, with no deviations whatsoever. In a world where that is possible, isn't creative interpretation even more valuable now than ever? Absolutely!!! I believe that this is the real reason that people will continue to love Impressionist styles - not to mention the fact that they're exquisitely beautiful.

To make sure you don't miss any of my Impressionist style pieces, make sure you follow my Instagram account instagram.com/trishaknifepainter and check back here for more updates!

The Rewards of Going Outside Your Comfort Zone

Creativity is one of life's great joys, and for me it may even be the greatest. There are few things more rewarding than expressing yourself, no matter how you choose to do it. But as a result of how good it can be, it becomes that much more frustrating when the creativity stops flowing, even if it's just a temporary blockage.

So what happens when you get stuck? With most creative people, they will either wait until the next burst of inspiration strikes, or they'll try to push on through and just wind up even more frustrated as a result. But there is another great option, and it's one that can be extremely rewarding, even it might seem a little scary at first.

Instead of sticking with what you know, turn everything upside down and start going out of your comfort zone. If you're using to working in a particular medium, switch things up and explore something else. If you paint watercolors, try working with acrylics. If your body of work is mostly portraiture, try working on some abstract expressionist pieces. No matter what you're used to, try switching it up and you might find yourself discovering talents that you never even knew you had.

It's almost like going back to the first time you started getting interested in the arts, when you were still trying to figure out how the whole creative process worked. By stopping yourself from following the paths you've already developed and since worn smooth, you have a much better chance of sparking new connections and restarting your creative flow, and you'll probably wind up having fun doing it.

But even if you don't feel like working with a new medium, that's not the only way that going outside of your comfort zone can inspire you to new projects. Your comfort zone doesn't just encompass your artistic practice, it covers every aspect of your life. Even doing something as simple as taking a new route to work, school, or the studio can make a huge difference in the way you see the world - and what else is our creativity really based on? The farther you push yourself to experience the world anew, the more effective it will be.

I know for a fact that this kind of experiment can pay off, because that's how I wound up picking up my first palette knife and what brought me to where I am today!

Did you find your passion by experimenting a new medium? Or maybe by exploring a new part of the world around you> Tell me about it in the comments below! After all, nothing helps a frustrated creative genius like knowing others overcame similar problems =)

Painting in 3D - the Origins of Impasto

This week, I've decided to take you on a bit of a historical whirlwind tour that will help you appreciate just why I've come to love impasto so much! There'll be romance languages and action painting and expressionists, not a stuffy lesson. Promise =)

As I've probably mentioned before, painting didn't always feel right to me. My brushstrokes didn't feel right and I didn't particularly like it as a medium - at least, not until I discovered impasto and the joys of the palette knife. Shortly after I began experimenting with the technique, I began to wonder how it had developed. It turns out that it's got a rich artistic tradition behind it, filled with some of the world's most famous artists and some fascinating living artists too - see the detail above!

For those of you who don't speak Italian (unfortunately that probably covers most of us), impasto is an Italian word that means 'dough' or 'mixture', and when you see an impasto piece so thick and heavy you could use a knife to cut a slice, you'll get why the palette knife enters the scene. It's also fun to say in a bad Italian accent, just FYI.

The technique started with the old masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer, but they used oils and could only build up layers of paint slowly. It captured the light beautifully, but it wasn't until Van Gogh and the French Impressionists that impasto painting really began to get interesting. Van Gogh began using it to show drama and depth and movement in his paintings, as you might remember from the incredibly famous painting Starry Night. Impasto was responsible for the drama that took it from an interesting impressionist painting to a world-famous masterpiece.

Fast forward fifty years or so (I did say it was a whirlwind, remember!) and we start seeing works by artists like Jackson Pollock, the so-called 'action painter', one of the pioneers of the abstract expressionist movement. He used both oils and the new acrylic and enamel paints in his pieces, which opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

He didn't use a palette knife, but instead built up heavy layers of paint by literally flinging paint at the canvas in a number of different ways. It reached a point that some of the pieces became so sticky heavy that they're now causing problems for collectors and preservers, because the paint is starting to actually come away. Somehow, I don't think he would have minded - it's just another action.

Some casual observers think that he was just getting lucky, but he was incredibly skilled in his understanding of paint. The textures he developed with thick, undiluted paints were exactly what makes impasto such a powerful technique for expressing emotion and adding elements that you just can't get any other way.

