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Artist Portfolios

 

These pages contain only the work of the artist themselves, meaning that none of the pictures are copies or "supposedly" belong to the artist. Just click the profile picture to view the page.

Jacek Yerka has won international awards for his art, and has had exhibitions in Warsaw, Dusseldorf, Los Angeles, Paris and London. He works and resides, with his family, in a rural enclave of his native Poland. Born in Poland in 1952, Jacek yerka studied fine art and graphics prior to becoming a full-time artist in 1980.While at university, Yerka resisted the constant pressures of his instructors to adopt the less detailed, less realistic techniques that characterize so much of contemporary art. Instead, he stubbornly continued to work in the classic, meticulous Flemish style he still favors to this day.In the end, it was his teachers who eventually relented, finally recognizing their determined student as a brilliant (although troubling) talent. The pastoral atmosphere of the Polish countryside provides a solid, mimetic foundation for much of Yerka’s art. However, it is his own uniquely evocative dreams that limn the complex, often arcane imagery of his work. One need only glance at the luminous surfaces of Yerka’s canvases to perceive his adoration of, resonance with, the master painters of the 15th and 16th centuries, key factors in the development of this surrealist Cagliostro. Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck were powerful, early influences. Basing on precise painting techniques, taking pattern from former masters like Jan van Eyck or Hieronymus Bosch but mainly on his unlimited imagination he creates surrealistic compositions, particularly admired by enthusiasts of sci-fi in all varieties. Yerka inspired the fantasy writer Harlon Ellison to write 30 short stories which along with Yerka pictures constituted the publication entitled “Mind Fields”. The same American publisher “Morpheus International” released the album “The Fantastic Art of Jacek Yerka”. In 1995 the artist was awarded the prestigious World Fantasy Award for the best artist. He exhibits in Poland and abroad (in Germany, France and USA among others), being an esteemed representative of the science fiction stream of art. His paintings have recently inspired film makers.

He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded him by Francis I. Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived, the small number because of his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary,Michelangelo. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, an armoured vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull, also outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strengthof wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a major Post-Impressionist painter. A Dutch artist whose work—notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color—had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). He began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches, and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits as well as paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers. He spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London, and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor, and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium, where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work, entitled The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style that became fully realized during his stay inArles in 1888. The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticize his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace".

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