David Hochbaum

David Hochbaum »Field of Stars«

David Hochbaum was born in New York City and has spent most of his life there. Educated at the Boston Museum School, his style incorporates photography and painting to sculpture and installations, thus remaining in constant flux, evoking the atmosphere and environments of his imagination. Hochbaum's unmistakable visual narrative is the defining signature of his often quite diverse exhibitions.
The protagonists of Hochbaum's highly detailed works are often portrayed as iconic messengers, laden with symbolism amidst reconstructed landscapes. These messengers bear the burden of the artist's quest for truth and understanding of his surroundings while confronting the viewer to explore their own personal mythology. Ciphers that provoke and inspire Hochbaum - such as chairs, bundles of sticks, arrows, ladders, ships, buildings and birds - permeate his work as symbols of his obsessions.

Chet David Hochbaum »Pursuit«

David Hochbaum »Pursuit«

 

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François Escalmel

François Escalmel »Earth«

More and more my paintings have an air of re-routed fairy-tales. These made-up stories, inhabited by well-defined characters are given a contemporary spin and explore themes that I hope resonate with our current times.

Set in a stage-like environment, figures emerge in a mise-en-scène that alludes to psychological interior dramas. Often tinted with humor, it is a world where childhood and adulthood seem endlessly intertwined. Sincere, unyielding and unsettling, these tableaux leave a vivid record. The actors, rich and iconic, entrenched in their dreamlike reality, vibrate with fear, wonder, surprise, longing, uncertainty, hope.

François Escalmel »Daryl«

When I create a painting, I'm not looking for a coherent narrative. I prefer elusiveness, mystery. It's a search for the point of reunion between the universal and the individual. I surrender to emotions and to the complex experience of the painting craft, taking these invisible matters and thrusting them into being, into physicality with each mark of the brush. Somehow, as time is stopped by this incredible process, an emotional sense is given, disclosed by a myriad of possible interpretations, an invitation extended to the viewer to create meaning.

Increasingly, I find myself looking to the recent past for the sources of my iconography. I'm tapping in the luscious brushstrokes of the golden age of illustration. I'm also searching for inspiration in the shaky patented magic of traditional animation. These are not merely appropriated but reenacted (with make-up and costumes). Tales, subverted, fractured, open-ended, re-formed, re-imagined, given a new life, a new voice to comment on contemporary events. And so the past merges with the present, high art and popular culture mesh, embrace and speak volumes!

François Escalmel »Made«

This diversity of references is given an echo in the representation of space. Verisimilitude is at times breached. Gone is the box-shaped, unifying perspective. Objects, decors and sometimes even people lose their depths; tonality gives way to hard flat colors. Space folds and unfolds between the second and the third dimensions. While it is important for me to draw the viewer in, I also relish sometimes in cutting the illusion open: the artifice is exposed, believability dies and a few inches away is born again! At the core of these explorations are questions of existence and identity.

I'm a storyteller working with the absence of words. A grassroots revisionist of my personal history. With an attitude that oscillates between fascination and criticism, I strive to create dark and comical fables that I hope are relevant. Improbable combinations that emotionally ring true, affirmative expressions of the human experience.

François Escalmel »Red«

 

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Richard Kirk

Richard Kirk »Ascension«

Richard A. Kirk was born in Hull, England in 1962. He currently lives and works in Canada. His fine art work is centered on images that explore the liminal space between imagination and reality; a pictorial space where a personal iconography manifests in protean forms that challenge conventional notions of the beautiful and the grotesque. Richard is interested in the forms found in nature, the morphology of plants and animals, and the effect of time on materials.

Richard has illustrated numerous books for authors such as Clive Barker, China Mieville, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Poppy Z. Brite and others. He has also designed the cover and stage backdrop of KORN's untitled album in 2007.

Richard's works can be found in many private collections in the United States, Canada, England and Europe.

Richard Kirk »Devils Darning Needle«

Richard Kirk »The Bellman«

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Michael Page

Michael Page »Brightlight«

Michael Page was raised in Southern California. He has shown throughout California and Europe, and currently resides in San Francisco.
With his new paintings common themes kept emerging. An awareness impossible to ignore seemed to sprout in every conversation with Michael's friends, family, and in his community. This thread of insight sewn through his every interaction needed to be expressed. So he started there.
Reflecting on his work, Michael found greed, hate and war, and their antidote, love, running deep through each piece. Environmental neglect and its devastating effects reside in many of the paintings. And, subtle or not, there is also expressed discontent with the state of our political system and those that wield their power so callously.

