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Brian de Graft (born 21 September 1988), better known by the name B.D. Graft, [1] is a German visual artist living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Brian de Graft (born 21 September 1988), better known by the name B.D. Graft, [1] is a German visual artist living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
De Graft was born in Mayen, Germany to a German mother and a half Ghanaian, half Dutch father. When he was seven, the family moved to South-East London, England, where they would stay for seven years. It was here that De Graft discovered his love for music and skateboarding, which would go on to influence his art.
When de Graft was 14, the family moved to Cologne, Germany, where de Graft finished highschool.
In 2011, de Graft moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to study at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained a BA in Media and Culture (with a specialization in Film), followed by an MA in English literature and Culture. During his studies, de Graft began making art as a hobby. In 2014, he started uploading his work to Instagram and decided to concentrate on his art full time in late 2016.
Recurring themes in De Graft's work include ownership (most notably his project "Is It Mine if I Add Some Yellow?" [2] ), nature, the pursuit of happiness, and the ‘deceptively decorative’. He mainly works on paper and canvas using acrylic, Oil pastels and charcoal.
De Graft has exhibited internationally, including in Seoul [3] and New York City, [4] and has collaborated with notable creatives and brands, including Australian rock band Pond [5] and fashion brand Off-White. [6]
De Graft's debut book "Living Things", [7] which showcases his plant-based artworks, was published through Zioxla [8] publishing house in 2019.
Living Things is the debut book from German artist B.D. Graft, whose light, graphic style recalls Matisse's cutouts mixed with Bauhaus-era design and Pop Art levity. In the 64-page softcover book, foliage and fruit play a central role, as does color. The book includes key works from Graft's ongoing series of plants in vases – collages and paintings of gestural foliage emerging from boldly hued vessels – and emphasizes the artist's playful side. For example, in an oil pastel titled "Pot Head," a loosely rendered, fleshy figure has a big blue planter for a head. "Making art brightens up my day," Graft explains, "and I’d like to pass that feeling on to the observer."
A pastel ( ) is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those used to produce some other colored visual arts media, such as oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process. Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made pastel their primary medium.
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat —Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30.
A set of primary colors is a set of real colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used in applications that are intended to elicit the perception of diverse sets of color, e.g. electronic displays, color printing, and paintings. Perceptions associated with a given combination of primary colors are predicted by applying the appropriate mixing model that embodies the underlying physics of how light interacts with physical media and ultimately the retina.
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The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, and biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative and gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer of Delft, Rembrandt was also an avid art collector and dealer.
Tree shaping uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures.
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Acer palmatum, commonly known as Japanese maple, palmate maple, or smooth Japanese maple (Japanese: irohamomiji, イロハモミジ, or momiji,, is a species of woody plant native to Japan, Korea, China, eastern Mongolia, and southeast Russia. Many different cultivars of this maple have been selected and they are grown worldwide for their large variety of attractive forms, leaf shapes, and spectacular colors.
Van Gogh's family in his art refers to works that Vincent van Gogh made for or about Van Gogh family members. In 1881, Vincent drew a portrait of his grandfather, also named Vincent van Gogh, and his sister Wil. While living in Nuenen, Vincent memorialized his father in Still Life with Bible following his death in 1885. There he also made many paintings and drawings in 1884 and 1885 of his parent's vicarage, its garden and the church. At the height of his career in Arles he made Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Memory of the Garden at Etten of his mother and sister and Novel Reader, which is thought to be of his sister, Wil.
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