Shari Chandler’s artwork

When I found Shari Chandler website I longed to buy one of her paintings!

Shari Chandler has a background as a professional archaeologist and her love of the land and its heritage comes through in her paintings. The painting “Monument Valley: Solitude” is an example of her ability to capture the vastness and the stillness of a breathtaking vista. This is a subject matter that could easily be trite and badly painted, and yet Shari Chandler pulls it off.

The way I discovered Shari Chandler is a wonderful testimony to the World Wide Web. Another very talented artist, a Spanish artist, Isabel de Frias, has an astounding group of “Engles” or “Friends”, a pictorial group of artists that she likes on the web. And it was on Isabel’s website among the array of talented artists, some very well known and some unknown, that I found Shari Chandler.

Shari Chandler’s website

Shari Chandler’s website is a testimony that artists do not have to spend a fortune to have an effective presence on the World Wide Web. The website is a template, but it sets off her paintings beautifully and it is both warm and professional.

Even thought there is not a great deal of information about Shari Chandler, the artist manages to give the Web visitor an understanding of who she is. One of the best ways this is accomplished is through the picture and description of her studio. Here is the brief description that is on the artist’s website:

” Now living in southwestern New Mexico, Shari finds her inspiration in the landscape around her adobe home, which she designed, and shares with her husband and two dogs. Below is her studio, “Casita de la Tortuga,” or house of the turtle. Shari and her husband thought the name was appropriate because it takes so long for her to finish a painting.”

Jacob Collins, art work

I’ve been following Jacob Collins career for a while. The Classical Realists have claimed him, the Academic painters have claimed him, but as far as I’m concerned, Jacob Collins is a Contemporary Realist. The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) lists his website under Contemporary Realism–works for me.

Although Jacob Collins has been trained as an academic painter, there seems to be a deep conscious or unconscious appreciation of the camera and Modern Art.

Take the still life called “Tangerine,” a small painting, but one of my favorites. The composition of this painting is a good example of Modernist composition, reminiscent of Matisse, Motherwell, Adolf Gottlieb, combined with realistic painting. Also the luminosity of the tangerine itself has a photographic quality. I think this is a good thing because it feels as if Jacob Collins is well aware of the culture around him.

In Jacob Collins’s self-portrait there is the tension of the different shapes of the frames and of the palette, a composition that could be right out of the abstract paintings of the 1920’s, 1960’s or a painter like Matisse. The cropping of different objects is a contemporary element. And Collins’s rendition of objects on a bulletin board, reminds me of the art work done by artist Steve Hawley in the 1980’s.

Along with the technical virtuosity, these elements give Jacob Collins’s art work their “zing.” These are not works of art done in the 1850’s, clearly these are Contemporary Realist paintings

Jacob Collins, website

A word (or two) about Jacob Collins’s website, since this is an Internet art review. The art website is classy, easy to navigate and loads quickly. The viewer quickly has an overview of Collins’s extreme artistic versatility.

As a Web visitor, however, I want to have information about Jacob Collins. Aside from the fact that search engines only index text and not gorgeous art images (and I would like lots of people to find Jacob Collins’s website), as a web viewer I want to “get to know” Jacob Collins.

It’s very hard as an artist to write about yourself, but written text helps endear the artist to the Web viewer, makes the artist seem accessible and is an invitation to the Web visitor to stop by the artist’s website more often.