here i am
scrubbed down
cocoa buttered and vaselined

(negro-scented!)

here i am, brown black me
with my pussy-afro smellin
like I don’t wash right
it be wild, exotic, jungle-scented
gets in to my panties, on the sofa too
a puerto rican I used to mess wit
told me I stunk good was like africaharlemphilly
brooklynmississippi to him
permanent my scent my first tat-
too it be blues jazz hip hop
all rebel, riot, revolution, righteous
i put my nose up to the crotch
of some white girl’s jeans once and there was no scent
dont know what I expected just wasnt ready
for there to be no flowers, no peaches, no drama,
no drums, no earth, no tribes, no incense, no honey
no bogaloo, no history, no rivers, no sermon, no nothin
I dont trust no woman that dont got
no smell to em how you know you you if you
don’t got no scent ‘cause here i am sittin on the edge of the tub
bathed good and shinin and i still smell me
full in my nose, and i cant imagine havin no scent
nothin to sniff, to inhale, and here i am, me, in a bathroom
with
a cold radiator lovin my me-smell, my brown blackness
and the bluesjazzhiphop in my bones and blood but sad too
for a past i cant undo sad for malcolm and martin and coretta
and good viola and little gavin cato and grandma lubertha and
granddaddy jim and uncle alphonza yeah here I am
clean and dirty with birthin scars on my belly, my smell risin up
to my nostrils

*

Note: A poem based on Carolyn Rodgers’ Me, In Kulu Se & Karma

*

Michelle McEwen is a mother who writes (or a writer who mothers). Either way she is a writer and has had work published in Poet/Artists, The Caribbean Writer, and Best New Poets. She is also the author of a chapbook: Delicious Dangerous (part of the MiPOesias Magazine Chapbook series). 

“Juliet” oil on linen, 53inx 36in, 2012

Cesar Santos
Email: santocesart@gmail.com
Born: Cuba, 1982

Cesar Santos-(b. 1982) Cuban-American, studied at Miami Dade College and the New World School of the Arts before travelling to Florence, where he trained at the Angel Academy of Art under the tutelage of Michael John Angel a student of Pietro Annigoni. He returned to Miami, where he developed his philosophy of marrying both the classical and the modern juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Modernism. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic. He has been the recipient of numerous accolades including a first place award from a competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Santos has had exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, including the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence, Italy, the National Gallery in Costa Rica and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida.

This painting was produced for a group show in Australia at the Metro gallery. The theme of this show is climate change and the contributing artists were asked to create a painting that is inspired by global warming/ climate change. The exhibition will be launched alongside a film documentary based on the subject which has been produced by award winning Director Alan Woodruff.

50% of the worlds population live in cities so it was an obvious choice for me to create something with a city origin. Every city in the world is guilty of contributing to climate change, but I intentionally chose New York City as my focus because of its iconic status and instantly recognisable skyline. In urban areas, greenhouse gas emissions are caused through everyday transportation, the generation of energy, industrial activity, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass in households. My painting is a metaphorical representation that focuses on the slow demise of our planet caused through the long term abuse of pollution and waste. It’s a reflection that maybe one day if we don’t consider our actions now and change our ways, we may well in the future see our last sunset over metropolis.

www.simonhennessey.co.uk

if i leave you
(worn is this world
filled with dead buttercups
and smirking devils)

if you leave me
i measure time in beanstalks
(and loutish giants fallen from Jack’s climb
through yesterday’s fairytale)

if we (carefully )leave each other
does hail fall to trample
the lilies like outraged elephants

Bio: The poetry of Pris Campbell can be found in journals such as Chiron Review, PoetsArtists, The Dead Mule, Boxcar Poetry Review, Outlaw Poets and numerous others. She has published 8 poetry collections, the most recent being Postscripts to the Dead, by MiPOesias Press, and was nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. A former Clinical Psychologist, she has been sidelined by ME/CFS since 1990 and now makes her home in the greater West Palm Beach, FL. She continues to enjoy writing free verse poetry, haiku and creating haiga.

Package-2427 oil on canvas 90.9×65.2cm 2011.JPG
 

My work is deeply rooted in studying human desire with a fetish desire wrought in it and the ideology around sex. A body adorned with lace decoration and eyes looking out without any focus, feeling suppressed by emotionless sun-glasses(not recognizing the other person). My work reveals women with a lost sense of identity, being subject to fetishization. Figure wearing sunglasses, painted in cold hyperrealism, and woman covered in heavy extravagant adornment fetishize the female identity being portrayed, and becomes an objet enabling realization of a desire. This is when the power system start to play – the system forces a suppressed pose and expression to the powerless. The system oppresses the powerless, subjecting it to a ‘packing.’

lkh9983.blog.me

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Painter-Lee-Guk-Hyun/361604490520977

OBRA “CÓMO TE LO EXPLICO?”. TECNICA: ÓLEO SOBRE LIENZO, MEDIDAS:77 X 85 CM

OBRA “SUSANA Y LOS ANCIANOS”. TÉCNICA: ÓLEO SOBRE LIENZO, MEDIDAS : 77 X 85 CM.
Cuando se detengan frente a sus trabajos, traten de percibir y degustar la consistencia de la carne, la suavidad de las mujeres gordas y cómo se retuerce un cuello cuando el amor le interesa o le da la espalda.

