Fantasy photos for true life

NailPolish

I love Julie Blackmon's work!! She is brilliant and fresh and hilarious and provocative and my new fave!

This one ( above) is called Trampoline from her new work. I found this amazing artist through Please Sir . Thank you Diana!!

Floatie

The Artist's statement:

Domestic Vacations:

The Dutch proverb “a Jan Steen
household” originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home
in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The
paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters,
helped inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now
the mother of three. As Steen’s personal narratives of family life
depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have
explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my
sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and
auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing
up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the
fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and
real. The stress, the chaos, and the need to
simultaneously escape and connect are issue that I investigate in this body of
work. We live in a culture where we are both “child centered” and
“self-obsessed.” The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping
to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to
dominate. Caught in the swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and
trying to find our way in our “make-over” culture, we must still create the
space to find ourselves. The expectations of family life have never been
more at odds with each other. These issues, as well as the relationship
between the domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have
explored in these photographs. I believe there are moments that can be
found throughout any given day that bring sanctuary. It is in finding
these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother
parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout
time seem remarkably unchanged. As an artist and as a mother, I believe
life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and
reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.





Julie Blackmon

Cupcake

Dinner Party

Green Velvet
This one reminds me of how I usually feel about the canines...however I read the most amazing post on my friend's Art Farm blog. I cried like a baby. Then I read it to my husband. I choked out every word, tears streaming down my face. Her dog story is so moving and heart wrenching. I think she should write a screenplay about her life and her farm- it would be snatched up immediately.