Featured Artist: GIGI CHEN

Gigi Chen is a visual artist with a playful mind that radiates into her Art.
She was born in Guang Dong, China and raised in Woodhaven Queens and NYC where she now resides and works.
The inspiration for her work comes from all of her surroundings.

She finds her mind to be a bank of accumulated bits and pieces of thoughts and visuals.
She often finds creativity in the oddest places for example,
a person can say a word and she will hang unto that idea for a few months
and then she will create it into an art piece.

Gigi Chen was born with the creative muse within her.
At the tender age of 11 she recalls copying an image of Ariel from “The Little Mermaid.”
The drawing was what her little kid brain felt was pure perfection.
That was the actual moment she decided that art was going to be the career she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Forever. No kidding!!

Gigi Chen's biggest influence have been the wonderful world of child play, the Saturday morning cartoons!.
Watching cartoons triggered her imagination and allowed her to reach into the grand desire to become an animator.
She went on and got her BFA in traditional animation.

Gigi also craved the desire of learning the masters. Her favorite was Leonardo Da Vinci.
The old Masters have an inexplicable and fantastic hold on her.
Once she knew what she wanted in life, she began to spend hours at the library doing research on the matter.
She would check out books on art and drawing. She was hooked on Da Vinci master pieces.
The drawings and the sculptures of Michelangelo set off a complete need and that was " IT!" she was hooked!

Gigi Chen was not sure about the style or label her art would be considered,
since she started showing in galleries she has been told that her work falls into the category of “Pop-Surrealism.”
Her work comes from so many different places: animation, traditional painting, films…
Because her work doesn't come from a strictly illustrative base,it has made it difficult at times to know
how the work should be labeled. Maybe that confusion makes her work so unique and special with it's own identity.

Gigi Chen creates an aesthetic that combines her training as a traditional animator and her love of the "Old Master" techniques.
She has displayed her works at the "Queens Museum of Art", "the Index Art Center" and at "Mighty Tanaka Gallery" in New York.

Gigi Chen
-"My paintings are unconventional self-portraits that explore my ambivalent feelings towards being an artist
and how it affects my views of the world. The Toy-like characters personify my neuroses and hearken back to my childhood fondness for soft play things.

The dynamic between the human figures and the characters is a constant push and pull.
They are interchangeably protagonists and victims, winning as well as losing.
Collectively, the scenes illustrate the struggles and rewards of being an artist."
In one sentence she describes herself and her work with her favorite Motto:"LOVE + FUN= ART"
If you wish to learn more on this artist please visit her site:

Featured Artist: DENNIS POTOKAR

Dennis Potokar is an artist with a powerful message,
his works evoke emotion giving his audience and delightful treat for the mind.
His work is magnetic. It draw’s you in, and changes you with every stroke.
His ideas are so unique they engulf your mind into another dimension.

Dennis Potokar, where does your inspiration come from?
“The beauty in everything!”
-The fractal geometry that lays in the underlying structure of things that are around us in general.
The simplicity of the beauty in a landscape. Patterns their changes, they fascinate me, I see them everywhere.

“The result is a loving interest in placing human life in its real world, of beauty and constructive change and expressing higher values toward a more creative path than the one we are on now.”

Dennis Potokar has spent his time in several parts of the United States like Hawaii, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. He also traveled abroad to Milan, Paris and throughout thirty-four other countries. Always searching and finding other art works that have inspired him.

His favorite influences right now are George Frederic Watts, Gustave Moreau, Jean Delville, Gustave Klimt. and William Blake.

Dennis Potokar considers his work to be an Earthy, holistic style, using contemplative symbolic abstraction and an emotional use of figures in a world based on fractal geometry.

He is involved in teaching, art direction, music, photography, and is a life-long painter. He dedicates all of his time to painting and creating.
www.potokar.tumblr.com

Dennis Potokar is an artist who creates with paint. This is important to him in a world of intolerance, ignorance, and destructive evil, but also of astounding beauty and tranquility for those who have the desire to live it and make it real in life. That is why his creations are so rich and beautiful. Few artist have the brilliance and the depth by which he creates.
www.artistoftheinfiniteeye.blogspot.com

If you wish to learn more about this artist and his work:
dennisart@sbcglobal.net

www.dennispotokar.com

DENNIS POTOKAR
"My goal is to express art, sometimes logically, sometimes intuitively...
through metaphor and symbolism, which has meaning....
from my own life experience (hopefully) to yours."

