Category Archives: Art & Culture

Coming Soon: Walls by GalleryDirect

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If you haven’t noticed on Pinterest yet, wall murals are the latest trendy way to decorate a space. So stop repinning those ideas and make them a reality! Oh you didn’t know that we offer wall mural art at an affordable price?…Yup, we sure do. Have a baby on the way and a nursery to decorate, consider a wall mural. Have a large playroom you want to make more colorful for your kids, consider a wall mural. Have a master bedroom that needs an inviting and peaceful image, consider a wall mural. Have a boring office that needs to be livened up, consider a wall mural.

We’ve brightened our work areas up here at Gallery Direct. We like to have a fun atmosphere to work at here…

Select from thousands of our fine art images, photos from our photo vault, or use your own image on our website Gallery Direct. It’s easy to do!

So stop repinning dream room ideas on your Pinterest – and make one yourself!

Love Your Home This Valentine’s Day – Artwork Giveaway

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As cheesy as it sounds, I believe in that quote, “Home is where your heart is.”  Your home expresses your love for life, your family and passions. The more love you fill your home with, the more you feel at home.  My home is filled with artwork, images of my dog printed on canvas, my six nieces and nephews smiles in frames greet me every morning, landscape scenery throughout the hallways that remind me of growing up on the beaches of San Diego. My home represents what love is to me and what I love.

As a blessed employee of Gallery Direct, I am able to love my home and workplace through artwork, and I want all of you to do the same. This is why we are giving away three $500 shopping sprees to Gallery Direct for Valentine’s Day.  We want you to love your home.  Enter on our Facebook Page, winners will be announced on Feb. 15

 

New Artist: Christine Wilkinson

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If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve been finding some pretty awesome artists to join our family. This of course means more unique and new art for all of you! We just launched artwork from Christine Wilkinson. Her digital abstract collection has a lot of a psychedelic feel to it with it’s shapes and colors. Christine started hand drawing these shapes back in school in the 60′s, a foreshadow to what she would be doing later in life…working as an artist currently in London, England. She explores with her camera using light in many different forms: light on light, light through objects and light reflected off objects.

I find this piece, Diving for Pearls, so interesting with the movement all the lines create and the layers and lightness of the different color. Though a lot of her art seems to be inspired from the psychedelic 1960′s counterculture, in some ways I felt this piece was modern or even futuristic. It reminded me of a red robotic eye.

 

These two companion pieces, Green Pinko I & II, are very soft and feminine. They too also give us a feel of movement. I could imagine this is what it would look like up-close and inside of a bubble.

These series of images, Grid Formation I-III, give us a more abstract, rigid and masculine feel. The repetitious elements seem to resemble a candle burning motif. The different stages keep your eye moving along.

So if you like what you’ve seen so far on this post, check out more of Wilkinson’s amazing art on Gallery Direct!

New Artist: Brett Pfister

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Gallery Direct is excited to welcome another new artist to our family, Brett Pfister. Brett is the Print operator for The Canyon Gallery and owner of Mind’s Eye Productions. His background and degree is in Graphic Design, this knowledge shows in his photo treatment and technique in his digital art. Besides being a professional Graphic Designer and Artist, Brett also does Photography, Video Production and Web Design.

This is one of my favorite new images by him, Veiled Eden. The female figure and soaring birds really draw you into this image wondering what could be going on in this “garden of Eden”. The texture and lightness peaking through the trees really make it interesting as well.

This new image, Intrepid Home, is being printed on aluminum to be hung in our office gallery right next to our CEO’s office door. Brett has a couple really fascinating images using barren trees, including Stretching, Nostrum Locus, The Ends of the Earth, and Cynon Valley.

This image, Break, is also going up in our office gallery. The color, technique and texture he uses in this image really give meaning to it’s title. It’s a beautiful piece.

Come check out the rest of Brett’s images on Gallery Direct!

