Cathie Bleck, scratchboard on a grand scale.

Cathie Bleck has a new show opening in Ohio.
Butler Institute of American Art
Sep 14, 2008 -- Oct 26, 2008

I love how personal her work is. It's impossible not to come up with some kind of mythology in it, and yet nothing is so overstated that a specific interpretation is forced on the viewer. Like the natural elements she portrays, her paintings are bold and sensual with plants and animals in constant motion, beautiful but rarely placid.

Earlier post on Cathie Bleck.

Three Rabbits

Three nice bunnies I've run across.

Shaun Tan:
From Shaun's picture book, The Rabbits.This was the first image I saw Shaun's and I just fell in love with it. The book was shown to me many years ago by Jenna Felice, an editor at Tor who passed away tragically young. It was given to her, if memory serves, by writer Justine Larbalestier.

Cathie Bleck:
I believe this was a personal work in Cathie's wonderfully organic and sensuous book, Open Spaces. More on that here.

Bill Carman:
I first ran across his Bill's work on Concept Art.org. His site is full of great work. It would be tough to narrow down but I think the top hatted crows in the drawing section are my favorites.

Cathie Bleck

I was at Cathie Bleck's opening last Thursday. She's a fantastic illustrator that is turning toward more un-commissioned work lately -- very beautiful and sensual large scale scratchboard pieces. She mainly uses animal and plant forms and has created a very personalized mythology from it. Everything is swirling and intertwined and somehow becomes simultaneously chaotic and calm. Seeing the originals is a treat. Since the image is scraped out of the surface, and sometimes painted back on top, they take on a sculptural quality that just can't be fully appreciated in reproduction.

Cathie Bleck
"Elemental Stories"
April 25 – June 6
1133 Avenue of the Americas (43rd and 44th street)

She also has an art book out, Open Spaces which is well worth picking up – a nice simple design that lets the work speak for itself. It also shows lots of sketches, something I always enjoy seeing.