You may remember an interview we did with Amy Crehore a while back. Amy paints strangely surreal pictures of mythic intensity, mostly containing modest female nudes, monkeys and other creatures, along with the occasional Pierrot.

Since she has a new painting on the wall, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit the work of Amy Crehore. Here’s her new picture, Wild Cat Fever :

As ever, Marshall Sponder over at Art NYC, continues to write about Amy and her work.

Here’s the relevant link to Art NYC.

You can also read our interview with Amy Crehore here on Celebrity at Work.

Our Art NYC author, Marshall Sponder, has interviewed one of America’s most famous artists, Fred Stonehouse.

Fred Stonehouse is a Mid-West artist who specializes in esoteric art full of symbology and alchemical overtones.

Here’s a sample Q and A :

Marshall : Is there any tie in between common symbols in your paintings (ie: skulls, bees, birds) and events in your life? Can you elaborate on the “Americana” symbolism in your work, (ie:what does the black devil with blue eyes mean)?

Fred : The symbols in my work are drawn from a multiplicity of sources, but they can be summed up as coming from the alchemical categories of: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

I was always interested in the hagiography that accompanied images of saints. I was never quite sure what the symbols represented, but I knew they were there for a reason. For me, they suggested secret and mysterious powers and were akin to magic and voodoo. It wasn’t important that I understood the specific meaning but that they represented an unknown mystery. The black devil was done as a way to add something new to the traditional representation of the fiery red character. I imagine that character as “burnt to a crisp” or perhaps as blackened, Cajun style. Besides, black is so graphic and makes for a powerful and haunting image. […]

Read the whole interview here.

Over on our Art NYC site, Marshall Sponder sort of interviews himself. At least he ruminates about art and his main profession, Web analyst with IBM, as he paints a model at the Brooklyn Artists Gym.

It’s interesting stuff, so here’s a little taster and a link to the post:

“My path is synthesis and seems to have come to me, or I realised it, only recently — but I was doing it all along. I feel empthy when I look at work I can identify with, mostly paintings — it’s as if I can feel an artist’s feelings in paint — I probably had it all along did not know what to do with it, or what it was.”

“This is what came into my mind, it was the memory of a saying from Paul Cezanne, my favorite artist (but my sensability is much different than his — it took me many years to sort that out). I can’t find the actual quote but it goes something like this: ‘art is a way of organizing sensations’.”

Read the whole piece.