Well I don't know what art is, but I'm gonna talk about Stanley Donwood.
Stanley Donwood is the nom de plume (nice) of UK based artist Dan Rickwood, best known for his work with Radiohead. That's right baby, two weeks in and I'm already talking about Radiohead. But don't worry, I'm not really gonna talk about his work with them. Also, this is gonna be a link heavy post.Stanley Donwood has done it all. Screenprinting, illustrator, wood block/linoleum prints, paint, the whole shebang. He even had a film showing recently. But he's recently been doing more screenprinting.
What I consistently love about his work is it's other-worldliness. Whether it's a print, painting, or illustration, there's always something strange and off yet identifiable. Be it a fence, a forest, or power lines - he has mastered the uncanny valley. Things can be too perfect, too imperfect. The mystery in his pieces really draws me in to look in each nook and every cranny to ensure I don't miss anything.His use of color and texture is also one of my favorite features of his work. In his screen prints he'll often use silver and sometimes gold leafing. His selective use of colors also stands out in his usually monotone prints. Some of his paintings are bombastic in their use of color, while others aren't.
He works with so many different medias and does so many different things with his pieces but they all look distinctly Donwoodian to me. A lot of his work also seems to take a lot of tedium, like how this eventually becomes this. And that's something I really admire, and enjoy seeing.I guess it would be unfair to completely ignore his work with Thom Yorke and Radiohead. But I've been such a good boy for not mentioning it so far that I'm gonna now talk about it. His work on all these album covers really fit into the "familiar but otherworldly" nature of his work and would fit easily within his "main" body of work. And I think it's because the covers are just more art pieces, perhaps meant to be viewed within the context of the music, but art. They aren't marketing, they're a visual extension of the music in ways.
That's about all I think I can squeeze out of this post. Sorry for the barrage of links, but I wanted to keep the body of this post mostly free from clutter. Also if you enjoy Donwood's work I plugged his website and Instagram up there, but now I just did it again for you. And if you particularly enjoy this style of his, check out this dimentionalization I did of it in college.