In the even more modern era, impasto is a popular technique that's used with a wide variety of paints, but modern acrylics offer possibilities that Pollock and Van Gogh could only dream of. That's where the palette knife really shines, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Petals by Trisha Lamoreaux (me) ;) — Petals by me :)

For more impasto pieces made with a palette knife, you can follow my Instagram here instagram.com/trishaknifepainter/ or check out my complete gallery here theknifepainter.com/all/

The Haunting Portraits of KwangHo Shin

One of the hardest things about portraiture is capturing the essence of the person who is sitting for you. What is it that really makes a person unique? Is it their smile? The way they hold their head? For KwangHo Shin, it's almost always in the eyes.

You probably haven't heard of him yet since he's a relatively new artist on the scene, but his portraits are chaotic and breathtaking. They're like a bizarrely beautiful nightmare, one that's disconcerting and haunting but also one you aren't totally sure you want to wake up from. Fortunately for all of us, he's an extremely prolific artist and has already created a huge body of work to keep the dream alive.

Typically, all of his focus goes into the eyes of his subjects, and the rest of the canvases become a fantastical blend of abstraction and expressionism. Some people think that abstract artists go into that genre because they wouldn't be able to make it in a more "classical" field, but Shin clearly shows that isn't the case. Some of his works are so abstract that they barely classify as portraits at all, but some of them strike a balance that makes his more classical talents obvious.

Even when he abandons the eyes (and sometimes the entire face), there's something powerful about the way that he abstracts them. The human element still shines through, as you can see in the careful detail of the hands in the untitled portrait below. The abstracted area of the face plays up our natural instinct to find faces in disconnected shapes, made even more disconcerting by the fact that our brain knows that's where a face is supposed to be.

As I mentioned earlier, Shin is relatively new to the art world, since he just graduated from Keimyung University in South Korea in 2009 and then burst onto the art scene in 2013. He's now working out of a studio in Seoul and still developing his style, experimenting with various iterations of his idea of abstract portraiture, but he's already selling paintings left right and center. He usually works from subject photographs, but has mentioned repeatedly in interviews that he doesn't usually have a plan for the end product of his work, he just dives in headfirst and sees what happens.

To top it all off, in 2013 he was named to the Saatchi Art 'One to Watch' list. The list is curated by the online version of the Saatchi Gallery and helps individual buyers and collectors identify living artists who might become very big names in the future. As you probably know, supporting living artists is a passion of mine and here's a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a rapidly growing star!

Why I love Unique Art & You should Too

When most people hear the term 'fine art', they usually start thinking of oil paintings by the old European masters hanging in stuffy, inaccessible museums - but art is so much more than that. Art is a living, breathing expression of our individual passions, and you don't have to look very far to start discovering some truly unique work being created by artists who are pushing the traditional boundaries of what we call art.

I'm in love with the work of Rosemarie Fiore, who is best known for her paintings made using lit fireworks. Yeah, you read that right! While I'm not sure how she manages to avoid lighting her canvas on fire, the resulting abstracts are often unexpectedly beautiful - if a little understandably chaotic - as you can see below:

"Firework Drawing #6"
2009

I can understand her drive to find a new way to create, of course. Exploring new methods of painting is what lead me to discovering the palette knife painting technique that's become my signature style. I was feeling frustrated with more traditional painting techniques, and almost by accident I stumbled onto impasto and my love of the palette knife was born!

Unique art isn't just about finding new ways of working with existing media, though - sometimes it's actually about changing what you think an artistic medium can even be. Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is known for some pretty "out there" conceptual installation pieces, but some of his most appealing works grew out of the fact that he sees opportunity whether other people see garbage. These intricate carvings are part of a project called 'Pneu', and the level of texture and detail is exquisite.

While in San Clemente last weekend, I came across an artist that I love. She finds sea glass and uses it to create little pieces of art. Check Signs of Shop out here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/signsof and here: https://www.instagram.com/signsofshop/

One of the great things about finding a practicing artist whose work you love is that not only can you get a piece of truly unique art, you're actually directly supporting them and enabling them to keep on creating. When you hear about a painting sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the artist almost never sees a cent of that money (even if they're still alive!). Supporting a living artist is a win-win for everyone involved!

To see more work from a still-living artist (me! :) ) come and follow me on Instagram for all my portraits, landscapes and still life pieces: instagram.com/trishaknifepainter/ or check out my portfolio here: http://www.theknifepainter.com/all/

Who's your favorite unique artist? Comment below.

Zoom IN

Every time I start a new painting there is a point where I think to myself, "this isn't going to look right." I push through and keep spreading the painting around the canvas. As I keep going, something starts to take shape. It's amazing to me that these images I create are just lines and colors.

I'm always shocked when I take a step back and my eyes see the lines and paint come together to form an eye or a smile.

If you're painting with a palette knife for the first time, don't give up. It takes time for the shapes to come together.