Featured Artist: JOHN BROPHY

John Brophy was born in St. Louis, MO, but didn't spend much time there. His father was an aerospace engineer for McDonnell Douglas (which is now known as Boeing.) The family moved a lot and by the time he was 12, he had already lived in St. Louis, MO, Tustin, CA, Boise, ID, and South Carolina, as well as Japan and Athens, Greece. As a young adult, he later lived with his family in several different places within the state of California.

John Brophy first started painting just after he finished high school. He had been a yearbook photographer and had enjoyed taking photos, but felt a need for something more and thus, picked up oil painting.

When his dad was transferred to Zaragoza, Spain, he took the opportunity to go to a university in Madrid. That's where he studied fine art, taking full advantage of the Prado Museum and the wonderful courses that he could absorb.

Soon after, he left home, he moved back to Japan for about 8 years. He ultimately decided to nest in Issaquah, WA. Though he has endured much travel, John Brophy is thankful for the experiences he gained.

With a very well-marked passport, he feels that he cannot quite say where his inspiration comes from and that it springs from many places and experiences. Some artists have a hard time with coming up with ideas, but John Brophy is happy to say he is not one of them.

When John Brophy was new to painting he idolized Salvador Dali and found that he could think up all kinds of Daliesque compositions. However, it was something that bothered him because even though the ideas were good, they were in someone else's style.

It took him a while to realize why he was rendering his work in someone else’s style, and ultimately he realized that it was because successful artists have done the hard work of developing their own styles and visual vocabulary.

The styles of the most successful artists were contagious to the point where that particular artist could engulf themselves in anyone’s style of painting. As he stated “It is easy to move into a beautiful house that has been built by someone else.” Taking this into consideration, John Brophy, found it necessary to stop looking at works of other great artists and build up his own inventory of visual iconography.

John Brophy’s biggest influences are Salvador Dali, Mark Kostabi, Pierre et Gilles, Tadanori Yokoo, the music and writing of Brian Eno, Haruki Murajami, and one of his first art teachers: John Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s temperament and gentle insight helped tune John Brophy’s eye and sharpen his creative instincts.

If you’re interested in following John Brophy and his enigmatic artwork Please contact: john@jbrophy.com Facebook John Brophy’s Personal website: www.jbrophy.com

If you’re interested in following John Brophy and his enigmatic artwork Please contact: john@jbrophy.com Facebook John Brophy’s Personal website: www.jbrophy.com

Featured Artist: JOHN DICANDIA JINNDOW

John Dicandia  also known in the art world as “Jinndow” was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia and of Italian heritage. John Dicandia-Jinndow has been creative for most of my life but has been seriously active in artwork only in the last 25 years. 

He works primarily with ink, graphite and acrylic to convey thoughts about his environment and the human state, both solipsistic and interpersonal, fusing myth and reality.  A blend of mediums and ideas that make his work both beautiful and captivating.

John Dicandia-Jinndow is both a creative enigma in artwork and a delightful writer and illustrator. His work has been published and also has been elected to compliment book covers. John’s curiosity for the human heart is what keeps his work so full of life, with colors and concepts that are naughty and nice, keeping the viewer in suspense and thrilling them with great expectations.

 Although John Dicandia-Jinndow has travelled extensively he resides and creates in his home town in Melbourne, Australia. His artistic creativity surfaced at a very young age. When John was 11 years old he began to take an interest in writing. It is hard to pinpoint one source of inspiration. Perhaps it’s from his diverse environment and the people that he has met along the journey of his life. It was then at that very young age that he started writing stories about having really cool friends and going on adventures.  

His biggest influence have been numerous, for he has had the fortune to get inspiration from his environment and his peers.  John can’t single out one major source of influence or art movement however he does have an affinity to the period from 1890-1940 covering the Belle Epoche, Dadaism, Art Nouvelle and Art Deco. 

John Dicandia-Jinndow likes to consider his art style to be -Art deco with gothic and pop art elements” or as he likes to say- “in a nutshell”. He Describes himself as “A puzzle with missing pieces!” His work is as he states “Organized chaos!”

If you wish to explore more about this artist please visit:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/dicandiaj

For personal inquiries please contact:

dicandio@gmail.com

www.jinndow.com.au