Brooke DiDonato

From her "As Usual" series, Brooke DiDonato blurs the line between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind.

DiDonato seldom titles individual
photos but instead titles her themes.
This images is from her "Take What
You Need" series.

When people think about Surrealism, on those very rare occasions when they do think about this type of art (without pulling out a dictionary), the focus is usually on painting. The mind pulls up images of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Freda Kahlo, Joan Miro, and a few others depending upon ones familiarity with such art. The more erudite might visualize images by Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and possibly Kay Sage. And if and when we think of Surrealist photographers, the list pretty much begins and ends with Man Ray/ That is, without a doubt, a good beginning, though I'm rather fond of the work of Kyle Thompson (American), Ronen Goldman (Israeli), Oleg Oprisco, (Ukrainian) and Brook DiDonato, born and raised in good old Ohio, USA.

 

If the name Brooke DiDonato or that of any of the other surrealist photographers doesn't exactly "ring a bell," don't feel bad, Surrealist photography is not what you'd call typical dinner conversation. And even though most artists have a kind of vague idea of Surrealism, regardless of the media, many would be hard-pressed to define it. Surrealism was an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement led by the French poet, André Breton from 1924 through World War II. Thus, Surrealism was a literary style before it became visual. The Surrealists sought to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought. To do so, they attempted to tap into the “superior reality” of the subconscious mind. I'm not sure of Breton's precise words defining Surrealism (I don't speak French, in any case). But DiDonato's work employs several definitions of Surrealism, not the least of which is the juxtaposition of common, everyday objects (top photo) in an illogical display not unlike Dali's irrational dream paintings.

 

Her couch and floral prints, but not her face, occur quite often in Brooke's work.
The image above if from the artist's "A House is Not a Home" series.

Originally from Ohio but now based in New York, She told her mom at about the age of eleven that she wanted to be an artist. Her mother told her that artists don't make much money until they're dead. (She was right, of course.) Thus Brooke trained as a journalist and soon discovered that telling stories visually was where she felt most comfortable. However, an internship working for a newspaper during her junior year in college quickly turned her off photojournalism. She did, however, enjoy being behind a camera and much like a much younger Cindy Sherman, began shooting self-portraits, no longer restrained by the objectivity of truth-telling. From that came the idea of hiding faces, a feature permeating her early work. Self-portraiture was ideal for experimentation but not so great if you didn’t want to look at your own face. In hiding the face, Brooke found that without an expression to focus on, viewers needed to fill in that blanks and create their own story behind the work.

Cactus green, DiDonato's favorite color.

One of Di Donato's most famous photos.

You may find yourself in sympathy for DiDonato's models, many of her images being almost painful to look at. DiDonato’s photographs are neither soothing nor up-lifting, as there’s always something a little out of kilter, some minor inconsistency or dream-like bizarreness that subtly brings out the uncanny from the banal. Exploring nar-ratives about vulnerability, instability and self-destruction. Brrooke's images challenge hu-man perception. Rather than asking viewers to distinguish between fact and fiction, she urges them to instead merge them into a story of personal reflection. DiDonato often poses bodies in twisting forms (right), skew-ing the viewer’s perception of where one body ends and the next begins. She also combines subjects and scenes in surreal ways that question the division between human anatomy and science, (below) or presenting a stream of bountiful flowers spil-ling generously out of an open spout.

 

A transfusion of nature into human nature.

When you look at Brooke’s photos, you tend to notice a sense of the whimsical in them. Even better, Brooke does these images without a lot of Photoshop. Although she doesn't necessarily reject Photoshop she simply finds it a lot more fun to try to make things happen in the camera. She insists doing so teaches a whole different way of working. It’s a testament to her work that she originally started in photojournalism and then decided that she wanted to get into the more commercial and surreal side in order to be more expressive. Even though Brooke loves living and working in New York, planning photo shoots is quite complicated because a permit is required to shoot virtually anywhere. Brooke notes that, "There is an aspect of performance to this type of photography I really enjoy,” She adds, “I’m not creating these backdrops; I’m simply using them as a stage."

 

Obviously not New York.

I wonder if she does Christmas cards?