World’s Top 10 Greatest Painters & Sculptors

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One of my most favorite college courses while studying art was Art History. It helped of course that I had a professor who was so passionate about our world’s greatest artists and masterpieces. I recall taking notebooks full of handwritten notes on these artists, and making flashcards of each painting and sculpture with all the known facts about them. I’ve been fortunate to see some of the masterpieces in person at the Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here is a top 10 list of the world’s greatest painters and sculptor compiled by Neil Collins MA LLB.

#10 Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
#9 Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441)
#8 Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
#7 Claude Monet (1840-1926)
#6 Donatello (1386-1466)
#5 JMW Turner (1775-1851)
#4 Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
#3 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
#2 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69)
#1 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

Did you know that Gallery Direct offers some of these amazing and beautiful masterpieces such as from Claude Monet? You can also search our Photo Vault for stock images from all of these artists or photographs of their works. We also have a Classic Art section where you can find masterpieces by many famous artists such as Klimt, Van Gogh, Degas and others. Even though they did not make it on this top 10 list, they certainly made their mark on history in the world of art.

Since these artists are so famous it’s a given that current artists will give us a new rendition (maybe with a modern twist) on some old masterpieces. Here’s an example from one of our exclusive artists Randy Slack.

Want a masterpiece hanging on a wall in your home or office, get it from Gallery Direct. We can print it for you on canvas to closely resemble the original masterpiece, or give it a modern look and print it on acrylic, birchwood or aluminum like this blogger did with Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

A Smile On a Student’s Face: InvisionART

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Not to sure if this is a Texas thing or maybe it was just my old school, but I hated walking the hallways and seeing nothing but brick walls.  Me, being an art person, always wanted to see colors and pictures, but my school just never had that.  Tuesday I had the pleasure of giving a tour to the Principal and a couple of teachers from Oak Meadows Elementary School, Manor ISD.  We recently put up a Mural in their school and I can’t tell you how grateful they were to have something so wonderful on their walls.

The teachers absolutely loved the mural, but the kids thought it was the most awesome thing!  (especially the young man in the picture J)

So as I gave the tour, I spoke more about what our CEO, Joe Garcia, wanted to do and in the making.  He wants to help cover up those ugly brick walls with some nice, beautiful artwork made by our artist and these students.  Here is part of an e-mail he wrote to the company:

“In the meantime, we still want to continue with the mission of helping disadvantaged schools and school districts by providing art, art supplies such as our bi-products which can be stretched canvas, rolls of paper, loose canvas, wall coverings, returned art work, etc. Our cause is to help keep art essential! Many schools districts are cutting or eliminating art programs. This teaches kids that art is not important. I would love to see more people involved in this great cause which aligns well with the company”

I am absolutely stoked about this project in the making, which we hope will be called InvisionART, a non-profit foundation.

We thank the Teachers, Principles, Director of Advanced Programs and Fine Arts and Superintendent from Manor ISD for all the help, inspiration, and excitement that they have given our company.  We hope that the art given to you all brings joy to you and your students as much as it gives us!

On an ending note please keep a look out as we continue to work hard on building this foundation!  We are excited! Take a look at the link below for a sneak peek!
InvisionART MANOR ISD

What Gallery Direct Offers – Part 2 – Vintage

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Here’s Part 2 of our 3 part series. You can take a look back at how we at Gallery Direct make sure your photo uploads look great. But, as promised, we’re going to take a look at Vintage.

Vintage has something for everyone. There are some very unique pieces ranging from French Posters and Asian Art all the way to Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

We also have some great Americana art dating back through times in American History.

One of my favorites is this French Liquor Poster.

Vintage Artwork:

Each Vintage Image you order has been retouched to look like new. Look at these Before & After examples…

 

 

 

Here’s a video to show you what all goes into each Vintage image:

Next time, we’ll show you the heart of the company… Gallery Direct’s Exclusive Artwork… Can’t wait!

-Brittney

New Era Artist Feature: Volume 2

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I’ve been enjoying interviewing our artists. It’s interesting to learn more about the persons behind the art I work with on a daily basis. Today I am going to introduce you to Darvin Jones, one of my favorite New Era artists.

