I Just Don’t Know (Acrylic on Canvas)

I have no idea what this is or what it is supposed to mean. I really think the artist was just farting around. If there’s a message here, I’ve missed it. I am up for suggestions though. So: if you think you know what this painting is all about, feel free to comment below and I’ll gladly remove my review and put yours up here instead.

Sunflower (Acrylic on Wooden Board)

Artist: what’s up with the black background? Would it have killed you to put a nice blue sky back there? A light blue maybe? Are we looking at a sunflower in the middle of the night? Whew…

Van Gogh Knockoff (Acrylic on Canvas)

I like Van Gogh and I like people and artists who like Van Gogh. This painting though? No, sorry. I don’t like it. Not bright enough. Or not something enough.

I just don’t like it 🤷‍♂️

Ocean Scene (Acrylic on Canvas)

Minimum Effort expended? Check!

Lucy (Acrylic on Canvas)

Too much blue, purple, pink and unpainted canvas. And then some unpleasant shades of green.

Lucy, you have some ‘splaining to do…

Emojis (Acrylic on Canvas)

We have Social Media and Smart Phones to blame for this shit. What a terrible terrible century this is turning out to be…

Ocean Scene (Acrylic on Canvas)

The colors are a little bit…dreary.

Not a fan.

Black Flowers (Acrylic on Canvas)

I don’t know what order these should be hung in. Honestly I don’t care. These are black and gray flowers. What difference does it make?

Black. And. Gray. Flowers!

(Addendum: I figured it out and re-sorted the pics as best I could manage vertically, in order to kinda reflect what the artist probably intended. It’s still ugly though. Pfft.)

Pfft Who Knows? (Acrylic on Canvas)

A waste of perfectly good blue paint and canvas. I’m pretty sure weathering could have done this (or something very much like it) to the side of a barn.

Landscape (Acrylic on Canvas)

 (Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

Yep, we support normalcy here. And by we I mean me. Me being the owner and curator of this nutty little gallery. I have an appreciation for talent and traditional representational art. Still Lifes, landscapes, portraits: I dig them. We need more of them in general. And less of the “Tampon in a Teacup”-type jive that has become so normalized. Down with post-Modernism. Down with Modernism. Up with Olderism. And pre-Olderism! Huzzah!

Good job Drickey: keep painting :)

Weird Graveyard (Acrylic on Canvas)

Really unusual. Not exactly great but far from being bad. Strange in a very original way. We’re sort of glad to have it. I guess? Whatever it is, that is…

Books and Coffee (Acrylic on Canvas Board)

It’s…kind of okay I guess. Bright colors at least, but a trite and uninteresting subject. This is what I call “Lifestyle Art”: the artist is telling the viewer “Hi! I like books and coffee!” There’s a lot of this kind of thing nowadays. I blame Social Media: lots of self-focused “me me me” inward-looking, almost no outward-looking or appreciation of the sublime.

Also: I’m not sure who, in real life, would put their steaming cup of coffee on a stack of books. But 🤷‍♂️

Colored Patterns (Acrylic on Canvas)

Not super interesting. About the only kind thing I can say is that the waves/ripples look very organic and natural. And the gradients of color in each painting are very well done.

Not Sure (Acrylic on Canvas)

Is this underwater? Looking up at the sky? Wind in tree branches? Who can tell 🤷‍♂️

Whatever it is, it’s not so great.

Random Patterns (Acrylic on Canvas)

Really don’t know what this is supposed to be. Really don’t care. This is not very good. Gross combination of colors, low-effort execution. Feh!

Faces (Acrylic on Canvas Board)

 (Value) Village Art Gallery Favorite

I am really impressed by these paintings. “Comparisons are Odious” as they say, but these semi Keene-like, semi Mark Ryden-ish paintings, done in black and shades of gray the way they are, are surprisingly good. Normally I’m opposed to too much black/gray in a painting but in this artist’s case it definitely works. Now add in the fact that, going by the names on the back, these appear to paintings of real people…I mean just WOW! I guess I am a fan (I bought the top two shown here by the way.)

DRS: what a pleasure it was for me to have found these paintings of yours before they were snapped up. The (V)VAG is honored to have your work on display. We are very glad to have you here with us :)

Castle (Acrylic on Canvas)

It’s certainly colorful, I’ll give it that much. And while it’s just not very important or profound or umm very encouraging that the viewer reflect on the sublime, for what it IS, it is actually reasonably well done. It almost certainly looks like what the artist wanted it to look like.

The end.

Posing Nudes (Acrylic on Canvas)

(Value) Village Art Gallery Favorite

Hayden! My dude/dudette! You and a certain other artist whose work I am about to install have MADE MY DAY. Good work my friend! It is a pleasure to include your work here at the illustrious (Value) Village Art Gallery. Why these wonderful paintings of yours wound up at Value Village is a real head scratcher…

Woods Road (Acrylic on Canvas)

Weird grey road, weird grey trees and treeline. But: the sky is actually kind of nice. 