Luchita Hurtado

Untitled, 1970, Luchita Hurtado

A few days before Christmas last year, my wife and I; and my sister and her husband drove to Bucyrus, Ohio, to visit our last surviving aunt. She is 94 years old (born on New Year's Day, 1925). She still lives alone after the death of my uncle (my mother's youngest brother) more than twenty years ago. Ironically, she's in better health than I am, (born in 1945). I wish she was a blood relative so that I might have access to the so-called "longevity genes," she obviously possesses (her parents both lived approximately one-hundred years). It is, of course, no secret than women usually live longer than men. Actuarial tables confirm that on an average, women outlive men by about three to five years (depending upon a number of very complex factors). According to the charts, I should live to be about 78. My aunt has a very good chance of reaching the century mark. That's also the case with the Venezuelan-born painter, Luchita Hurtado She is currently 98.

Luchita then (1920s), and now.

Luisa Amelia Garcia Rodriguez Hurtado was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1920 and moved to New York City as a nine-year-old. She studied at Washington Irving High School, where her mother thought she was learning to sew, not paint. Upon finishing high school, Luchita married Daniel de Solar, a Spanish journalist twice her age. She was just 18. By 1942, the couple had two young children and was in the midst of a divorce. Around the time he left, she made one of her earliest paintings, an ethereal semi-abstraction of two flattened deer drinking under moonlight (below). She also began freelancing as an illustrator, doing magazine work, and painting a temporary mural at Lord & Taylor of elongated figures with light bulbs for heads. She and her two sons lived in a modest apartment. Her life has been filled with joy and fascination, as well as suffering. (She lost two of her children, one to polio at the age of five.)

Untitled, 1942, Luchita Hertado.

However, it’s Hurtado’s work, rather than her rich story, that deserves attention—though in some ways, they are inseparable. During the nearly 100 years she has been painting, her work has been largely overshadowed by the men she married — Chilean journalist Daniel de Solar, Austrian artist and theorist Wolfgang Paalen, and for more than 40 years U.S. painter Lee Mullican, a founder of the “Dynaton” group, an influential trio of artists known for their interest in the surreal, the abstract and the cosmic. Although her work has been exhibited sporadically since the 1950s, mostly in group shows, it’s only recently that the art world has taken deeper notice of Luchita's paintings. Just in the last two years she’s had two solo exhibitions, but before 2016 her last solo show was back in 1974.

 

Luchita Hurtado Self-portrait,
probably painted during her time
living in San Francisco.

At 98, Luchita Hurtado has had enough adventures for three lifetimes. She traipsed around Southern Mexico in the 1940s in search of pre-Columbian archeology. She was pals with sculptor Isamu Noguchi and Mexican modernist Rufino Tamayo. Marcel Duchamp once gave her a foot rub. Hurtado and her second husband moved to the San Francisco Bay are in 1948 following the death of her son from Polio. She needed to escape to a new environment. There, they were again surrounded by a community of artists—Giles and Sheila Healey, architect Sybil Moholy-Nagy, and poet Jimmy Broughton. It was there where Luchita met Lee Mullican, whom she would marry soon after she left Paalen.

Untitled, 1950, Luchita Hurtado

Now newly single once more, Luchita moved in 1950, moved south to the Santa Monica Canyon near Los Angeles. At first, she lived alone, and then Mullican joined her. Shortly thereafter, their son, Matt Mullican (also a painter) was born. Lee Mullican belonged to the Dynaton group of artists that Paalen spearheaded, centered around Eastern philosophy, meditation, and intricate paintings. She and Mullican kept separate studios throughout their 48 years together, until his death in 1998. “We didn’t talk about the art,” she said. “I don’t like to work with anyone. I would turn a painting to the wall and wouldn’t let anyone see it. Maybe it was because I belong to a certain generation.”


Some of Luchita Hurtado's more recent works--all "untitled," of course.

 

Around 1970, just after Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro started the Feminist Art Program at CalArts, Hurtado broke from her private comfort zone and joined a feminist consciousness-raising group which included Vija Celmins, Alexis Smith, Susan Titelman. She met routinely and, at one point, artist Joyce Kozloff asked her if she’d like to help start a West Coast Guerrilla Girls chapter. Luchita disliked the name and soon distanced herself from the consciousness-raising group after they began doing drawings of each others’ privates. she said. “I thought it was the wrong approach to art. It was demeaning.”


Luchita Hurtado's "wall" at a recent group show, "Made in L.A."

