Modern Art

Modern and contemporary art, with artist stories, exhibitions, discoveries, and market news.

Exclusive Interview with Veronica Winters – Part 1 | Symbolic Precision

Portrait by Veronica Winters of a woman with green eye makeup against a dark, eye-patterned background.

Veronica Winters is one of those rare professionals who can paint stunning beauty with near-perfection. Her precise, colorful, and highly imaginative style often leaves the viewer speechless. It isn’t easy nowadays to find an artist who is still following in the footsteps of the Old Masters and is putting in the time to create works of truly fine contemporary art. For this reason, right before International Women’s Day, The World Art News is pleased to publish Part 1 of our Exclusive Interview with Veronica. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

ANTOINETTE: Altar of Europa 3.0 – Art Museum in the Metaverse | INVITATION

Avatar facing the curved glass exterior of ANTOINETTE's Altar of Europa 3.0 virtual museum.

The artist ANTOINETTE, together with her technology partner BizzTech, have created a photorealistic museum space of  unprecedented image quality in the Metaverse for the ALTAR of EUROPA. The ALTAR of EUROPA is a real existing, 100m2 drawing consisting of millions of individual pencil strokes created by ANTOINETTE during three years of work . The image density of this monumental work of art is an ideal example to demonstrate the power of the browser-based multi-polygon technology used. In the digital world, every detail of the drawing becomes visible and perspectives and sections can be explored that would not be accessible when visiting the physical exhibition. In this virtual space, museum visitors, regardless of their location, meet with their digital twins, their avatars. With their avatars and an integrated translation tool, visitors can communicate about what they see and what moves them, without being restricted by language barriers. 

Exclusive Interview with Tom Glynn – Part 2 | Assembling Life

Stonehenge 8 by Tom Glynn, with standing stones, a butterfly and textured bands of orange, yellow and pink.

What makes your art unique? “My paintings, sculptures and assemblages are potentially unique as I explore the narrative of everyday events and issues, historical journeys, the paradox of objects and the abstract qualities of both landscape and  the built environment. Direct responses to landscape are significant recurring themes. I work with a multitude of found objects, materials and  techniques within the scope of painting and sculpture, in order to harness the mystery and visual excitement created by juxtaposition, visual memory and spatial configurations – the surrealist and dada  placement of objects and images. Themes and visual ideas often  explore incongruity, archaeological qualities, visual ambiguity, pictorial and real space, political irony, symbol and humour, resulting in a wide  range of outcomes made from expressively applied paint, collage,  assemblage, wood and objets trouvés that yield a profusion of colour, texture, form and spatial complexities.”

JACK OF THE DUST: Exclusive Interview with Andy Firth – Part 3 | The Way

Andy Firth is a self-taught Australian artist of the social generation, known for his signature canvas: the human skull. Capturing the gentle intricacies of lives once lived, Firth’s work has captivated an engaged audience of over 2.5 million people Worldwide! His clientele includes Joe Rogan, Slash, Jason Momoa, Chris Brown and Nikkie Tutorials.

For the past decade, Firth has remained widely anonymous under the title ‘Jack Of The Dust’. Established in a home garage in 2013, his operation’s alluring namesake is an 1800s Royal Navy term that represents Firth’s revival of characters, cultures and the stories that surround them. Firth has now grown ‘Jack of The Dust’ to a full-time crew of 15, and operates from two Burleigh Heads warehouses spanning 7500 square feet on Australia’s Gold Coast. ‘Jack of The Dust’ exists to crack through the limits of imagination on adventure, where the human experience is never truly dead! And with that being said, here’s Part 3 of our bone-chilling interview with Andy Firth.

Exclusive Interview with Tom Glynn – Part 1 | Making of an Artist

Landscape with Pink Lake by Tom Glynn, a colorful textured assemblage with a pink circular form.

Tom Glynn is a rare breed: an artist who can move effortlessly between artforms, materials, scales and registers, equally adept at making miniature paintings and  monumental sculptures. And yet all of his work is unmistakably English in mood.  His images are populated by the country’s Neolithic monuments and pastoral landscapes, and informed by the many artists who inhabited those places before him.  Glynn is driven by the same Romantic spirit that motivated Palmer and Turner, Nash  and Piper, Wallis, Lanyon and Hockney, but his art is never anything but his own. It  is, after all, underpinned by an urge that has coursed through his veins since he first  stepped foot in a sandpit. 

