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My paintings operate in a fictitious world that utilizes the mythologies and realities of the modern American West. Because of its unique history, the Western United States is more than just a location, it is a label, a persona and most importantly a cultural identity. The word “Western” is a category, it is used to describe films, literature, music, art, and fashion. In my work I use the cowboy and cowgirl and other stereotypical Western themes coupled with pop cultural depictions of the region to reflect my own interpretations of the contemporary West. I am interested in historian Michael Johnson’s phrase, the “Ralphlaurenization” of the iconic West and its characters.

In order to become such a cultural identity the American West has been idealized throughout its history. As the frontier ended, the cowboy way of life and the landscape came to be highly romanticized through dime novels and with the development of Wild West Shows in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In the 1920’s the creation of western films further etched the image of the iconic West and it’s characters into the collective American psyche. From then on, the cowboy became a symbol of the American ethos. “Western” became a brand and an image used to signify certain characteristics and stir up romantic illusions. John Wayne, the Marlboro Man, and Monument Valley denote something uniquely American and iconic; and everyone from fashion designers to advertisers to pop stars use them to sell not only products but an idea. Ironically most of these images and idealizations have little to do with reality and more to do with a romanticized mythos of the American West and its residents.

It is because of my own personal history that I find myself creating these narratives. Before moving out West I was a victim of the same romanticizing of the region and its inhabitants. I grew up watching Western films and idolizing their characters and longing for the wild open spaces in which they roamed. Only after living in the west and immersing myself in the region and its culture did I grasp its complex reality. A reality not only infused with romantic iconography but also with the contemporary issues such as the human impact on the frontier and a continued exploitation of an imagined culture. I exposed myself to more modern Western stories and songs from artists and songwriters like Terry Allen and I began to look for ways to depict these new images in my work. The narratives in my paintings are sometimes derived from these songs and stories. “What a Dangerous Life” is based on a country western song and other paintings like “Walking Truffles and Soufflé” are based on actual events. The characters and places in my paintings while wearing a cultural costume, attempt to expose a bit of the reality of the modern Western frontier.

www.tracystuckey.com

So what 

are we going to do anyway? 

Pounds and pounds upon pounds 

of unloved boy child, of poor choices made. His mama 

don’t answer the phone. 

Like that girl with the hair? She talked to him all day 

Tues, and Weds too. 

Painted her eyelids green, a hard little chick she 

smiled at him. 

Lays on the plastic bed 

quietly, the sweat seeping, then the shits,  

his pants without a belt, homey G; for gravity?

Assault and battery 

acid, attempted murder, misdirected misdemeanor 

black tar and her shell white skin.

Watched TV alone all day. Asked the nurse, 

“Is this America? Are these my rights?” 

Tapped out on only the black 

keys of the piano, so she asked, then, 

she asked him, “Do you speak Tagalog?” 

He didn’t know what that was, only 

that she said it was not a digital TV, 

a new TV. Asked for Xanax only

Dr. Fishstick said: no medicine. 

Something for the shits,or the long ripe pain in his legs. 

Looky! Fat Steve grew a dorsal ape! 

Never made plans to, couldn’t read good. 

Little boy we can all see 

in his face peering through corpulence 

may have had a vague idea 

that third grade was ok but his mom never 

smiled at him; 

someday he’d be a soldier or a cop, but she didn’t answer.

Lookit, Steve, this is America!  

This is what you get for your sins! 

Fat lip and dirty looks, tattooed monkey fingers 

Up your ass, clown.

What are we gonna do with you, anyhow?

Rage whore! 

Powdered gloves, fingers in all the cracks, 

the monkey couldn’t smell this bad going to hell. 

That hard chick was tight, pearly heart 

sticking to her ribs, cracked teeth, scalped. 

Carved a crucifix into her thighs. 

Told the nurse “She’s my girlfriend.” 

BIO

Tara Larkin insists on behaving in this manner, thereby adding years to her sentence. Her writing effortlessly reflects the times as well as the places. She resides in the part of California that borders the state of bliss, under the full moon in all its buttery goodness.

‘Warhorse’ 

Text, poems. Size: 142.5cm x 114cm.

