Others Art as Inspiration

painting by Randy Wix

I find other peoples art to be such an inspiration to me. There are so many new ways of looking at things, so many expressions of emotion, so many textures. I'm glad that for a small city such as the one i live in, there are a lot of artists, some quite accomplished, and some quite good in my opinion.

Wireworks Coffeeshop for the last five years has kept a rotating monthly showing of local artists work.

Ann, the owner of Wireworks Coffeehouse gets a lot of feedback from customers about the art. She says she's always surprised by what art different people like or don't like. She has recently turned the coffeehouse's art direction over to Randy Wix.

Randy Wix is a local artist who's work has shown several times at the coffeehouse and is an artist who is quite busy painting these days to keep ahead of the demand for his work. His works are mixed media contemporary abstracts.

One of the things i like about his work is that it has lots of texture. I can enjoy his work froma distance, but i often find myself getting up close to check out how its all done, the grooves and squishes, the drips and scratches.

detail of a painting by Randy Wix

Sometimes i find a lot of joy and inspiration in just a small part of a piece of art. I find this to be true for artists such as Breughel and Dali or , as it is for Andrew Wyeth or local contemporary artists such as Randy Wix, Justin Reddick or Ann Chenu.

detail from a painting by Ann Chenu

The above painting by Ann Chenu gives me vast imaginative teritory to explore, to me it is an archaic map of a mythic coastline, complete with deltas and canyons, deserts, mountains and islands. This painting is in my studio and often after stoking the woodstove i will take a few minutes to relax and gaze at it, letting my eyes follow the coastline and my mind to discover its stories.


And then there are painters like Robert Venosa whos intricate works, such as astral circus pictured below, give one a virtual playground, a myriad of luminous images in a magestic managerie to explore. Works such as these give one much to think about due to the often associative and symbolic or archetypal forms.