Michael Page »Insight«

Michael Page »Watching It All Go«

 

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Michael Forbes

Michael Forbes »America«

Hailing from the Scottish Highlands, self-taught artist Michael Forbes has evolved from a dark-subject surrealist - whose early paintings containing animals in various anthropomorphic situations landed him an exhibition at Sotheby's London "Animals in Art" show - into a "pop-surreal" artist whom director Terry Gilliam finds "surreal, mischievous, wryly sweet, and chockablock with wit and wonder," and whose latest series is featured in this month's magazine.

Forbes reveals that these images sprouted from his "Icon" series based around the idea of fame. "I had this notion to paint famous people's inner animal spirit - their 'familiar,' as the witches would call them. I wanted to ask them which animal they thought was their familiar, and that animal I would use as a replacement for their own head in the painting - thus having an exhibition of celebrities without actually showing their faces, but instead their 'familiar faces.'" He then took this idea one step further, taking faces so famous that even a slice of that icon was enough to instantly identify them. "It was a bit hit-and-miss to begin with, but I eventually saw new faces and new icons arising from the jumble."

His latest painting, of Lincoln, Obama and Uncle Sam - "The Face Of America," as he calls it - uses Shepard Fairey's "Hope" image of Barack Obama. Forbes says, "I guess that is what we now have. It may go horribly wrong - who is to say? - but for now we do at least have hope, and that is a great feeling. (Moving Pictures Magazine 2009)

 

Michael Forbes »King of the Monster Robots«

Michael Forbes »Winston«

 

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Ray Caesar

Ray Caesar »French Kiss«

I was born in London, England on October 26 1958, the youngest of four and much to my parent's surprise, I was born a dog. This unfortunate turn of events was soon accepted within my family and was never again mentioned in the presence of polite company. I was a rambunctious youth as was natural to my breed but showed a fine interest in the arts as I drew pictures incessantly on anything including the walls and floors of every room of our tiny house. After some trouble with intolerant neighbors, my family was convinced to move to Canada and it was not long before the burgeoning town of Toronto became our new home.
Unfortunately the drawing continued to become somewhat atypical and aberrant and it was impressed upon me that such images might not be suitable for public viewing. In the summer of 69, there was a valiant attempt to stop me from doodling infamous contemptible fascist dictators upside down on my stomach with a ballpoint pen. I was consoled however by the encouragement to continue penciling in faces of flamboyant cowboys such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Tonto on my toenails but was expressly forbidden to talk to them at night.

Ray Caesar »Prince of Truth«

It can be said that there are defining moments in a dogs life that can only be described as pivotal. Mine came when I received a gift of a flesh toned 12 inch plastic movable human doll attired in cheaply made military fatigues called "GI Joseph". I however named him "Stanley Mulver" and immediately resigned his commission from the light infantry. My Mother helped in this by sewing small business suits and leisure wear out of leftover Christmas fabric embroidered with holly and snowmen, tinfoil shoes and one tasteful Safari suit made of tight fitting powder blue rayon that proudly shone cobalt in the summer sunlight. It wasn't long before I had begun making enlarged wigs out of gray plasticine. These wigs soon became huge pompadours for Stanley and looked even more grand when I meticulously imbedded small hairs from my daily body and face shavings. This hirsute practice along with walking upright allowed me to fit in with other children even though my father considered it a waste of time. In short, Stanley had become a visage of the Man I could never be, of that elusive self one sometimes glimpses down the tunnel of infinite reflected mirrors. Although ridiculed by my peers, I proudly wore Stanley around my neck at all times as if to say "SEE! This is the man I will be, a good man, a kind man".

I have worked in many fields over the years, attended obedience classes and art colleges, jobs designing horrible buildings in architectural studios, medical art facilities, digital service bureaus, suspicious casino computer game companies, eventually working at computer modeling, digital animation and visual effects for television and film. Some award nominations have been attained and I have been driven in long black liquor filled limousines and walked on hind legs down red carpets in Pasadena while wearing strange smelling rented tuxedos.
Things change and summer years come to an end. My change occurred one night when my Mother visited me, which was slightly unusual because she had passed away some months before, a victim to the cigarette habit she could never quite lick. Facing a wall and slowly turning I saw the right side of her face ablaze in light, her hand trying to cover the light as if she were apologetic for having it seep through. Words were said about following rabbits down holes and I was shown galleries of work which were to be my own. My Mother was not the first visitation I have had and it seems she will not be the last.
I live in a brick house with my wonderful wife Jane and a coyote called Bonnie. I like eating avocados and I don't really mind being a dog. (Ray Caesar)

Ray Caesar »Waiting Wife Study«