Art Wortd Coop

When it comes to art, I have a bias towards the vividly imaginative. Certain illustrative works are windows into childlike worlds, where color, whimsy, and spirits abound. The separation between fine art and illustration is growing smaller. We can look to Henry Darger's oeuvre, a collection of 15 separate manuscripts, each 145 pages--with hundreds of drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the stories--as the point at which illustration becomes fine art. Today, master illustrators such as Olaf Hajek, are being recognized for their art in publications such as Lürzer's Archive 200 Best Illustrator's Worldwide.

Well-known galleries are increasingly representing illustrators and comic book artists. One of my favorite contemporary art galleries is the Adam Baumgold Gallery. Baumgold sells the astounding graphite on paper works by John Borowicz, the comic art of Charles Burns (author of the graphic novel, Black Hole), the ink on paper works by Rene French, and various other examples of contemporary art that reside in the territory between illustration and traditional fine art.

Hajek's works stand on their own as fine art. They do not need the context of the magazine or publication to illuminate them. There is a prevailing style that is characteristically Hajek, and each illustration is a full composition. Particularly, I like the fine-lined figures that evoke the artwork of a child. At the same time, however, Hajek's art reflects a sophistication of design, in which fantasy elements and real-life elements are brought together into harmony. Objects in the illustrations are full of life-affirming beauty, and yet the scenes also give way to esoteric mystery.

What is the future of illustration? I see illustration as gaining importance to fine art collectors. Our world, which is entrenched in images, is best represented by these image-centric illustrations. You need not look far on the Internet to see what our visual culture has become. We consume images daily, identify with them, avatar them, collect them, bookmark them, put them on our iPhones and screen savers; in short, we decorate our lives with them. But know that these illustrations are not merely decorative. They are imaginative works that add a level of depth and mystery to our lives.

Master illustrators such as Olaf Hajek are emerging as a new breed of contemporary fine artists. Their art plays with the boundaries between high and low, pushes the threshold between comics and paintings, challenges the division between commercial and personal work. We are seeing it now, as illustrators display their works on the Internet by the thousands. Their vividly imaginative renderings create the visual diversity of the web, and in the process, make our experience of web-surfing even more delightful. How wonderful it is to come across the fanciful images of an unknown illustrator. It feels like a true discovery.

Olaf Hajek's Website

1. BLU


2. Zach Johnsen


3. Merijn Hos

4. Lapin

5. Silke Werzinger

6. Ronald Kurniawan

7. Kukula

8. Audrey Kawasaki

9. Yuko Shimizu

10. Mattias Adolfsson

11. Paul Heaston

12. Jesus Galiana

13. Tomer Hanuka

14.Matei Apostolescu

Do you know of any outstanding illustration art sites? Add them in the comments . . . .

Versatile artist, who studied at Ringling College of Art and Design, moves effortlessly between local-color city scenes and classical, elegant depictions. Most recently, his work was featured in the show for the Society of Illustrators at Gallery Nucleus in Los Angeles.

“Time is important to the artist.” Thus reads Dominguez’s website; he’s quoting himself. Judging by his works, the artist must use his time wisely because he’s achieved something brilliant.

Many of Dominguez’s editorial works involve people in urban settings. The street scene is his dominant subject matter. In these scenes, his ability to capture the city in a single, telling moment takes us beyond the usual territory of the illustration and into something wider, like a painting. The city characters are at times done in meticulous detail, in which we gather their personalities and situations; at times in a sort of caricature that gives exaggeration to the scene; or crowd depictions where colors and patterns come out more than faces.

Norman Rockwell’s influence on Dominguez’s illustrations is by no means veiled, and Dominguez himself credits Rockwell as being his greatest inspiration. Departing from his Miami-influenced urban subject matter, Dominguez illustrates 50’s era children in overalls and flap-hats, and in one picture, a nun brings out a basket of oranges into a schoolyard. Adults are often missing from the picture or placed just outside of it--we see the bottom half of their bodies or merely their hands. In “Hunger”, a bunch of scalawag kids rush up to a plate of cookies held out by a mother. Each one of these works of narrative art conjures up a story, with a dynamic moment of action and intensity.



But my favorite Dominguez illustration evokes neither the urban “local-color” nor the Rockwell type portraits, but a very classical and exotic art. “Walking a Monk” is the perfect example of this original style I’m referring to (done with acrylic and graphite on illustration board).

I love the layout of the picture. It begins with the subtle background, the wide stone staircase, the tilted umbrella over the shoulder of the sauntering monk, and then the massive body of the spangled tiger. Using this layout, our eyes naturally follow the stairs down, we glimpse briefly at the face of the monk--and everything converges in the marvelous beast.

The movement is precise. The tiger’s midriff turns inward as its hind legs and lavish tail swing in the opposite direction. Notice the perfect placement of the tiger’s front leg extending forward. In fact, a fine balance of opposing angles hold the illustration together. The monk and the tiger look in opposite directions. The monk looks up into the top left-hand corner of the picture while the tiger looks down to the bottom right.

Dominguez’s work has such marvelous coloring and impeccable detail that the sheer absurdity of the picture can easily go unseen. This is a monk walking a tiger on a leash. How improbable! How absurd! And yet in this improbable and exotic scene there is a thematic and metaphorical unity. The saffron robe of the Buddhist and the tiger’s coat, in a way, mirror each other. The billowing of the monk's robe makes the distinction between the two figures almost untraceable. They seem one, in this provocative, energetic moment.

OLIVER DOMINGUEZ'S WORK

This is the third in a series of illustration art reviews for the Arts and Culture Webzine, Escape into Life. If you are interested in writing reviews on illustration art, please contact me. More reviews can be found at Escape into Life.

Celebrated illustrator who has won countless awards and her works have appeared in Playboy, Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and on several covers of Neil Gaimen’s Sandman.

Shimizu did this drawing for PlanSponsor. The article is about choosing between two difficult choices. Of the scores of fantastic illustrations on Shimizu's site (and I looked at a lot of them), this one jumped out at me the most.

I have always been attracted to fine lines in illustration art and Shimizu's brass diving helmets have an unmatched realism that seems to reside in the perfection of her lines. While at the same time, the underwater scene has a dreaminess to it.

Two children hold each other’s helmets and water ripples from the whirlpool they stand in. Tiny pink mushrooms fall from under their masks. The two colors which vibrantly play off each other are the pink of the mushrooms and the brass of the diving helmets.

I love the bubbles emitted from the mask and the long tubes stretching through the water and out of the illustration. The children are connected by their hands holding each other’s masks and though we cannot see their faces, we sense the human element underneath the masks, the eyes gazing at each other.

The black and white stripes of the old-fashioned bathing suits also has a startling charm. This illustration achieves its poignancy by combining the antiquarian and the surreal.

You can find more of Yoku Shimizu's works at her website.


Escape into Life, a literary arts community for illustration artists and online writers will soon be dedicating reviews to outstanding illustration art and hosting a forum. This post is the first in a series of illustration art reviews.