Mushroom Floating in Outer Space (Acrylic on Canvas)

I feel nauseous...

I try to always (well, almost always) find something positive to say about even the worst paintings. But this one? I don't know, man. There is no "there" here, there or anywhere near this canvas. It, and the many others like it that I have reviewed over the years, seems to just be a kind of...group membership identifier...a badge or sign or password showing that the painting's owner/creator shares a common sub/pop/counter cultural reference point. But (and here's the thing) the cultural references have become so freaking banal and mindless and stupid and plastic. AND I LIKE MUSHROOMS, OKAY? I really do! But this stuff is like...I dunno...gnomes or rainbows or something.

Artist: you have the ability to paint a mushroom and a butterfly and greenery. This means that you can paint...a bowl of fruit, or a self-portrait, or your home or a garden or whatever. Even if what you wind up painting isn't very good, it will be better than this. Trust me.

And: never give in to the urge to use black, gray, blue or purple in your paintings.

Trust me.

"Daydream" and Glum Cowboy (Charcoal on Canvas, Oil on Canvas?)

The first one was titled on the back and dated 1972. I couldn't get a look at the back of the second one to see if it was called anything so (as usual) I just made up a name for it based on the subject. I considered going with "Moustachioed Adam Driver" then decided against it. These are both kinda weird-looking but holy smokes the first one was held onto for 50+ years so clearly somebody must've liked it. The second one is appealing in a odd kind of way: it reminds me a bit of something. Chagall maybe? Gauguin? I'm not sure. 

Inexplicably, the more I look at it the more I find it is growing on me.

Ghouly Badly Creeply (Acrylic on Canvas)

Blue. And Black. And Gray. Good grief...

Crown Royal (Acrylic on Canvas

I'm assuming this is supposed to mean something but I have no idea what that something might be. We have a lot of purple, which I'm historically opposed to (see previous blue/purple painting critiques) and some Bedazzling going on as well, which ehhh feels kinda hokey. But that's just me...

I Love You (Acrylic on Canvas)

I wanted to call this one "Club-Footed Girl Getting Kissed in the Woods" but I figured that might wind up offending someone.

Ehhhhh....this unslightly, boring thing is...marginally okay I suppose. Kinda dry white toast-y. Pfft. I dunno. Maybe I'm coming down with something. I find myself feeling strangely and uncharacteristically charitable/sympathetic/empathetic toward the awful awful artists who keep pumping out paintings around here. Perhaps, mayhaps, maybe someone's heart and soul went into this cheesy, hokey, cloying, pablum-y girly thing. Maybe they were really proud of this. It's possible...

Artist: this is ummm okay but I feel like you're capable of much more. Keep up the...good work.

(Does my forehead feel hot to you?)

 

"Mood Orange" (Oil on Canvas)

This was done by a non-amateur but since it's not commercial art or mass-produced art it IS allowed here. Also, the artist is Alaskan so she's a local. The title of this painting was on the back, along with the artist's original sale price, which was considerable. Not sure how this wound up at VV 🤷‍♂️

Snowman and Aurora (Acrylic on Canvas)

A "Paint Night" suggested topic maybe? Almost certainly. As these things go though, both are kind of not so bad. I think the one on the top is better. I've seen some realllly bad ones in the past (and you can too, since they're all right here at the good ol' V/VAG!) but these are somewhat better than what our more run-of-the-mill Mojito-swilling Applebees Paint Night Moms are typically capable of. 

Basically? Not great, not terrible.

Christmas Ornaments (Acrylic on Canvas)

Purple is involved so I'm opposed to this. But it is demonstably, objectively not that horrible. It just doesn't have anything to say. Purely decorative, inoffensive, palatable. Better than I could do. But still...

Cats (Acrylic on Heavy Cardstock)

An actual Paint By Numbers painting. It's still art. 

If you stand far enough away from this, or squint while looking at it, it's actually not that bad. 

Kinda charming, really.

