Surrealist Meister

My artsy sister Becks was sending me some really cool web pages of illustrations and drawings, and much as I wanna trade and show her new stuff that I dig, I somehow always end up sending her the same site, despite having shown her for the 9 millionth time! I'm forever waxing lyrical about how I love surrealist painter Mark Ryden's work! He's really my all time favorite post-modernist surrealist master and I can't stop gushing about him every time I talk about paintings. I dig him even more than Salvador Dali who's hailed the father of all surrealist painters. I love Ryden's lighthearted yet deep, dark and twisted portray of unsettling circumstances. He uses cute illustration of plushy oh-so-kawaii pet animals against disturbing background which really brings out the unsettling quality quintessential to most surrealist paintings....this is one of my favorite painting he's got. It's named "Sweat"

This one is all cute but he's got other very awesome surrealist work too...

The Meat Show

Blood

The Tree Show (my favorite)

The Snow Yak (Ryden's latest work and see how cute the snow yak is!)

He's good with using a combination of dewy vixens, cuddly plush pets, alchemical symbols, religious emblems, primordial landscapes and slabs of meat to challenge his audience not necessarily with their own oddity but with the introduction of their soothing cultural familiarity into unsettling circumstances. I love his work cos there's this very strong sense of childlike honesty that invokes some sense of emotional relevance in me whenever I look at his work and this quality is precisely why he's been catapulted into the limelight in the 90s.

Mark Ryden

I adore his own self-portrait too...so quirky as if it's from another world. Mark Ryden was born in Medford Oregon. He received a BFA in 1987 from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles where he paints slowly and happily amidst his countless collections of trinkets, statues, skeletons, books, paintings and antique toys. Now I wish I have all the money to collect his art pieces...but first, I would really want to go see his painting in a museum. His Snow Yak collection is currently showcased in Tokyo...if only someone's gonna take me there! Click here to check out his website