I've fallen in love with a particular Argentine artist. Her work has inspired my current painting (at this point of time I am still working on it), and her depictions of nature in its various dimensions has certainly marked a terrain that I'd like very much to keep on exploring.

A short bio on Claudia Ferrari from her website:
Claudia Ferrari was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. In her life she has two great passions: languages and painting. She gets a degree as a literary, scientific and technical translator of English and French while she studies painting at MEEBA. While doing her post-degrees studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, she had the opportunity of getting in touch with local artists. In her search for getting to know new cultures, she studies Japanese and its ideograms for ten years. She then discovers her inner world through Sumi-é, an antique Japanese technique using natural dyes on rice paper. Together with her Teacher Kazu Takeda she turns into the Oriental world where she recreates her occidental being through the techniques of colour Sumi-é. Her teachers were I.Merellano, N.Pagano, E.Audivert and Juan Doffo. In Contemporary and Modern Art, F.Barreda.

This painting below is titled "Back to Myself" and the colours, combined with the beauty of her brush strokes, form the woods whose lushness and burst of life sucks me in completely.
 
Ronald's sketches are so alive they almost appear to pop up from the plain 2D surface of the computer screen.

His Madhatter sketch, a combination of black, grey and blue exudes both sinister, cheeky and mysterious vibes.
 
Let's go to the Madhatter party now! Bring your hats and follow me!
 
Picture
Méchante, by Agustina Eden
My art classmates are terribly talented. I bet you'd agree with me. Look at this painting of a 3-D corset by Agustina, and you'll understand why. Agus only started painting about one or two months ago, but she's already creating fantastic, literature-inspiring pieces. I am so impressed.

Now, "Méchante" is French for "naughty woman" and it fits this painting well. A hint of naughtyness, an illusion of a bad girl ready to seduce, flirting carelessly between good and bad. This kinda reminds me of Rihanna's album "Good girl gone bad".

The painting also exudes a class of haughtiness embedded with class, high-society, and haute couture. Be transported to a masquerade ball in Paris during the Bella Époque, dance with masked-gentlemen in dashing suits, run off when the bells chimes mid-night and drive off in your pumpkin carriage, before it all vanishes. Viola!
 
This metropolitan landscape painting will leave you without doubts about Mabel's inability to create and inspire. A picture says a thousand words, so I won't say much more.
 
Mabel has the ability to take a huge canvas and paint a totally breathtaking landscape which transforms you to a different place, a different time, and lets you forget for a moment the worries of life. Here's another piece, completely different from the one in the previous post, but with the same amount of power to astonish and amaze. Feel the wind in your hair, imagine you're running through the meadow, flushed with life.
 
Love love love this piece by my fellow art classmate, Mabel. She always creates the most astonishingly ambitious paintings, whether in size, form, or simply the picture she chooses to use. In this case, there are two paintings which form a beautiful weave of lights when placed side by side. Don't you just love how it brightens up your mood and makes it feel almost like Christmas has arrived?

Gracias Mabel por tu inspiración!!! Qué siempres crees cosas espectaculares y hermosas! Besos!!
 
January 1st, 2008. A night I remember so very clearly. Juan and I were with Luisa and Fernando in Paris, standing right in front of the Eiffel Tower as fireworks burst into a thousand shades of colours. Everyone was smiling, laughing or just simply celebrating the start of a brand new year, happiness thick as the smoke in the air.

I was crying, because the next day I would leave Paris to return to Mannheim, Germany, where my luggage was in my hostel, and from there I would depart with my roomate Faye for Singapore. I didn't know if I was going to see Juan again.

Looking back, it seemed silly, especially since I am now living in Argentina, in the same country as Juan. But back then, the stroke of midnight and festivities hung a thick cloud over us. This sketch, which I drew shortly after re-locating in Buenos Aires, has elements both sad and happy as we embraced that New Year's night in front of Paris' most iconic structure.
 
I mentioned my brother's work in an earlier post, and how much his artwork has inspired me. I used to doodle and sketch quite a bit when I was much younger, but not anymore. The last I did was a sketch of a picture of Juan and I in paris, as we were standing in front of the famous Eiffel tower.

Today I want to show you just how good Ronald is at sketching, and I'm sure you'll agree with me as well.

This is a sketch of a boy sitting on his bike, but I can tell you that it looks exactly like Ronald. For more of Ronald's artistic talent, visit his site RONALD LIM.

His site has a collection of illustrations and photography that might interest some of you. While updates to this site are not very frequent, he has some really good pieces worth checking out.

As all good things go, pass it on! 

Xoxo,
Felicia 
 
Picture
En la Intimidad (Translation: Intimacy)
After talking so much about my art teacher Emilce, let me finally show you one of her paintings. Emilce always says she doesn´t paint people, or at least never faces, so here's a painting of a woman with her back facing us. It's still very beautiful.

Art is like literature, you have to read between the lines, stare deeper beyong the obvious, and try to understand the depth of the story behind the creator's brushstrokes. Not everyone may appreciate every piece of art in the exact same manner or amplitude. And not everyone has the ability to see beyond the colours and shapes and curves and lines.

But for those who can, art is a refuge, a space of infinite possibilities, undefined shades and a mixture of textures and stroke types. Art can be structured, but more often than not, art may just be a mish-mash of the creator's imaginative powers. And the power that art beholds is infinite, delicate and at the same time trascending all boundaries, social, monetary and physical.
 
A long time ago, even before I started getting interested in painting, my brother Ronald already began developing his artistic capabilities. He enrolled into design school at the National Technology University (NTU) in Singapore, and is on his way to finish his degree in graphic design. Yet while he specializes in this field, he also dabbled in painting, and among his first few pieces was this delightful ballerina piece. He also has a website dedicated to his non-painting artwork, RONALD LIM.