Kristy Gordon

"The Great Mystery" contemporary oil painting, a modern Adam Eve, Tree of Life

2022

A contemporary oil painting that resembles an early renaissance mural. Old masters throughout Art History come to mind, like Hieronymus Bosch, Jan Van Eyck, or Pieter Bruegel. Gordon depicts the "Strangled Planet" we live in: war, protests, and unrest abounds. At the same time, exploration, cooperation, and humanity persists. She uses European Medieval, Renaissance, and Neoclassical references around the main contemporary action. This is perhaps a reference to the uncertainty that is inherent in life—hardships as well as victories have always been depicted in grand compositions. The skeletons that climb, cling, and swing on either side of the painting are the reminders of this finite life. Artist Bio Kristy Gordon’s work is a frank and intimate reflection of her curiosity about other people, transformations and self-discovery. Her paintings hang in over 500 public and private collections worldwide including the Government of Ontario Art Collection. She has been a full-time, professional painter since 2004, exhibiting her work internationally and earning numerous awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2010, 2013), an Exceptional Merit Award from the Portrait Society of America (2014), and was a finalist for the 2013 Kingston Prize for Canadian portraiture. She has been widely featured in numerous magazines, art publications, radio and television shows, including International Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur, The Artist’s Magazine, Southwest Art and Bravo!’s Star Portraits. Gordon has seven years of experience teaching and conducting painting workshops throughout North America. She has taught at numerous academies and schools including The Academy of Realist Art Ottawa, The Lake Country Art House, and The Okanagan School of Arts in Penticton and has also substitute taught at the New York Academy of Art. She has lectured at China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, New Century Artists in New York City and the Art of the Portrait in Washington, DC. She received her MFA degree in Painting from the New York Academy of Art and holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Additionally, she has studied classical drawing and painting at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto and Andreeva Portrait Academy in Santa Fe. She has also studied privately with artists including Yuqi Wang, Odd Nerdrum, Juan Martinez, Jeremy Lipking. Gordon is represented by Dacia Gallery in New York, Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor and Cube Gallery...

An oil painting by Kristy Gordon (b. 1980 British Columbia, Canada) of two tigers resting amidst vines of wildflowers, under a blue sky. The big cats are realistically rendered. S...

Robin Hextrum's "Yggdrasil" is an original oil painting on stretched canvas. Artist Statement: This painting is part of my "Magical Realism" series. Yggdrasil is the tree of life ce...

"Adam & Eve Triptych" is a contemporary painting with surrealist elements such as the eyes in the clouds, the unknown and unknowable creatures painted and the biblical scene alluded to by the title. There is a definite Hieronymus Bosch attitude expressed by the creature in the first panel and the last panel. The sweetest creature is Eve as a very young, but nonetheless, suspicious and perhaps manipulative woman. Renata Palubinskas was born in 1968 in Kaunas, Lithuania, at the time still in the Soviet Union as the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. She received her diploma in Fine Art and Restoration from St. Zukas Technium of Applied Arts in 1989. After working at the M.K. Ciurlionis State Museum of Art, she emigrated to the United States in the 1990s, basing herself in Detroit. Renata's work rethinks historic iconography while intentionally addressing the modern world through a new perspective. The characters in her paintings are often caught between the struggle of good and evil. That struggle represents the choice of trying to obtain immediate gratification or realization of the self, and the haunting life experiences with latent possibilities for death. Renata uses schematic compositions with purposefully positioned figures and other visual elements. To attract attention to the most significant figures, she often ornate their garments with intricate patterns. They are typically placed in either a serene landscape or an interior setting with a threatening presence around them. Her work has been exhibited in Collected Detroit...