Rosas ha estudiado cuanto ha podido para saber qué hace el cuerpo de un hombre desengañado en el momento justo de tener que sobrellevar la tristeza profunda, justo cuando él y su cuerpo comienzan a sentir que la tristeza es todas las cosas. Entonces, la piel se le vuelve azulada, y el hombro se tensa como para sostener una espada o matar, pero con la dura certeza de que no podrá hacerlo. Ese hombre y su cuerpo angustiado será el tema del pintor que irá dejándolo solo en el sufrimiento y pintará una mujer a su lado, un cuerpo de mujer roto en un costado, sin hacer compañía ni existencia.

Cuando se detengan frente a sus trabajos, traten de percibir y degustar la consistencia de la carne, la suavidad de las mujeres gordas y cómo se retuerce un cuello cuando el amor le interesa o le da la espalda.

Rosas ha estudiado cuanto ha podido para saber qué hace el cuerpo de un hombre desengañado en el momento justo de tener que sobrellevar la tristeza profunda, justo cuando él y su cuerpo comienzan a sentir que la tristeza es todas las cosas. Entonces, la piel se le vuelve azulada, y el hombro se tensa como para sostener una espada o matar, pero con la dura certeza de que no podrá hacerlo. Ese hombre y su cuerpo angustiado será el tema del pintor que irá dejándolo solo en el sufrimiento y pintará una mujer a su lado, un cuerpo de mujer roto en un costado, sin hacer compañía ni existencia.

Bio:

Fernando Rosas: nació en 23 de abril de 1976 en Mendoza, Argentina. Cursó estudios secundarios en la escuela Provincial de Bellas Artes de Mendoza de la cual egresó con el titulo de maestro de plástica en el año 1995.

Desde 1992 expone de manera individual e ininterrumpida en el medio mendocino así como también en Buenos Aires, Rosario, venado Tuerto Santa Fe y Santiago de Chile, participa de muestras colectivas y grupales

Su producción es mayoritariamente pictórica, pero el dibujo y la escultura no escapan a su campo de interés.

Algunas de sus obras ya forman parte de colecciones privadas en USA, México, Tailandia, Irlanda, Holanda y Argentina.

(escrito por Federico Ceconato)

rosasfotografias.blogspot.com

“el vuelo de Venus” oil on linen 140 x 180

“Desnudez II” oil on linen 48 x 96

“The light pilar” oil on linen 96 x 140

Since I started painting I have always liked to represent things as real as I can, sometimes I succeed sometimes I don’t, what is a fact is that it is very hard for me to do the opposite. I enjoy the challenges of trying to reproduce natural light and the nuances that gives us, particularly in bright environments. I like to keep the simplicity of the pieces because I think excess makes us poorer rather than richer.

website:
www.omarortiz.wordpress.com

Muse Acrylics on canvas / 15.74 x 31.48 inches

Gothic Acrylics on canvas / 39.37 x 39.37 inches

Lady R. Acrylics on canvas / 15.75 x 63 inches

Born in 1963, Angers, France. He currently lives and works in Vitry-sur-Seine near Paris. His works are currently exhibited in New York at the Bernarducci-Meisel-Gallery. (Muses – 19 Jan. – 25 Feb. 2012)

Through the astonishing hand of the artist, the women in de Lartigue’s paintings project the essence of beauty as well as a sense of style and intrigue. It is impossible not to be drawn in by de Lartigue’s innate understanding and fastidious rendering of the female form. De Lartigue’s search for an inner persona is revealed in his depiction of beauty. As his muse Octavie has said, “The secret of his art lies, above all, in the attention and the regard he has for each of his models in all his paintings. It is Hubert who reveals himself.”

Frank Bernarducci

http://www.hubertdelartigue.com/

18″x24″ oil on canvas

Rebel, outcast, the fringe minority without purpose or place, she is all of the aforementioned if one only judges on appearance alone. The intertwining of faith and intrepidity she bears scars of loss, adorns herself in contradictions, and moves with an undaunted poise through an orthodox world of order and hypocrisy content in her own skin knowing that all you need is love.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The central theme that unites all my paintings examines how seemingly separate and isolated life experiences actually disguise the extent of our individual and communal bonds. The “masks” and the accompanying identities we all assume depending on the life role we must play, obstructs the conscious mind from acknowledging what truly unites us through the isolation and chaos: our shared encounters of pain, loss, desire, and longing for serenity and acceptance. The false facades we all manufacture to adapt and belong also renders most blind and lost in a world where the meaningless has somehow become meaningful and the idea of a shared honest self devoid of hidden agendas all too infrequent.

I focus on combining traditional oil painting techniques with surrealist symbolism to communicate the immediate and lasting impact of technological innovations on the human body and psyche. One recurring motif in my paintings often appears as the feminine form bearing the burdens of worldly grief and mistakes on her body bowing in resignation to a seemingly inevitable fate: the acquiescence of the corporeal state to the encroaching dominance of modern technologies conjoining itself like an apathetic demon of silicon and circuitry cursing more than fulfilling promises of beauty and comfort.

www.alexandramanukyan.com 

Bird of Paradise
30×40 inches
Silver and Gold leaf on linen panel

B R A D  K U N K L E bradkunkle.com

Available from:

A R C A D I A F I N E A R T S N e w Y o r k
email: arcadiafa@aol.com telephone: 212.965.1387