Brian Viveros – jaded beauty

The moment I saw Brian Viveros’ work I was sold. I wouldn’t know how to put it into words and feel I made it justice but there’s something about his art that gets an emotional reaction out of me. There so much of everything in this world that you just can’t react to it all so when you do, or more truthfully when I do, it’s to something special that hits home in more ways than one. 

For me his portraits talk about the dark side of everything beautiful, the desire for destruction and self-destruction that’s in all of us, how we’re so jaded and hopeful at the same time, so powerful and so very weak, how we get wounded everyday by all the small and big things we never thought would happen to us, how we all pretend and play the many roles we have to, how we see ourselves and how others do, it’s about all the beauty and ugliness that coexist in this world, it about all the love and all the hate, all the contrasts that we live with.

I love how Brian paints these incredibly beautiful wide-eyed women while also giving them a super heroine quality that makes you feel they are true fighters. They are stunning and vulnerable but you wouldn’t want to mess with them. I guess ultimately it’s about how things are never black and white and how beauty gets tainted and soiled and wounded in the struggle to be happy or get wherever we want to get, how perfection is overestimated and how we are all damaged and fucked up but sometimes better in spite of it all.

Blue Velvet

Cleopatra

  Blue Rose

  Seeing Red

 La Frida

“A technical perfectionist, Brian Viveros’ oil, airbrush, acrylic, and ink paintings are highly saturated with pigment, luminosity, and depth, while the compositions are poignant and simple. The artist’s emphasis tends to be on focal points such as the eyes, lips, and skin, conveying the subtlety of minute expression and the power of an impaling gaze. The paintings feel cinematic, like haunting stills from a film, owing to their evocative suggestion of narrative and to the iconicity of their subjects. The artist’s creative cosmos is beautifully stylized, never derivative, and distinctly recognizable as his own.” – this is a quote I found on his website that I subscribe to so I had to share it.

Scorpio Rising

 Baroness

 Octopussy

 Captain Dirty

 Fake Empire

  Poetry in motion

 Photos

The text reflects my feeling towards Brian Viveros’ work and being personal I don’t expect everybody to agree but I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

 

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Illustration spotlight – Fab Ciraolo

We live in a world were everything is possible and we are permanently surrounded by things that leave us speechless. Or at least that’s the case with me. I see so many talented people in a variety of areas - dancing, singing, acting, painting - and talent is something I appreciate with all my heart.

And as wonderful as it is seeing all of the magic that they can create, it’s even harder to have your own thing, that special talent that separates you from the crowd, making people recognize your work. It’s the ability to choose from all the subjects out there and find the one that defines you as an artist. And today we’re talking about such an artist - one that has found his niche and made it art.  

Fab Ciraolo is a Chilean-born illustrator that takes pop icons, superheroes, cartoon characters and even historical ones and illustrates them with a modern twist. He also ads a fashionable angle as he changes their outfits but keeps, at the same time, a vintage vibe. He uses subdued colors and psychedelic backgrounds to create the impression of space.

His technique involves “painting, a lot of drawing, acrylics, color pencils, mostly anything I have near that might work to get a final result that makes me happy. I can remember using coffee in some paintings.”

Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe as modern day stereotypes

This is brilliant: Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld in the Pietà pose!

Old school heroes

And even though this has been done before, in the sense that he is not the only one to bring into his work famous people from the past, he does it in an original way. Fab Ciraolo remains fluent in his work by keeping his signature “space” background and changes only his subjects. He creates this amazing mash ups, putting together elements from pop culture, science fiction and just a hint of wired.

While his characters still have their signature styles he transforms them into present day stars. They are somehow reborn into the hipsters and rock stars of our days.  There’s a lot of irony there, mixed in with humor and even a bit of social commentary - Fab Ciraolo’s work is provocative! Pop culture is his playground and I love it all!

Edward Scissorhands and  Charlie Chaplin

Alfred Hitchcock

Salvador Dalí  and Frida Kahlo

 Photos

What do you think? I would very much like to have  any of these hanging in my house!

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Forever Pin UP

The pin up style has made a comeback in this last decade. Even if the modern pin up girl is different from the “vintage pin up” girl this style has regained the popularity it had in the 50s.

Basically the pin up girls were models, actresses and celebrities who were considered sex symbols and took pictures that had a great appeal and were mass produced becoming part of the popular culture. These pictures could be cut out of magazines, postcards, calendars, posters and could be PINned UP (hence the name) on the walls.

 

 

 

Other pin-ups were artwork, often depicting idealized versions of what some thought a particularly beautiful or attractive woman should look like – kind of an ideal women of each decade.

Surely the pin up girls is not what she used to be but she still has her charms even if she changed her look and lifestyle: she may now have some tattoos, heavier make-up, maybe a motorcycle, who knows, she can actually be a burlesque dancer.:))).

 

Speaking of, you may wonder why has this style emerged as a trend in the recent years? Oh well, everything in this world has something to do with the all mighty www so it’s no wonder one of the factors was the popularity of Suicide Girls, an erotica website that features tattooed and pierced "alternative" models sometimes styled in 1950s-inspired pin-up looks.

Then Bettie Page, one of the most notorious pin-ups, was suddenly hot again mostly due to the biographical movie The Notorious Bettie Page from 2005. At the same time Dita Von Teese and burlesque were l’attraction du jour so you can see know how many little factors can snow ball at the same time and revive or even create a new trend. That's also how an old trend can become relevant again.

 

 

 

 

Photos: 1, 2

So, do you PIN UP? Love this style or not that much?

Soundtrack: Azi ascut Jason Mraz - Butterfly!

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