Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author
"there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" Sir Frances Bacon, Of Beauty, Essays" 1625
Last summer I spent some time photographing things in my garden with a macro lens. Some of the pictures were put on a blog called Nocturnalogic, which I have since discontinued. I have salvaged the images and added them to a gallery as part of this blog. Simply mouse over "Gallery" in the header and... Continue Reading →
Tale of Tales is a beautiful animated film by Yuri Norstein. This book by Clare Kitson is an in depth look at the making of the film, which examines many of the director's influences. The book is filled with fascinating background material, photographs and conceptual work. From Wikipedia: "Tale of Tales, like Tarkovsky's Mirror, attempts... Continue Reading →
This book was given to me as a Christmas gift. I've admired books by Porcupine Quill in the past but somehow I never came across this one. The pages are filled with the fantastic etchings of Rudolf Kurz, an artist living in Canada. They are presented as full page spreads or details carefully placed to... Continue Reading →
I'm ending the week with this new ink drawing called Forbidden by the Deep. I took the title from a quote by Leonardo da Vinci that I came across in Ian Leslie's wonderful book Curious. "I came to the entrance of a great cavern, in front of which I stood for some time, astonished and... Continue Reading →
This fall I will have new artwork in a very special group show (I'll talk more about the show later, once it has been properly announced). I'm planning two pieces for this show. To that end, I started a sketchbook dedicated to all of my ideas for these pieces. I find that it's helpful to... Continue Reading →
I just finished coloring this drawing. The actual ink was done earlier in the year. Over the last few days I've been focused on digital coloring. My motivation for stepping outside of my usual analog mode of working (painting and drawing) came from looking at the works of some other artists: Moebius, Mignola and Tomine.... Continue Reading →
I came across a few sheets of thumbnails that I did a couple of years ago. At the time I was just trying to generate a few ideas for monster characters that had a strong organic vibe. Last night I took one and developed it into this tinted ink drawing. I plan on doing more... Continue Reading →
Here's a vignette from a new piece that I'm working on called Lamentation for the Last Drop of Honey. I always have fun with the title of my pieces, but this drawing had at its heart a serious concern: the devastation we've seen in honey bee populations. I'm not a scientist, I am an artist,... Continue Reading →
I really like this book plate of tree hoppers. I found it on-line somewhere.
Paper, An Elegy by Ian Sansom I picked up "Paper, An Elegy" on a bit whim a couple of weeks ago. Every artist should read this book. It is packed with fascinating stories about, well, paper. It's thought provoking and funny. I'll definitely be picking up everything I can find by this author.
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 