Romney Illustration

The Roots Mural Project

I’m working on a pretty big project with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. We’re creating a mural in honor of The Legendary Roots Crew – one of my favorite bands. It’s a pretty dope project to be involved in. I’m working with Amber Design Collective – a Philly based group of accomplished muralists and artists.

I’ll be posting more about the mural as it goes on. We’re still in the beginning stages as of now. Here are a few pics of from the project so far:

Myself, Questlove, and Amber Design Collective.

Painting a panel that will be applied to the final mural at The Roots Picnic. Photo by Steve Weinik.

My painting of Questlove, backstage at The Roots Picnic. Photo by Terrence Jennings.

Rich Medina x Tatyana Fazlalizadeh Get Angry

Get Angry is a collaboration between DJ Rich Medina, and myself. As a part of my Get Angry series, I asked Rich if he would be interested in creating a mix under the theme. He was into it. And created a dope mix that I couldn’t be happier with. Rich is fam but, he is also one of my favorite dj’s so I was geeked.

I wanted to add a music component to this painting series because I felt it would give the project more energy and completion. When I began the Get Angry paintings, I wanted to relay the human emotion of frustration, anger, desperation. There was a feeling of having nothing to lose with a lot of these protests in 2011. And I thought that whether or not you’re being directly affected by a particular event or movement, the notion of being oppressed, and being fed up with it, is one that I can relate to and so can many others.

The concept of a “visual mixtape” was something that I thought would be really cool. I’d never heard of anything like it. This mixtape isn’t just music – it’s meant to be presented as a package with the music serving as a soundtrack to the paintings.

This project has been awesome. I plan to do more visual mixtapes – linking with a dj on a theme, and putting together a creative experience.

LISTEN to the mix on Soundcloud:

DOWNLOAD the full project:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mff2qp8aysh26ks

Toyin Odutola. Kajahl Benes.

This week I discovered two young artists whose work I immediately fell in love with.

Toyin Odutola beautifully draws figures with pen and ink. They’re drawn so that these figures look more like 3-D creations that have been woven together with textile. I love the content of her work, the detailing, the style. Her work is very striking.

Kajahl Benes creates large, realistic figurative paintings. His technical skill is very impressive and I think the theme his work seems to follow is interesting.

Dawning:Perspectives on Black America

From December 5th – 11th, I will be exhibiting work along side other artists in the group exhibition “Dawning of a New Day: Perspective on Black America.”
This show will be in Brooklyn, NY at the Brooklyn Artists Gym.

The opening afternoon reception will be:
December 5th, 2009
12pm – 5pm
Brooklyn Artists Gym
168 7th Street 3fl
Brooklyn, NY

I will be showing new work!
I encourage all my readers in NY to please come to the opening.

Barkley Hendricks: Birth of the Cool

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Barkley Hendricks.
(Please excuse my hair.)

The retrospective of the career of Barkley Hendricks, Birth of the Cool, is now at PAFA in Philadelphia. The show runs until January 3, 2010, and I suggest all of my readers who are in Philly visit the show.

I saw the show a couple of Sundays ago when Hendricks, a Philly native, was there to talk about his work. It was my first time seeing his work in person and the paintings, realistic life-size portraits on flat backgrounds, are pretty remarkable.

During his talk, Hendricks was asked about his flat, one toned backgrounds. He said that he wanted to create the illusion that the figures were in the same space as the viewer and, could seem to walk off the canvas. That illusion was very effective with his “all white series” in particular, subjects dressed in all white and painted onto white backgrounds. Especially given the size of his portraits, the subjects did seem to occupy space in the gallery along side the viewers.

What was interesting about examining his work (I like to look at paintings just inches away from them), was discovering that he works wet on dry. Wet on dry means applying wet paint on to paint that has already dried, as opposed to wet paint on wet paint (the way most oil painters work). I found it interesting because I work wet on dry as well.
It’s a wonderful show with a lot of work. His career spans over 40 years and the retrospective includes paintings that were created just a few years ago, to work created in the late 60′s.

I found it all very inspiring.

My Health Should Not Be Up For Debate

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, My Health Should Not Be Up For Debate, Oil on canvas, 2009

Even though I think Barack Obama could have proposed a better health care reform, let’s get this public option.
Affordable health care for everyone -
young, old, poor, rich, healthy, sick.
Because we’re human.
And deserve to be treated as such.

Detail:

Standing From What Was

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Standing From What Was, mixed media, 2009

Detail:

Experimenting with paper – the background image was printed on paper and mounted to the canvas. I used oil paint on top of that.
This painting came about from working through ideas of how to use old black and white photographs of African Americans in my work, as I talked about in a previous post.

Sapphire Show

Here are a few pictures I took while setting up my work for the show.