Visit the 7th Annual Figures & Faces Art Exhibition HERE.
Best in Show (Traditional) – Jon Laing – “Kalaheria” – oil on wood
Jon Laing is a portrait artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He started his art career as a caricaturist as a teenager working at Six Flags Great Adventure. Through his time there, drawing people all day every day, he developed a knack for lightning fast draftsmanship and capturing a person’s likeness. Now working as a realistic portrait artist, he aims to bring the energy and personality from his caricatures while injecting sensitivity and poignancy in to his paintings, taking pain staking efforts to capture emotive lighting and subtle color shifts.
Jon’s website is www.jonlaingart.com
Best in Show (Photography & Digital) – Brian Cann – “Shadow Play” – digital photography
Brian Cann is a photographer, teacher and writer living in Stuttgart, Germany, specializing in portrait, editorial, fitness, event and art-nude photography.
He taught math at school and university. Studied photography. Stopped. Started again, motivated by early retirement and his wife. An early specialization in the studio slowly shifted to outside images. Portraits of athletes, many of them masters, morphed into figure studies and explorations in erotic and fetish photography, often with the same models: typically strong, fit, and older. His goal is to produce non-exploitative, authentic portraits that stay away from cliché and in which his models are co-creators, collaborators in a process.
His work has appeared in IoN magazine and ‘Mein heimliches Auge’ and others, and he has been featured in juried exhibitions in the USA, Scotland, Hungary, France, Montenegro, and Germany.
He is originally from the UK, now living in Germany, with his American wife and kids.
Brian’s website is www.briancann.com
Best in Show (3 Dimensional) – Jia Peng – “Portrait of Zhang Boju” – stone sculpture
Jia Peng is a Chinese artist who graduated from Yanshan University in 2005, and then traveled to Vienna, Florence and other places. He is a member of Baoding Artists Association and Chinese Sculpture Professional Committee.
Jia Peng specializes in realistic portrait sculptures. His representative works include the stone statue of Lebanese current President Michel Aoun, the bronze statue of Yang Jingren, the former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the statue of Bai Juyi in the memorial hall of Bai Juyi’s hometown.
He has participated in numerous international art exhibitions, including the Third Youth Art Exhibition of the Hebei Artists Association (the highest award), Beijing Youth Art Biennale, Spain from Seville to China: Velázquez Painting & Sculpture Competition, and the British Portrait Sculptor Association Annual Exhibition.
Jia Peng can be reached via his Email.