JDL Unveils 40-Metre Mural ‘Icarus’ in Rome to Raise Awareness for Environment

Judith de Leeuw (JDL) – a well-known Dutch street artist who’s art appeared all over the world – has unveiled her imposing new 40-metre mural entitled “Icarus”, created for the Street Art for Rights Forum Festival on the north-east wall of the Corviale building in Rome, the famous “Serpentone”, one of the “most symbolic” walls in the capital. 

This new masterpiece – on one of the city’s largest walls – bears a reference to the myth of Icarus. Icarus is the man who, heedless of his own limitations, flew too close to the sun with wax wings and fell into the sea. A metaphor for a profit-blinded society that is heading for self-destruction, aiming to have the most today, heedless of the future. 

JACK OF THE DUST: Exclusive Interview with Andy Firth – Part 2 | The Artist

Andy Firth is a self-taught Australian artist of the social generation, known for his signature canvas: the human skull. Capturing the gentle intricacies of lives once lived, Firth’s work has captivated an engaged audience of over 2.5 million people Worldwide! His clientele includes Joe Rogan, Slash, Jason Momoa, Chris Brown and Nikkie Tutorials.

For the past decade, Firth has remained widely anonymous under the title ‘Jack Of The Dust’. Established in a home garage in 2013, his operation’s alluring namesake is an 1800s Royal Navy term that represents Firth’s revival of characters, cultures and the stories that surround them. Firth has now grown ‘Jack of The Dust’ to a full-time crew of 15, and operates from two Burleigh Heads warehouses spanning 7500 square feet on Australia’s Gold Coast. ‘Jack of The Dust’ exists to crack through the limits of imagination on adventure, where the human experience is never truly dead! And with that being said, here’s Part 2 of our bone-chilling interview with Andy Firth.

JACK OF THE DUST: Exclusive Interview with Andy Firth – Part 1 | The Skull

Medusa skull sculpture by Andy Firth with a dark face, snake hair and a gold skull revealed on one side

Andy Firth is a self-taught Australian artist of the social generation, known for his signature canvas: the human skull. Capturing the gentle intricacies of lives once lived, Firth’s work has captivated an engaged audience of over 2.5 million people Worldwide! His clientele includes Joe Rogan, Slash, Jason Momoa, Chris Brown and Nikkie Tutorials.

For the past decade, Firth has remained widely anonymous under the title ‘Jack Of The Dust’. Established in a home garage in 2013, his operation’s alluring namesake is an 1800s Royal Navy term that represents Firth’s revival of characters, cultures and the stories that surround them. Firth has now grown ‘Jack of The Dust’ to a full-time crew of 15, and operates from two Burleigh Heads warehouses spanning 7500 square feet on Australia’s Gold Coast.

A Modern Romantic: Reflections on the Art of Tom Glynn

If some artists are born and others made, Tom Glynn is undoubtedly one of the former. Growing up in West Sussex in the 1950s and 60s, he possessed a voracious  aesthetic sensibility from the start. Not long after beginning at school, aged five,  he spent the best part of a week constructing an elaborate tunneled structure in a  sandpit – astonishing his teachers in the process. In subsequent years he fashioned  animals from plasticine, made assemblages from scavenged wood, sketched on  scraps of paper, and built miniature model theatres. As he grew older, Glynn became  interested in earlier artists, establishing what he has called a ‘lifelong friendship’  with the work of Picasso, Matisse, Arp and Brancusi. But his ambitions to become  a serious artist himself only crystallized at the age of fifteen, when he visited the  studio of the great post-war British sculptor, Robert Adams. Glynn even showed  the older artist some of his own creations, which Adams is said to have admired. 

The Groovy Colors of Dan Lam

Internationally acclaimed contemporary artist and social media influencer Dan Lam is an artist based out of Texas. Lam’s drippy sculptural work explores sensational dichotomies by mixing unconventional materials, organic forms, and bright colors. With contrasting themes verging on beauty and grotesqueness at once, her art provokes its viewers to ponder meaning and existence while inspiring feelings of familiarity and wonder.

Curiosity, play, and fun are the foundation of where Lam’s work begins. Her experimentation results in beautiful sculptures created with various materials such as foams, polyurethanes, resins, acrylics, and polymers, which defines her style.