Luchita's drawings’ are loosely Surrealist forms recalling dense pictographs from a variety of cultures, ancient and modern, A critic wrote in a review, “Hurtado’s work was multicultural before multicultural was cool.” Today, Hurtado and her feet are again big talk — this time for her striking paintings of feet and other parts of the female body against depictions of indigenous rugs, blue sky and sumptuous fruit. If Hurtado’s energy could be bottled as a tonic, it would no doubt sell out. Gallery owner, Paul Soto, who showed Hurtado’s work in 2016, notes, “She has this completely spiritual energy." One gallery guest contacted the museum to question the wall text that accompanies some of her paintings. They left a message saying they really loved the show but they found a typo. They thought Luchita’s birth date was wrong. "There’s no way, said the visitor, that a painter by the name of Luchita Hurtado could have possibly been born in 1920."

Untitled, 1970, Luchita Hurtado

 

Nuns and Art

The Nun, 1983, Andy Warhol. Though neither Warhol nor movie actress, Ingrid Bergman (upon whom Warhol based his portrait) ever sought refuge in a monastic life, the "art thread" runs strong down through history in the lives of those who have. 

Guglielmo Giraldi, 

Saint Catherine of Bologna, ca. 1469.

Just a little over three months ago the world of art lost one of the towering advocates of our time. On December 26, 2018 (Boxing Day in England), Sister Wendy Beckett died at the Carmelite Monastery in Quidenham in Norfolk, England, where she had lived much of her latter years in a small, windowless, mobile home (caravan in English). Although her cause of death has not been officially disclosed, she apparently died of what has commonly come to be known as old age. She was 88. (A Sister Wendy video excerpt can be seen at the end.) It seems unlikely she ever picked brush and palette to create paintings on her own, but the history of art is replete with a surprising number of convent artists, both female and male who did.

Art historian, Sister Wendy Beckett

One of the earliest examples we know about (whose work survives) was Maria di Ormanno degli Albizzi, a 15th-century Italian nun, who au-daciously painted her own self-portrait. Forgoing the demure profile view that male artists cus-tomarily used in their depictions of refined quattrocento ladies, this miniature version of Maria stares out openly from the heart of a sumptuous gold and blue background. Yet this groundbreaking self-portrait was only intended to be seen by her Augustinian sisters; di Ormanno footnoted her likeness on the bottom of a page in a 490-page prayer book. We may think of nuns as sequestered, But just as she was safely cloistered inside the walls of the Florentine San Gaggio convent, di Ormanno was able to paint her daring self-image precisely because it was safely nestled between the covers of her private prayer guide. For Renaissance nuns with a creative bent, convent life was not a problem—it was a creative solution. Many prospective nuns came from wealthy households and had some education; nunneries extracted women from the domestic responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, freeing them to further pursue their studies and even artistic careers.

Sister Juana Beatriz de la Fuente, Arbol de la Vida, 1805.

A century later, the prospect of courtship and marriage drove the early 1600s, Neapolitan painter Luisa Capomazza to find refuge in a convent. She rejected many advantageous marriage proposals, while nobly enjoying herself with painting. According to her biographer, the late-Baroque art historian and painter Bernardo de Domini, she was very much "in love" with painting. Luisa saw herself as quite constrained by the irksome pleadings of both suitors and their parents. Thus she decided to become a nun. In the habit, Capomazza was free to paint a range of subjects, including altarpieces and landscapes. The latter genre was especially challenging for all women artists working in her time inasmuch as the direct study of nature was limited by rules of decorum, which dictated that women be chaperoned outside the home. Despite later having her own biographer, few if any of Capomazza's paintings can reliably be attributed.


Sister Plautilla Nelli,
Saint Catherine with Lily. 1750. 

During the Renaissance, it was common practice for families to send women who weren’t in line to receive the hefty dowry reserved of eldest daughters off to convents. For a variety of economic reasons, not to mention the inclinations of women like Capomazza, convent populations exploded in Italy.. In 1515, there were 2,500 nuns in Florence alone, but by 1552, one out of every nineteen Florentines was a nun. The popularity of this lifestyle is not surprising, considering the socially repressive alternative. Generally speaking, convents have served as one of the most supportive artist residency programs available to women in the history of Western art.



