Wednesday, June 23, 2010

1. Naomi Chen

http://www.petracore.com/


    From what i gathered about the artist, Naomi Chen is a student in the US, living in New York. She uses Adobe Photoshop CS3 and a Intuos4 as a pen tablet and it seems he likes to read Leonard Cohen. She listed somewhere that her interest are "antediluvian cowboys".
    Now you may, or may not know that the antediluvian is a term derived from latin (before the deluge) that refers to the biblical period between Creation and the Great Flood that killed every living thing except Noah, his family and his ark of animals.
    The Book of Genesis speaks about giants, and nephillim, monsters that lived in that time and age, and thus the figurative form of this word is mostly used to describe very old, entities, or monsters like vampires; H.P. Lovecraft is very fond of this term, and he used it allot in his horror books; all those beings most probably were fossils of large animals (mostly flying).
    All this ranting about the meaning of antediluvian is just to better understand Naomi's artworks, she is obsessed in portraying these ancient creatures in all her artworks, alone or at the feet of the cowboys, (the law-keepers or heroes in Chen's fantasy univers)

The one comprehensive piece of mind-boggling art from Naomi's current portfolio is, in my opinion "Seeking Solace"  :


   The attention to detail is absolutely remarkable: the broken skull on the end of the cross, the cross's wood itself, the creatures body, legs, torso, feathers, tallons, the bleeding wound on the head, the flow of blood on the hair and finally the man on the chair, questioning or judging the beast, apparently floating in a dark mist.
    These elements are what make up Naomi Chen's artistic universe: antediluvian monster, obvious biblical reference, the cowboy and the wattery shroud in which they float.

    The other bewildering piece is "Eden is not enough", in which she paints the struggle, the combat between a beast and a hero, the title and the canvas content speaks for itself more then enough.



     All in all a phenomenal artist, hope you enjoy her work as much as i do, and if you do, be shure to check out her website...

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