Zaria Forman Paintings Just Blew Your Mind
Not sure what it is that so attracts me to Zaria Froman’s paintings. I mean besides the fact that they are amazing technical achievements. And besides the fact that water and ice are some of the most difficult things to draw and paint in the known universe. They remind Samantha Keely Smith’s abstract ocean scapes which I discussed just a week or two ago. But where Samantha Smith ran the emotively dark path to water Zaria Forman takes a more literal approach. A hyperrealist perspective. What is most amazing is that she paints with her fingers. Which is clever. At the size of these paintings and the detail needed it makes sense. But to these results? Amazing. Here is a little bit about Zaria from the about page on her site:
The inspiration for my drawings began in early childhood when I traveled with my family throughout several of the world’s most remote landscapes, which were the subject of my mother’s fine art photography. After my formal training at Skidmore college I now exhibit extensively in galleries and venues throughout the United States and overseas.
In addition to exhibitions, recent projects include a series of drawings that served as the set design for the classic ballet Giselle, which premiered in October 2012 at the Grand Theatre of Geneva, Switzerland (see drawings and performance photos here). Ten of my drawings were also used in the set design for House of Cards, a Netflix TV series directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey.
In August 2012 I led Chasing the Light, an expedition sailing up the NW coast of Greenland, retracing the 1869 journey of American painter William Bradford and documenting the rapidly changing arctic landscape. Continuing to address climate change in my work, I spent September 2013 in the Maldives, the lowest-lying country in the world, and arguably the most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
All I know is that I would really like a print of each of these.