Lamentation with Saints, Sister Plautilla Nelli,

Sister Plautilla Nelli (above, right), for example, was probably enticed to join the Florentine convent of Santa Caterina of Siena because of its artistic reputation. After entering the sisterhood in 1538 at age 14, Nelli gained access to the convent’s large collection of prints and drawings, some of which she may have traded with art historian Giorgio Vasari, who mentioned her in his second edition of Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, (1550). Nelli learned to paint at the convent. Vasari relates, “She, [began] little by little to draw and to imitate in colors panels and paintings by excellent master. She has executed some works with such diligence, that she has caused artists to marvel.” Her works were in demand, and she soon headed her own workshop at Santa Caterina with as many as eight nun/artists studying and working under her. Though they proudly produced devotional paintings for private collectors, the nuns of Santa Caterina also created expensive, monumental artworks for themselves. Nelli’s workshop painted a large-scale Last Supper (ca. 1560) for the convent’s refectory is nearly equal in length to Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco on the same subject. It is currently undergoing extensive restoration and this October will be unveiled to the public for the first time in nearly 500 years.

Conservation work for Sister Plautilla Nelli's, Last Supper, dating from around 1560. Leonardo discontinued his misbegotten efforts about 1498.

Portrait of Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz,
c. 1750

Convents beyond Italy and long after the Renaissance continued to nurture women artists. Their stories are still slowly being patched together as religious works change hands. Decades ago, Marion Oettinger, curator of Latin American art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, spotted an unusual 19th-century painting for sale at a Latin American folk art gallery in California. He examined the signature and found that it was created by Juana Beatriz de la Fuente, a nun from colonial Mexico. This is still her only known work. “We have no idea who she was,” Oettinger explains, though he imagines that her life resembled that of her more famous sister of the cloth, the 17th-century Mexican scholar, painter, and poet Juana Inés de la Cruz, (right) who had the luxury of a room of her own and materials provided for her.

Moshe Safdie

Golden Dream Bay, Heibei Province, China, Moshe Safdie

When I start writing about architects, it's tempting to land on one particularly outstanding example and sing the praises, or heap all the criticism on that one structure. Never has that been more of a temptation than in discussing the long, incredible career of the Israeli-born architect, Moshe Safdie. It must have been something of a mixed blessing back in the mid-1960s...yes, more than fifty years ago...to have achieved international acclaim as a result of his first major commission--Montreal's Habitat '67. Not every ambitious young architect makes architectural history so early on. It must have been quite a challenge to choose an encore. It was, indeed. Having established his own firm in 1964, Safdie's projects for the next ten years hollowing Habitat '67 were limited to various modest structures in the blossoming state of Israel.

Today, Safdie's frim has designed nearly forty structures around the world.
Safdie's Altair Towers in Colombo, Sri Lanka is seen above.)

Moshe Safdie was born into a family of Jewish Syrians living in what was then Palestine in 1938 (now Haifa, Israel). After apprenticing with the famed Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for Expo 67. In 1964, he established his own firm to undertake Habitat 67, an adaptation of his McGill thesis. Habitat '67, which pioneered the design and implementation of three-dimensional, prefabricated units for living, was a central feature of Expo '67 and an important development in architectural history. Safdie was awarded the 1967 Construction Man of the Year Award from the Engineering News Record and the Massey Medal for Architecture in Canada for Habitat '67.


Habitat '67--never before had so many room-size prefabricated blocks been joined on such a large scale.

Habitat '67 (above) is widely considered an architectural landmark and one of the most recognizable and spectacular buildings in both Montreal and Canada. The development was financed by the Canadian government, but is now owned by its tenants, who formed a limited partnership that purchased the building from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1985. Safdie still owns a penthouse apartment in the building (four concrete cubes). Habitat 67's interlocking forms, connected walkways, and landscaped terraces were key in achieving Safdie's goal of a private and natural environment within the limits of a dense urban space. Habitat '67 comprises 354 identical, prefabricated concrete units arranged in various combinations, reaching up to 12 stories in height. Together these units create 146 residences of varying sizes and configurations, each formed from one to eight linked concrete units all held together by steel cables. The complex originally contained 158 apartments, but several apartments have since been joined to create larger units, reducing the total number. Each unit is connected to at least one private terrace, which can range from approximately (225 to more than 1,000 square feet (20 to 90 square meters) in size.

 

Sky Habitat is one of Safdie's newest(2012) completed projects.