2011 -2012

Follow Jamie’s blog at: www.visionpoempaintings.blogspot.com/

Also other work is displayed at: www.jamie-poole.co.uk

Click here for the form.

here i am
scrubbed down
cocoa buttered and vaselined

(negro-scented!)

here i am, brown black me
with my pussy-afro smellin
like I don’t wash right
it be wild, exotic, jungle-scented
gets in to my panties, on the sofa too
a puerto rican I used to mess wit
told me I stunk good was like africaharlemphilly
brooklynmississippi to him
permanent my scent my first tat-
too it be blues jazz hip hop
all rebel, riot, revolution, righteous
i put my nose up to the crotch
of some white girl’s jeans once and there was no scent
dont know what I expected just wasnt ready
for there to be no flowers, no peaches, no drama,
no drums, no earth, no tribes, no incense, no honey
no bogaloo, no history, no rivers, no sermon, no nothin
I dont trust no woman that dont got
no smell to em how you know you you if you
don’t got no scent ‘cause here i am sittin on the edge of the tub
bathed good and shinin and i still smell me
full in my nose, and i cant imagine havin no scent
nothin to sniff, to inhale, and here i am, me, in a bathroom
with
a cold radiator lovin my me-smell, my brown blackness
and the bluesjazzhiphop in my bones and blood but sad too
for a past i cant undo sad for malcolm and martin and coretta
and good viola and little gavin cato and grandma lubertha and
granddaddy jim and uncle alphonza yeah here I am
clean and dirty with birthin scars on my belly, my smell risin up
to my nostrils

*

Note: A poem based on Carolyn Rodgers’ Me, In Kulu Se & Karma

*

Michelle McEwen is a mother who writes (or a writer who mothers). Either way she is a writer and has had work published in Poet/Artists, The Caribbean Writer, and Best New Poets. She is also the author of a chapbook: Delicious Dangerous (part of the MiPOesias Magazine Chapbook series). 

“Juliet” oil on linen, 53inx 36in, 2012

Cesar Santos
Email: santocesart@gmail.com
Born: Cuba, 1982

Cesar Santos-(b. 1982) Cuban-American, studied at Miami Dade College and the New World School of the Arts before travelling to Florence, where he trained at the Angel Academy of Art under the tutelage of Michael John Angel a student of Pietro Annigoni. He returned to Miami, where he developed his philosophy of marrying both the classical and the modern juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Modernism. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic. He has been the recipient of numerous accolades including a first place award from a competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Santos has had exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, including the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence, Italy, the National Gallery in Costa Rica and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida.

This painting was produced for a group show in Australia at the Metro gallery. The theme of this show is climate change and the contributing artists were asked to create a painting that is inspired by global warming/ climate change. The exhibition will be launched alongside a film documentary based on the subject which has been produced by award winning Director Alan Woodruff.

50% of the worlds population live in cities so it was an obvious choice for me to create something with a city origin. Every city in the world is guilty of contributing to climate change, but I intentionally chose New York City as my focus because of its iconic status and instantly recognisable skyline. In urban areas, greenhouse gas emissions are caused through everyday transportation, the generation of energy, industrial activity, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass in households. My painting is a metaphorical representation that focuses on the slow demise of our planet caused through the long term abuse of pollution and waste. It’s a reflection that maybe one day if we don’t consider our actions now and change our ways, we may well in the future see our last sunset over metropolis.

www.simonhennessey.co.uk

if i leave you
(worn is this world
filled with dead buttercups
and smirking devils)

if you leave me
i measure time in beanstalks
(and loutish giants fallen from Jack’s climb
through yesterday’s fairytale)

if we (carefully )leave each other
does hail fall to trample
the lilies like outraged elephants

Bio: The poetry of Pris Campbell can be found in journals such as Chiron Review, PoetsArtists, The Dead Mule, Boxcar Poetry Review, Outlaw Poets and numerous others. She has published 8 poetry collections, the most recent being Postscripts to the Dead, by MiPOesias Press, and was nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. A former Clinical Psychologist, she has been sidelined by ME/CFS since 1990 and now makes her home in the greater West Palm Beach, FL. She continues to enjoy writing free verse poetry, haiku and creating haiga.

Package-2427 oil on canvas 90.9×65.2cm 2011.JPG
 

My work is deeply rooted in studying human desire with a fetish desire wrought in it and the ideology around sex. A body adorned with lace decoration and eyes looking out without any focus, feeling suppressed by emotionless sun-glasses(not recognizing the other person). My work reveals women with a lost sense of identity, being subject to fetishization. Figure wearing sunglasses, painted in cold hyperrealism, and woman covered in heavy extravagant adornment fetishize the female identity being portrayed, and becomes an objet enabling realization of a desire. This is when the power system start to play – the system forces a suppressed pose and expression to the powerless. The system oppresses the powerless, subjecting it to a ‘packing.’

lkh9983.blog.me

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Painter-Lee-Guk-Hyun/361604490520977