I wonder why the artist’s name was removed? The painting isn’t THAT bad…

Cacti (Acrylic on Canvas)

As previously (and oft!) mentioned, I am not a fan of left-unpainted canvas. Otherwise this is a fairly decent looking cactus. I had to do a double-take though since I installed another cactus earlier today and was worried that I was posting it a second time. This one is much better though.

Marbleized Canvas (Latex Paint on Canvas)

Another one of the furshlugginer things?!? Potrzebie!

Cattle (Acrylic on Canvas)

We’ve got a very weird choice of colors here: pale green and pale pink. Along with an anti-silhouette (white instead of black) which is something we don’t often see. Some of the pink blobs look like hearts, but some don’t.

This thing is inscrutable.

Landscape (Acrylic on Canvas)

Weird corkscrewy trees. Like those spiral-cut potatoes on sticks you can buy at the Fair. But: there’s no blue purple black grey or white involved. So that’s something. This is a nice solid 3 on my “Artistic Merit One to Ten” Scale, mostly because of the mountains sky and sun, and the color choices used for them.

Birch Trees (Acrylic on Canvas)

Soooo many birch trees in our gallery. Like so so so many. And so much blue. It’s exhausting. 

Hockey (Acrylic on Canvas)

I’m betting this actually looks like what the artist wanted it to look like. It’s not bad. It just has the feel of a selfie, like so many Amateur Artist paintings do nowadays. Nothing to really complain about here. It’s a painting.

(Except: too much blue!)

Flowers (Watercolor on Paper)

It’s rather nice.

Seriously!

Birch Trees (Acrylic on Canvas)

(It’s a bad sign when you can’t tell if a painting of trees is upside-down or not. Pretty sure this is facing the right way but 🤷‍♂️)

Also: we have waaaay too many paintings of birch trees in this here dang ol’ dang ol’ gallery.

Camera (Pen and Ink on Parchment)

Ginormous hands on tiny wrists. And the camera aperture looks like a sphincter.

I’m assuming the index finger is done like that in order to convey a sense of motion? The only other explanation is that we have a hand with six or seven fingers on it. Egad!

Sunset Dance (Acrylic on Canvas)

Only one of my “Tell-Tale Signs of an Amateur Artist” is present here, which is Things in Silhouette (“too much blue” doesn’t apply in this case). Apart from that (and these people’s rather wonky legs, and the lady only having one arm), this isn’t bad. It’s kind of appealing, actually. If you squint a bit…

Octopus (Acrylic on Canvas)

This is really pretty good. These are some confident brush strokes and these are some fairly good colors in the water. The octopus itself looks natural. I would have preferred for the water to go all the way to the edge of the canvas though: unpainted canvas bugs me.

Still, nice work!

Dog (Acrylic on Canvas)

This is so amateurish and rough that it’s actually sort of interesting. Not sure how that works: it’s just the way I see it. This could’ve been much better though…

Swan (Oil on Canvas)

The neck reflection in the water isn't so great. And the water itself is kind of low effort. But this all somehow manages to come together and make for a fairly decent painting. It feels…real. Legitimate. Authentic. It’s not great, but it’s definitely pretty good 👍 

Flower and Ladybug (Acrylic on Canvas)

I swear I think I’ve seen this painting, or one very much like it, here before.

If this winds up being an identical duplicate (like when the same exact painting winds up at Value Village more than once, months or years later) I’ll have it removed.

But if this is just another version of the exact same scene, it stays.

Postscript: Son of a Bitch!!! I was right!!!: https://valuevillageartgallery.blogspot.com/2025/01/ladybug-acrylic-on-canvas.html?m=1

Marbleized Canvas (Latex Paint on Canvas)

Boy I’m really kinda tired of these things.

This is a nice one, but I’m still just not a fan…

Christmas Snoopy (Acrylic on Canvas)

I eventually figured out what this was supposed to be but honest to God for about a week I thought Snoopy’s snoot was bandaged for some reason.

There is a lot to dislike here. We have one of the most recognizable comic and cartoon characters of the 21st Century and he’s…all wrong. Check out his ear. It looks like a tie from the 80s! And his eye! It’s all wrong. His body is wrong too: his stomach and legs/feet are without any depth or detail. And the roof of his doghouse has no slats!

Otherwise, it’s perfect!

Cacti (Acrylic on Canvas)

Whew.

Just…whew.

Turtle (Acrylic on Canvas)

This is pretty rough, if I’m being honest. And pretty uninteresting. We get a lot of this kind of thing here. Also: a silhouette, black and blue: the tell-tale signs of the Amateur Artist.

Birch Trees (Acrylic on Canvas)

It’s no masterpiece: it’s uninteresting, formulaic, boring. But the colors are kind of nice. And we’ve definitely seen worse.

I can live with it.