What's it like to own some of Safdie's stacked concrete cubes? Well, first of all you'd best be "made of money." A three-cube unit of 2390 square feet recently listed for $1,375,000. Moreover that doesn't include a monthly "contribution" of $2,705 for taxes, utilities, a single indoor parking space, a private storage locker, 24-hour security, a tennis club with clay courts, an Instructor. and free shuttle bus tickets to beautiful downtown Montreal. Life in Habitat '67, is unique in all the world. Located on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, Habitat's piling up of cubes seems to deny the laws of gravity, with its garden terraces, its fountains, and its large estate. (Habitat '67 was declared heritage building by the Government of Quebec in 2009, and has been recently restored.) However, if you've a yen to move to Singapore, there Safdie has designed a 21st century version which he calls Sky Habitat (above). The units there might cost a little more, though.

 

The Marina Bay Sands integrated resort, Singapore, designed by Moshe Safdie.

Or, you might choose Marina Bay (above), yet another Moshe Safdie high-rise apartment complex also in Singapore. Completed 1n 2010, the group of six slab-like buildings seem to lean lovingly against one another. Marina Bay also comes complete with its own arts and sciences museum designed by Safdie (below) in the shape of a Lotus blossom. As lovely it is to look at during the day, nighttime renders Safdie's creation even more spectacular.

 

A portion of Safdie's Marina Bay Sands can be seen in the background.

Not to be outdone by the Malaysians, the Chinese can also claim a Moshe Safdie as their own. Located in Heibei Province (north-central China). Safdie's Golden Dream project is set to become the crown jewel of that city's new Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Heibei is industrial China at its rawest: smog, relentless, incredible construction, and traffic stretching along hundreds of miles of expressways. While its attractions are obscured by its industrial output, the province has plenty of sightseeing, outdoor recreation, and skiing in a region where few international tourists venture. The builders of Safdie's Marina Bay hope to change all that.

 

The Marble Collegiate Church can be seen on the right.

And finally there's no reason one must trek to the Far East, or even Canada, to experience Safdie's revolutionary architecture. Officials of New York City's historic Marble Collegiate Church have recently unveiled plans for Safdie's first New York structure (above). Planned to rise on a Manhattan site at West 30th Street, between Broadway and 5th Avenue, the as-yet-unnamed 64-story mixed-use tower will feature a limestone base that compliments and serves its historic neighbor. The building will be distinguished by its vertical massing, which breaks down the scale of the tower into a series of three-story-high, offset projections. The offset projections also provide energy efficiency by self-shading the tower’s façade, further enhanced by additional sun shading of the south façade. The tower will house new administrative and programming spaces for Marble Collegiate’s congregation, the administrative staff of the Churches, and Intersections International, a major conflict resolution initiative of the Collegiate Church. Funds generated by the building will support both the restoration of the historic church and the vital programs of the Collegiate Churches.

 

Safdie's Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Kansas City, MO.

 

Skyler Grey

Silent Riot, Skyler Grey

During my twenty-six years teaching art in a public school I encountered dozens of students with exceptional talent. I once exhibited about fifteen paintings and drawings created by my students at a local club. Three of the fifteen sold for modest prices (less than $50 each). It used to irritate me a little that the buyers seemed to be taking advantage of my students in purchasing pieces at a fraction of my judgment as to their value. But, learning to price one's work is part of learning to be an artist. Having said that, if talent and astute pricing were all it took to be a successful artist, there would be at least twice as many professional artists working today. Those factors are important, but the key element in any artist's success is promotion. In effect, I was serving as the promotor of my students' work, and apparently not a very good one. If I had been any good at promoting, I'd have used this aptitude in the promotion of my own work. Most accomplished artist could say the same. Los Angeles artist Skyler Grey is an accomplished artist, but beyond that he and his father have a knack for self-promotion that sees his work selling to buyers all over the world for prices ranging from $6,000 to $60,000. This from an artist who is only nineteen-years-old.

