Aaron Jasinski

Candy pop installation art

Taking inspiration from Lewis Carroll, Dr Seuss, and Salvador Dali, Rose Skinner creates vibrant installation art from candy, plastic, and toys. Of her work, she says: ‘my intricate compositions of eclectic materials play tantalizing games on your senses; you are bombarded with colors and textures sounds and smells, metaphors and iconography that are used often in ironic ways’. Read more

Sarajo Frieden

The artwork of Los Angeles-based Sarajo Frieden literally explodes out of the canvas, this challenging, confronting, colourful burst of shapes and textures, at once disjointed yet somehow perfectly in place. She says of her work: ‘The cacophony of hand-painted signs in a variety of languages serves as both inspiration and daily reminder that the ordinary is often extraordinary and nothing is what it seems. A host of disparate vocabularies from the worlds of fine, folk and decorative art, including Persian miniatures, Shaker trance drawings, Japanese ukiyo-e, and my Hungarian great aunt’s embroidery, can be found wandering through my images. I try to give form to the human experience as I see it’. Read more

Laurie Hogin

Laurie Hogin takes a classical approach to painting mutant critters that snarl and menace through their cute, day-glo fur. If Victorian artists got in a time machine to the ’80s, watched Gremlins, bought some Hypercolor jam shorts, and went back to their home era, they might have generated images like these. Read more

Jon Todd solo exhibit in Los Angeles

If ever there was an artist more deserving of critical acclaim, it’s Toronto-based, Jon Todd. I first came across his work a number of years ago at an underground art exhibit at the famed Niagara Bar in New York City: it was a painted skateboard deck. Who would have thought four years later that he would be staging his first solo show in the hotbed of Pop Surrealism. Read more

Fornasetti wallpaper

I am in love with the new Fornasetti collection of wallpapers from Cole and Son. If you’re into Damask patterns, oddities, and a hint of the early surrealists, this wallpaper has your name written all over it. Cole and Son has been around since the 1800s and has become one of the oldest and most respected wallpaper companies in the industry. I’m ready to cover my walls in the new Fornasetti already. Merry Christmas me!

Tifenn Python

I recently came across the work of French illustrator Tifenn Python. She is also showing at the current Young Blood show at New York’s Opera Gallery. What I love about her work is that it has a certain vibe to it that reminds me of some of the great masters like Lautrec and Shiele, which I’ve been drooling over these past weeks. Her work calls focus to the line, encourages simplicity, and bathes our eyes in colour. It also has a certain sense of comfortable melancholy, which feels familiar to me.