Mud Monkey’s Awesome Sculptures

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Simon Boses’ (aka Mud Monkey) wondrously-imaginative clay sculptures are the result of a childhood fired by exposure to art from many different cultures, and a staple diet of watching cartoons.

Sometimes the most simply drawn cartoon characters can evoke deep feelings of empathy in us, and Boses has been able to harness the same phenomena in his works with great effect. His works have a whimsical and delightful quality to them, and yet, they are rich with hidden and subtle symbolism, that reveals itself upon repeat viewings.

I found the stylized lines and forms of cartoons echoed in the art of many cultures. African masks, Egyptian tablet figures, Coptic portraiture and Australian aboriginal bark paintings were among those that captured my imagination and inspired me to weave a thread of symbolism into my work. This is where my own mythology comes in.

A piece is successful when it reveals a familiar moment in what it is to be human. It can be something as small as the affection one feels toward their favorite toy or as complicated as an unrecognized injustice our society unintentionally supports. When the audience recognizes that moment as something from their own lives, possibly something they never took time to think about I consider it to be a success.

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Boses is an alumnus of the Maryland Institute College of Art for ceramic, and lives and works in Seminole, Florida. He undertakes commissions, and you can buy his (very affordable) sculptures at his Etsy store.

Link to Mud Monkey.

(Thanks, Kevin Titzer!)

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The Art of Shelby Taylor

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Shelby Taylor is a gifted, upcoming artist from Canada, who will soon be graduating with a BFA from The University of Western Ontario, London.

It’s really easy to fall in love with her latest paintings, which are rich with symbolism, and have a central theme of wild animals intruding into urban spaces.

Snip from her site:

I seek out to create an infringing force within our humanity by using the figure and concept of the animal. The images I create focus on encroaching animals in places and forms that we consider properties of humanity. My earlier work was based in creating an illusive image with exaggeration in proportion and form, but as I progress my works relate to interrupting a reality through more subtle inclusions of the animal form in it’s natural state.

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Soo Kim’s Surreal Art

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There is a common thread that runs in artist Soo Kim’s paintings and illustrations.The characters that inhabit the imaginary world in her paintings, are always in constant, but silent interaction with themselves, each other and their surroundings.

Though her works are rich with symbolism, they are not weighed down by it. Each piece is a frozen snapshot of a moment, that has a subtle, yet dynamic narrative quality to it. As she says, “They depict the subtle unspoken communications and connections that can occur in a single instant.”

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