Cactii (Acrylic on Canvas)

Very average. But: it looks like what it's supposed to. So that's something.

Sunshine (Acrylic on Canvas)

 It's been a slow week for art...

Marbleized Painting (Acrylic on Canvas)

I have mentioned in the past (on numerous occasions, yes yes I know, very sorry) that I am not really a fan of this technique. But: of this painting I can at least have the pleasure of saying that it is the best one I've seen. And that it is definitely my favorite of the five or six of these types of things exhibited here. 

Nicely done, KJ2020 :)

 

Portrait of a Woman ("I Have No Idea" on Canvas)

(Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and base my review on the assumption that this unsigned...whatever it is...is not a copy of some very famous artwork that I'm not familiar with.

If this..."whatever it is" is real, and original, it is in all likelihood the best artwork we have ever had the privilege to exhibit here at the (V)VAG. It is, simply put, just freaking wonderful.

It seems to partially be some kind of...paper mosaic decoupage or something (?) that is covered with shellac. I'm not exactly sure though. It's on canvas and boy did this thing look old. And it was big, too. I know big is relative, but compared to the size of most of our exhibits, it was big. Like maybe ehhh 18"x24"? (I was way off: it is 24"x30" - I know because I went back the next day and bought it.)

Is it a little...ehhh...Klimty? Perhaps. Is it an outright rip-off of Klimt? No Way, Jose! 

It's great. Just great. No signature though. What the heck? I wonder what the story is here..

Cabin in the Woods (Impasto on Canvas)

 (Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

Okay. So. While this is no masterpiece (I don't think the VVAG even has one), it is really really really nice, for what it is. This is yet another one that I wish I had bought. It was slightly pricey by VV standards but definitely cheap by "Alaskan Art from 1969" standards (I think it was $29.95) 

I just love it. The (V)VAG is fortunate to have this painting in its collection. I'm kicking myself for not having bought this right on the spot.

Winter Landscape (Watercolor on Parchment)

If this was Acrylic on Canvas like most of the not-so-great paintings here, I would probably hate it and say something like "Blue and grey and black, what the hell is wrong with you? Do better!" But in this case the artist in question has A) used a medium (watercolor) that makes up probably 1% of our total paintings, and 2) actually not done too terrible of a job of it. The trees, while black and gray, aren't bad. The mountains are nice, as is the sky. There's something about this painting that will not allow me to be too critical of it. Other than to say "Artist: avoid black, grey, blue and purple as you would the plague. Go brighter, not darker. Day, not night."

I think it was Goethe whose last words were "More light!" That's what the art world needs: more light!

Keep at it, Michelle :)

Abstracty Symboly Tribally Dots (Acrylic on Canvas)

The names that I came up with for these three paintings may sound a little snarky (yeah, they are snarky) but these paintings are actually not that bad. They're not super interesting or striking/arresting but they're...okay.

They're okay!

Aurora (Acrylic on Canvas)

Again with the "a lot of black." Perhaps not such an overabundance of black as we occasional find, but still: a lot of black. I occasionally wonder if black is overused by some amateur artists as a ploy on their part in order to avoid having to paint something that has any detail. I'm not saying that's the situation here. But 🤷‍♂️

Anyway. There's not much to applaud here. Even the Northern Lights aren't good.

Again, sorry.

Sea Turtle Heart (Acrylic on Canvas)

So much black paint. And blue! Why? Amateur artists just lurrrve their black and blue paint, man. I've seen it time and time again.

This painting is...umm....pretty average. It's just not very important. Or very interesting. Not much else needs to be said I guess. Sorry.

Mountain Lake (Acrylic on Canvas)

One of these days I'm gonna count up how many "Mountain Scene"s or "Mountain Lake"s have been installed here. I am guessing (?) it's probably at least 12 to 14 by now. This, unfortunately, isn't one of the better ones. It's not bad; it's just...not that great. I have so much more liking and admiration for the demonstrably amateur artist who paints something real, something that's right in front of them (a person, a pet, a bowl of fruit) rather than some second-hand item in the form of a photo or (worse!) something just made up out of whole cloth in their imagination. 

