Undecided on a subject or artist to feature this Arty Farty Friday, I cast around for ideas. First, I noted that American artist/illustrator John Schoenherr was born this day, 5 July, in 1935; he died in 2010. He is best-remembered as illustrator of the now iconic 1965 sci-fi novel Dune by Frank Herbert.
I could never match the information on this artist already available in the bog of his son, Ian devoted to the life and work of his father.
So....onward I went.
Noticed that an arty photographer died recently (26 June): Bert Stern who will be remembered most for his 1982 book of photographs The Last Sitting, a collection of 2,500 photographs taken for Vogue of Marilyn Monroe over a three-day period, six weeks before her death. The camera loved Marilyn and the feeling, it appears, was mutual. Who else, before or since has managed to depict such joie de vivre and/or sexy come-hitherness? The skills of the photographer, no doubt, had a lot to do with it too!
Not enough there for a post though.
On Father's Day one of my husband's sons gave him a book Outsiders (Art by People); looking through its numerous illustrations I noticed some artwork by Sage Vaughn, a contemporary artist, born 1962. His website is HERE. I felt especially drawn to his delicate paintings of butterflies, one reason being that for the past 24 hours an old song kept buzzing around in my head - Bob Lind's Elusive Butterfly - I always loved that song, but why I should suddenly think about it and keep hearing it in my head was a total mystery.
Sage Vaughn specialises in delicate paintings of wildlife - birds, butterflies abound - in juxtaposition to foggy illustration of aspects of modern life and its technology: a tension between the natural world and the artificial.
I'm wary of showing any of Sage Vaughn's work for fear of copyright slapped hands (or worse), but I'll risk a small representation or maybe two, to illustrate the point which brought me full circle to where I began this post:
See....a coincidental round trip from the huge Dune worm illustrated by John Schoenherr to Sage Vaughn's butterflies and a wormy looking creature.... via Bob Lind:
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