Cosplay is an Art: Vienna Comic Con 2025

via Mr. Green 

Suzanne Jackson

Art Appreciation

Suzanne Jackson was born on January 30, 1944, in St. Louis, Missouri, and came of age during a period of social and artistic change. She studied art in San Francisco before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1960s, where she became a student of Charles White. These early years shaped her belief in art as both a personal practice and a communal act, grounded in observation, discipline, and lived experience.

Jackson’s career spans painting, poetry, education, set design, and gallery ownership. In Los Angeles, she founded Gallery 32, a vital, community-centered space that supported Black artists such as Senga Nengudi, Betye Saar, and Emory Douglas. After closing the gallery, she turned toward theater design, earned an M.F.A. from Yale, and later taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her visual work resists fixed categories, favoring light, movement, and open composition over rigid form.

Hilton Als profiles Jackson as an inventive, light-focused painter whose work reflects decades of engagement with nature, community, and intuition. In his discussion of her exhibition Light and Paper at Ortuzar Projects, Als notes how works from 1984 to 2024 explore light as a shifting force—never static, never resolved. Jackson’s use of acrylic, netting, fabric scraps, seeds, and bamboo results in surfaces that feel suspended between painting and sculpture.

Among her most recognized works are Frozen Elsie (2000), a luminous meditation on color and perception, and 9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s (2003), a layered homage to jazz innovators. As Als argues, Jackson’s art occupies a liminal space—between memory and material, control and chance—capturing the quiet persistence of light and creative life.

Frozen Elsie, 2000

9, Billie, Mingus, Monk’s, 2003

El Paradiso, 1981-1984

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Jackson_(artist)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/07/suzanne-jackson-art-review

https://www.ortuzar.com/exhibitions/suzanne-jackson2

https://missionlocal.org/2025/10/sf-suzanne-jackson-art-sfmoma-exhibit/

https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this/artists/suzanne-jackson

http://frieze.com/article/suzanne-jackson-profile-247

Barnett Newman

Art Appreciation

Barnett Newman was born on January 29, 1905 in New York City to Polish-Jewish immigrants and grew up immersed in philosophy, literature, and politics. He studied at the City College of New York, initially pursuing philosophy rather than art, a background that later shaped the intellectual rigor of his work. 

During the 1930s and early 1940s, Newman painted intermittently while working as a teacher, critic, and civil service examiner. Much of his early figurative and expressionist work was later destroyed by the artist, reflecting his dissatisfaction and his search for a visual language that could address fundamental human experience.

Newman emerged as a central figure of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s, though his approach differed sharply from the gestural style of peers like Pollock or de Kooning. He rejected dynamic brushwork in favor of large color fields interrupted by vertical bands he called “zips.” These zips were not compositional devices but structural elements, meant to assert scale, presence, and immediacy. Newman sought to evoke the sublime—an encounter with vastness, creation, and existential meaning—using simplicity, flat color, and monumental scale.

Among Newman’s most recognized works is Onement I (1948), which introduced the zip motif that defined his mature style. Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950–51) remains one of his most ambitious canvases, enveloping viewers in red while confronting them with scale and intensity. His series The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani (1958–66) stands as a stark, spiritual meditation, using black and white to explore suffering, silence, and transcendence.

Onement I, 1948

Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950-51

Sources:

Wikipedia

https://www.moma.org/artists/4285-barnett-newman

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/barnett-newman

RANDOM WEDNESDAY: Anders Erickson Makes an Old Fashioned

via Anders Erickson 

John Collier

Art Appreciation

John Collier was born on January 27, 1850, into a prominent British family deeply connected to public life. He was the son of Sir Robert Collier, later Lord Monkswell, and grew up in an intellectually active environment. 

Collier trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London before continuing his studies in Paris and Munich, where he absorbed European academic traditions. Early in his career, he gravitated toward portraiture, quickly earning recognition for his ability to capture psychological presence alongside physical likeness.

Collier is best known for his restrained realism, clear composition, and controlled use of color. His subjects ranged from leading political and cultural figures to scenes drawn from classical mythology and literature. 

Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite circle—particularly John Everett Millais, whose studio practice he admired—Collier favored strong outlines, even lighting, and calm, deliberate poses. His paintings often balance narrative clarity with emotional distance, allowing viewers to engage intellectually rather than sentimentally. As a writer, he also articulated his views on art practice, contributing to debates on realism and technique.

Among Collier’s most recognized works are Lady Godiva (1897), Lilith (1887), Circe (1885), and Clytemnestra (1882), paintings that combine mythological themes with modern psychological tension. He was also a sought-after portraitist, painting figures such as Charles Darwin and Rudyard Kipling.

Lady Godiva, c. 1898

Lilith, 1887

Clytemnestra after the Murder, 1882

Charles Darwin, 1882

Circe, 1885

Sources:

Wikipedia

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/the-hon-john-collier-101

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp00970/john-collier

https://artuk.org/discover/artists/collier-john-18501934

Body Art: Nelson Montoya - Supergirl

Model: Karen Blanco (@kattyblakeoficial

via Nelson Montoya SK imagen

Ashe Maree

Modeling Appreciation

Ashe Maree, born on January 25, 1993, in Los Angeles, California, is an American social media personality and cam model. The 5'9" beauty started cam modeling in 2011 and in 2016 she received an XBIZ Award for Live Cam Modeling of the Year. 

In interviews, Ashe Maree stresses that camming is "not for everyone," noting that admirers often mistake curated visuals -- her apartment, pets, or aesthetics -- for the full reality of the job. Maree emphasizes the labor behind the scenes: hours of preparation, lighting, and performances in a space she designs to be both calming and professional. 

In another interview, she advising aspiring models to choose platforms that match their style -- social, explicit, or a blend -- and to lean into what they already do well rather than copy others. Authenticity, she argues, is the most durable strategy, even if it sounds cliché. 

Ashe Maree is equally candid about misconceptions around confidence and appearance. Maree reiterates that her body reflects unresolved gastrointestinal health issues, not a regimen worth emulating, and she cautions viewers against seeking health or body advice from her. On confidence, she admits to anxiety and insecurity, describing her on-camera poise as something she “puts on” because it reads better than visible discomfort. What sustains her, she says, is freedom: control over schedule, content, and the trust of an open-minded audience willing to follow her creative experiments. 

Sources:

https://www.instagram.com/kittenisodd

https://www.babepedia.com/babe/Ashe_Maree

https://x.com/ashemareexoxo

https://bsky.app/profile/ashemaree.bsky.social

https://linktr.ee/AsheMaree

https://www.youtube.com/@AsheMareeMeow

https://youtu.be/-7A-HkpiiMQ

https://youtu.be/G5IDzGIM8Ok