I Checked Out All the Newer Art Books

April 11, 2018 | Jen McB

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I picked up “Toronto Street Art Strolls” by Nathalie Prézeau and found the elephants gracing the side of my former branch. This is familiar. I like this this book. 


Toronto Street Art Strolls
I flipped through “Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez” by Lawrence Weschler. I found “Sun Mad II” by Ester Hernãndez, 1981. This image is older than me and but it feels very now. 

Domestic Scenes

There is one book entitled “Andrew Wyeth: People and Places”. I also used to catch frogs, but in a more northern climate. We would then release them off into Lake Misquabi, this was before the developments took over.

Andrew Wyeth  People and Places

The next book I flip through is the “Art of P.K. Irwin: Observer, Other, Gemini”. I love the image of "The Dance", 1963. I rarely enjoy anything with this much red.

The Art of P.K. Irwin

What a joy to find out that Landon Mackenzie is a woman. She is a Vancouver-based artist and she loves paper too. “Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey: Works on Paper” by black dog publishing will be following me home. I cannot decide if I like the gestural drawings or the work using words better. This requires extended reflection. 

Landon Mackenzie  Parallel Journeys  Works on Paper

The book “Portrait Revolution: Inspiration from Around the World for Creating Art in Multiple Mediums and Styles” is earmarked for the Komiks Meetup. Sometimes you pick up a book and it reminds you of other people. They are planning a Zine Fair and I want to assist them as much as possible. 

Unless you are studying Abstract Expressionism, “Abstract Expressionism for Beginners” will not be very useful. Go find a Gerhard Richter book or documentary. This book tries too hard to be John Berger. Shame, I like gestural images. It is however useful, if you are cross-referencing “artists” and “poetry” and do not want another William Blake suggestion.   

To the Writers' Trust of Canada, I found one of your bookmarks in “I Had an Interesting French Artist to See Me This Summer.” This is a book featuring Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paalen. It seems the connection between the two was that Paalen had traveled to British Columbia at some point and met Emily Carr. Wouldn’t you agree that the work of Emily Carr informs the choices of Wolfgang Paalen?

I Had an Interesting French Artist to See Me this Summer

While “The Art of Space: The History of Space Art, From the Earliest Visions to the Graphics of the Modern Era” is not so new, it is still new to me. I might not love red but I love lobsters, not the kind you eat. The cute kind. The kind that Picasso painted. I stumbled across the work of Wayne Barlowe. I learned that the cover for “The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe” is next door. I am happy to discover an artist who grew up with professional dinosaur illustrators as parents and who has collaborated with Guillermo Del Toro on the Kaiju aliens in Pacific Rim. My initial reason for going over to the art book section has turned into library information gold! I am told Barlowe is still living, has a website and is still working. This is the power of going for a walk, if only over to the shelf and browsing through the stacks. 

Lobster  Merril Lobster

  

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