Darvin's paint brushes

Although Darvin would rather be an actor, iron-chef, super hero or astronaut he has embraced his role as an artist. He sums it up; “life is art and art is life, they really are inseparable.”

Darvin in his studio

Q: What or who inspired you to paint? How did you discover your talent for art?

A: I would say my experiences working as an artist assistant and art handler in NY and on the West Coast. I studied art academically not as a practitioner. I started painting to basically see if I could do it and if I could do it better than the art I was hanging on museum walls. I discovered my talent though really out of a necessity during a dim time in my life.

Darvin's paint splattered jeans

Q: Do you work certain hours each day or only when you are inspired to work?

A: I work every day, I may not paint everyday but I’m in my studio everyday, every week. I wish I had the luxury of painting only when I am inspired, although on second thought then I would probably paint 24/7 and never stop.

 

Q: You have some very unique titles to your pieces, is there always a deeper meaning to your pieces or do some of them just portray emotions?

A: It’s a combination of both. I usually try to sum up the meaning of the painting in the title or what I feel the piece is about. The paintings are always a riddle or a metaphor and so the titles suggest the rhetorical nature of the painting by using an interplay of words to title them.

Q: Out of all of the pieces you’ve painted, which is your most favorite?

A: Really? As I heard a mother put it when asked, which kid is her favorite I don’t have favorites, I love them all.

"Where is the Architect" JD162A. Darvin may have trouble picking a favorite, but this is one of my favorites. Here it is hanging in my family room at home.

Q: Who is your favorite artist?

A: Is this a trick question? Hum, I guess it would be a toss up between Matthew Ritchie, Julie Mehretu and Takashi Murakami.

Stayed tuned in for my next post!

Memory lane: The Yellow Dress

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I remember the morning like it was yesterday.  We were all gathered around the tree and of course I had the most gifts!  Yes it’s true I was the spoiled one.  I wasn’t the “spoiled brat” but I was the “spoiled princess”.   I had waited all day for Santa to come and it was finally here.  So it was my turn to open my gifts and I won’t ever forget this moment. With so much excitement I opened a medium sized box.  It was heavy and wrapped in the prettiest gold paper I had ever seen with a beautiful red bow. Santa must of had his best elf wrap my gift.  I heard music and when I pulled my gift out it was a water globe.  Inside the globe was a beautiful woman with a pretty yellow and pink dress.  She had similarities of Bell from Beauty and the Beast.  The globe played the song “I hope you dance” by Lee Ann Womack. I loved it!

It’s been several years since I got that gift, but one day as I was working in the prepress room. Peggy Weiss brought in one of her newest pieces, Twirling.  It’s of a pretty woman twirling in her yellow and pink dress.  All I could think of was my childhood memory of my water globe.  I was so deeply in love with this piece that Peggy Weiss had created that I had to get one for myself.

It hangs in the bedroom of my new sweet little girl, Eliana.  I hope that this picture brings her joy like it brought me.

It amazes me how these pieces that different artists bring in can remind me of memories that I will cherish forever.  Did you ever run across an art piece of ours that reminded you of something when you where a child?  If I were you I would look at ALL of our art pieces and you will be amazed of how one of them can bring back a memory.  So try it, and why don’t you tell us about it.  We would love to hear.

-Elise

Gallery Direct Participates in Austin Office Building Tour

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We were excited to hear that Burt Watts decided to open the doors of their local facilities to the public and Gallery Direct. Part of the Austin Office Building tour, Burt Watts walked us through their headquarters right in the heart of downtown Austin. As a leader in green and sustainable designs, most of the structure was built from recycled materials and designed to be energy efficient in every way, from using mostly natural light to the carpeting made from recycled tires. All of the artwork printed for Burt Watts downtown building was printed by Gallery Direct and is showcased throughout the tour. Watch the video to learn more about the Burt Watts Austin Office Building Tour and Gallery Direct.