ARTimus Prime: 5th- Robots and Doughnuts with Eric Joyner

Our next project takes a look at contemporary artist Eric Joyner and creating a metallic effect with colored pencils by blending them together.

Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary society and the issues relevant to ourselves, and the world around us.

Take a look here for more examples of contemporary art:

http://arthistory.about.com/od/current_contemporary_art/f/what_is.htm

http://www.art21.org/teach/on-contemporary-art/contemporary-art-in-context

Pulled from Eric Joyner's website.

In 1999, I started to enter various juried shows at Artisans Gallery in Mill Valley, CA. and the work was well received. Shows in other galleries, (usually group shows) were positive as well. In 2000, after years of painting other people’s pictures, I made the decision to only paint things that I liked. Four series of paintings of different subjects were started; they were: San Francisco urbanscapes, paintings of old newspaper cartoons characters, Mexican masks, and last but not least, Japanese tin (toy) robots. Though all four series of these subjects were enjoyable to do, I chose to focus on the tin robots, as they were the most popular and seemed to have the most possibilities. So, armed with a small collection of tin robots and spaceships I began painting them in earnest. In attempt to bring them to life without losing their charm, I showed them where they belonged: outer space. By 2002 the paintings were looking good, but they still needed something to play off of… perhaps a nemesis. After a month or so of searching for a ‘nemesis’ I had an epiphany while watching the movie ‘Pleasantville.’ In one of the scenes, Jeff Daniels paints a still life of…donuts. With thoughts of Wayne Thiebaud’s pastries always close at hand, it wasn’t difficult to see the battle scene of robots retreating from 300-foot tall donuts when I went to bed that night. The rest, as they say, is history.