Glenn Arthur - Amazing Artist who plays fun on Twitter!

Anyone who knows me knows that I live and breathe art. Since I stumbled upon Glenn Arthur several years ago on Myspace and fell heard over heels I've shown atleast 100 people his beautiful paintings. His muses are often an angst ridden beauties with a tarnished innocence or the devious grinning vixen with a playful malevolence that reaches into my gut and twists while making me breathe lustily. His colors are from my mind's palette, I've painted my home and bedrooms in these colors. Some of his themes include  mirrors, hummingbirds, calaveras, stripes, filigree, fluffy flowing hair, glistening beautifully made up eyes, streaky inky mascara tears, gingham patchwork hearts, raw bleeding hearts, anchors, booboos and bandages, needle and thread, chiffon and satin bows, stripes and beautiful damask patterns and lovely blossoms of all kinds, even origami Glenn holding my favorite painting. Click to LIKE his Facebook Art pageones.  

His work has a sweet macabre sensibility that I thoroughly backstroke in. PLUS! We have Alphonse Mucha, The Walking Dead, Amelie, green tea, weddings, steampunk, extra sleep, water colors and Betty White in common.

Yeah, he's for me. 

"Glenn Arthur is a self taught visual artist from Orange County, California. Born in February of 1979, he grew up in a conservative, religious household with little to no influence in art. Although he constantly doodled and sketched as a child, Glenn did not come into painting until later in life when a friend (God bless you, friend!) took him by the hand to a local art store, purchased him a canvas, some paints and a few brushes and told Glenn, “You need to do this!” 

Since then Glenn has been diligently working on creating his own brand of beautifully painted images. Using acrylic paints on wooden panels, he adds in elements and influential symbols of his past and present to each piece. Beyond the aesthetics of his artwork, Glenn brings an overwhelming sense of passion to his paintings. Touching on themes of love, death, conflict and duality, Glenn’s art tells stories of strength and hope through emotion and sentiment with his sensual beauties and signature hummingbirds." 

The other day I came across this Tweet:

@GlennArthurArt

TWITTER CONTEST! I'm giving away my 3 latest drawings! 

"What's this?", my eyes popped open, my jaw went slack, "I'm ALL over it!" Immediately tweeted back 

@BombaRose 

#GlennArthurArt OOooOOoOooooo purple <3

Today I received this Tweet: 

CONGRATS! You won the Purple give away piece! Please DM me your address and I'll send it out tomorrow! Thank you so much for participating!

SHUTTTUPPPPP!!!!!!! Look at her! She's mine! I've been doing cartwheels across his Facebook pages. Blue and Brown went to two other very excited people. 

MINE! @BombaRose: Heeeeeheeeheee! I won, I won, I won, I won the Purple steampunk beauty. I LOVE @GlennArthurArt ! U should too

@erikeddy hasn't replied yet

@dwalk888's @GlennArthurArt HOLY HELL!!! thank you soooooo much!!!! i totally cannot wait to really see and hold this!!! amazingness!!!! thank you! ;)He mails her home tomorrow. Pretty! Ok, it's 2am and my brain stopped working so it's time to clock out. Love ya, babies! 

deseo serenidad y paz

Santiago - Digital Painter

Latin house fusion pumps relentlessly, multi-cultural couples fill the dance floor, which in the cozy nether regions of Williamsburg’s Bembe extends wall to wall. Two young Latinas excitedly discuss a young unassuming man in a fedora and lightly tinted a brown glasses, who is speaking with their male friend. “That’s Santiago, the artist on MySpace”, the taller one leans down and breathily yells into her friends hair, clearly believing herself to be in the presence of someone worthy of her exuberance. “Really?!”, her companion squeals, “Oh my God, he’s amazing!” Their excitement is justified. Upon witnessing the passionate, color saturated visual outpourings that are posted internet wide for his global audience; surprise and awe are usually the instant sensations. Known for his extreme exercises in creativity and highly distinctive style of digital painting, very few would recognize him due to the fact his internet profiles bear only one or two photos of him and hundreds of eye-popping, mind bending beautiful images.

Born in the Bronx, as a teen he entered New York City’s High School of Art and Design, where the artsy misfits find themselves amongst a myriad of peers that compliment and neutralize the feeling that they are indeed “different”. He went on to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts at the world renowned Fashion Institute of Technology.

One of his most noteworthy and concentrated projects involves his creating 30 images in 30 days. It is a grueling exercise in tapping into his creative spirit that seems endlessly accessible. Summer ’08 proved to be the summer of a Latina Pin-up heat wave that he posted daily on MySpace, Behance and Flickr, he called “30 Days of Heat”. Through the advent of social networking, art has reached people by way of friend request. Santiago’s work was noticed and before he knew it, more than 11,000 people knew who he was, with hundreds regularly leaving comments on his pics, which in his case were never of himself but of his recent works or political outcries.

Having learned of Facebook’s global reach and the vast art community networking through the newer site, Santiago’s friend list grew again in a flash and in it were beauties across the world that pumped his always searching mind with the inspiration for the new 30 Days project. A proponent of “cultural mash-ups” he whimsically plays with portraiture that often combines the women with touches that distinctly represent another culture altogether. To give us a blonde blue eyed girl from Sweden would be expected, mundane even, something he could never be. Gorgeous Imane from France, with her light caramel complexion isn’t what most would expect to find as the representative of her country, but there she is, enticing a Chinese dragon to bite into a particularly bitter-sweet lollipop. Sou Sou of Kuwait wears a wrap, her eyes blaze and wait…are those space invaders that make up the hounds tooth pattern?! Just when you think that you know what kind of surprise is going to greet you, you log on and brace yourself to see the next gorgeous face to find the representatives of Antarctica smiling coyly back at you in the form of two lovely penguins, Penny and Gwinny. Pure genius, always fun and visually fulfilling, hopefully, Santiago’s works will soon be spilling out of the interwebs and into a gallery near you.

written during the Muse project for the New York Optimist