Dig it: if you're going to paint something fictional or imaginary, why not come up with something remarkable and/or unusual? Plaid fruit. A three-headed duck. A skyscraper made out of Lime Jello. The possibilities are limitless. Instead, we've got 12 to 14 Mountain Lakes. I know this is Alaska and all, but give me a break!

Taps (Acrylic on Canvas)

(Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

Okay. So I don't really know what's up with this painting. It is so...trendy-feeling I initially wondered if it might not actually be retail/commercial art. I know, I know: it certainly doesn't look like what you might find in the Home Decor section of Target. But: it has that Hipster Esthetic to it that makes this feel commercial in a way. Add to all this the fact that there were older price tags on this thing, not counting the Value Village one: one on the back for $5 and one on the front for $3 - what's THAT all about?!? This painting, if not machine-painted or screen printed, is worth ten times those amounts all day long. So. I dunno what to make of this. If it's amateur art, it stays in the gallery AND as a Favorite. If someone can research this and demonstrate to me that it's a Ringer, it'll get removed.

On to the guts of this review. I like it. It's intentionally cartoony so we won't hold the two-dimensionalness of the Pale Ale tap against it: it's a feature, not a bug. Nor will we hold the oft-overdone semi-"Starry Night" swirls against it, since beer drunks often see such swirls in Real Life. 

This is a fun, engaging painting and while my wife and I don't have the right place for it in our home, I wish we did so that I could have bought this.

(Postscript: I went back a couple of hours later and bought it anyway. We made a place for it.)

To the assumedly-legit amateur artist who painted this: good work! 👍

Flower Field (Acrylic on Canvas)

This is pretty basic but as I've stated before, reasonably decent flowers will almost always get a favorable (or at least non-snarky) review here. What can I say? I like paintings of flowers: get over it. I also like flower paintings that are done in predominately warm colors rather than cool: (ugh) blue and (shudder) purple are my arch nemesiseseses. In this case, while the painting is fairly unremarkable, I don't feel that it is actively bad.

Artist: keep painting :)

Mountain Scene (Acrylic on Canvas)

Ho hum.

Winter Forest River (Oil on Canvas)

Our rule here at the (V)VAG is that our exhibits must be by real artists, mostly amateur, not commercial art or mass-produced art i.e. not the kind of "real" paintings one might find in the Home Decor departments of places like Target, or (back in the day) JC Penny, Sears, Kmart etc. This originally felt to me to be a store-bought painting of the variety just mentioned. My Girl Friday (i.e. the Della Street to my Perry Mason, the Velda to my Mike Hammer, a.k.a. my wife) said she thinks it's non-commercial, legit, non-professional, human-being-type-artist-person created art. I googled the artist's name and learned nothing. So it's here until someone can show me for sure that it is commercial. How's that for a long-winded into? Let me keep the rest of this brief then:

It's great! And it's old, like easily (I'm guessing?) 1970s old. Good job, almost-certainly-dead artist-person.

Moon Over Ocean (Acrylic on Canvas)

Better than most of these types of things we often see around here. But uninteresting and easy for sure. 

Artist: good work but next time try for something less ehhh...less THIS.

Mountain Scene (Acrylic on Pressboard or Masonite?)

 (Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

The artist's name and the date info on the reverse side of this painting say this was done by Janet M. Ferguson back in November of 1979. Pretty wonderful in my opinion: Real Art by someone trying hard and doing their best. We need more of that. Get off your cellphones and off Social Media, folks...

Lou Grant (Oil Pastel on Paper)

Or is it Spencer Tracy?

I'm just kidding: this appears to be a pastel or oil pastel sketch of a real non-famous person, someone's dad or grandad probably. Lots of talent here, of the photo-realistic variety. Excellent work.