 

Where is Miss Piggy, Skyler Grey

Olive Oyl Chanel,
Skyler Grey 

If one were to categorize Skyler's work it would be Pop Art inspired by the street art movement combined to create beautiful but offbeat works. His work is colorful with some hints of darkness, and sprinkled with a few dashes of surrealism. Skyler prefers to think of his work as neither of the above but instead having a genre of its own. As the youngest artist ever to be internationally exhibited, at the age of sixteen, Skyler Grey is a rising star and one of the newest fixtures on the LA street art scene. After the tragic loss of his mother at age of two, he was subsequently placement in therapy that involved art and drawing. Grey’s father noticed his son’s incredible artistic interest, talent and creativity. Over the years, with his father’s encour-agement and continuous practice on various mediums, Grey has already transformed his talent into an ex-traordinary career. Although not formally trained, Skyler has educated himself by exposure to the arts and constant sharpening of his artistic skills. Influenced by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Grey has developed his own distinctive style and artistic concept. In addition to achieving early success as an artist, Grey has made strides in his community as well, being honored by Black Entertainment Television in 2014 at the 11th Annual 365 Black Awards which honors African Americans who have made positive contributions in the community.

 

Two of Grey's versions of Queen Amy.

Grey has been called "The Fresh Prince of Street Art." He began painting when he was ten years old, and had his first commissioned work at the age of thirteen. Rearranging pop cultural icons with bursts of vivid color, Grey’s works have been acquired by Hip-Hop artist The Game and pop singer Ashlee Simpson. One of Grey’s earliest and most widely-circulated works. Queen Amy (above, appropriating late singer Amy Winehouse as the Queen Elizabeth II), has appeared in galleries and private viewings worldwide (there are several different versions). His work has been exhibited at venues in London, Vancouver, Miami, Los Angeles, and Dubai. He was featured in the 2017 edition of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 Art and Style.

Skyler Grey with a self-portrait,

Like most teenagers, Skyler Grey goes through the usual morning routine of waking up, checking his phone, watching TV and grabbing breakfast. But unlike most high school grads his age who are now hitting the books in college, Grey heads to his home studio in Los Angeles each day, flips on his favorite music and starts painting. His studio is always happy, always nice, and always creative with nothing sad, mad, or having weird vibes. Grey claims that’s the only way you can make wonderful artwork. His mixed-medium paintings are a blend of bold colors, 3-D textures and street art techniques. The paintings’ overlapping layers of colors and patterns reveal new discoveries the longer they are studied.

 

 

Mickeys Chanel Party Can in Midnight Black, Skyler Grey

At the center of Grey's work are images of famous pop culture icons such as Popeye and Mickey Mouse, as well as high-fashion logos like that of Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Grey notes, “These are things that bring you back to happy times. I like to make people happy when they look at my artwork." In 2013, Grey hosted his first solo art show and received his first commission from a street art collector in Switzerland. The only instructions to the budding artist were, “Just make sure I like it.” Grey studied the collector’s Instagram account and discovered he owned a tattoo and piercing parlor and was a huge fan of Disney. The end result shows the familiar Mickey Mouse with psychedelic eyes, round ear gauges and a chest tattoo. Grey said the collector was blown away.

 

Dreams of Warhol and Bowie in Yellow, Skyler Grey

More recently, the artist’s popularity has skyrocketed. His art is in high demand among top musicians like Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Sean "Diddly" Comb, and William L. Mack, Chairman of the Board, Guggenheim Museum. His paintings currently hang in Miami’s Avant Gallery, and his work has appeared in London’s Graffik Gallery as well as the Four Seasons Jumeirah in Dubai. Free from the daily routine of high school classes, tests and homework, Grey can now fully immerse himself in his art. He typically works on multiple canvasses at a time, carefully crafting each vibrant layer. His materials include spray paint, acrylics, house paint and, most recently, diamond dust for a bit of bling. Grey says it takes him roughly three to four weeks to complete a piece.

Today and Tomorrow, Skyler Grey

There’s a lot of things that set Skyler Grey apart from other artists. Mostly he has a look all his own. Every time he rolls out a new painting, you know it's going to be fresh. In 2018, Grey released a high-end line of jewelry art pieces in partnership with Jason of Beverly Hills. He also has plans for a musical album and would love to someday dabble in the acting world. In the meantime, his artistic talents continue to garner exposure within the art world’s most prominent spaces, such as the 2017 edition of Scope Basel with Avant Gallery and the sacred Wynwood Walls in Miami. Grey is an artist, but Skyler Grey is actually a brand. It's a brand likely to have incredible potential and staying power Today and Tomorrow (above).

  

Chanel Spinach Red, Black, 2016, Skyler Grey