What Is Hot

The second Saturday its self was "hot". Out of all the art events in the area, this one had the most notoriety. It is hard to look at something and say that it is hot, or it is the next new thing, or even it is the best of its time. A way of gaining insight to help determine whether it is hot or not is, to go out and see where the people are, what they are buying, and what they are spending time to appreciate.

Under the first category of where people are at, the DA gallery stood out as the hottest. It had a steady flow of people stepping in to admire the art. the DA was featuring a collection of art under the theme of, The New Traditionalists. The new traditionalist theme seems to be a hot topic for art, because several other galleries had similar paintings to the ones were featured at the DA gallery.

One set of these commons paintings were, paintings done by an artist named Yolanda Gonzales. Many or her paintings were featured in several galleries, and seemed to be very popular. I wondered why these paintings were so popular. After some discussion and a little bit of thought I came up with a hypothesis. I felt that they took a new view on traditional portraits. They were not perfect portraits, but the had the proper portions and definitions of facial features. It is almost as if they took a classical style portrait, but they are painted in a modern style.

from left to right

Sueno de Jennifer $12,000

Bailarina Folklorico $5,000

Portrait of Lauren with crown of roses

$9,000




top row left

Sueno de Alicia $12,000

Sueno with eyes closed $12,000

bottom row

Nude 1-4 $1,000 each

Price is the third category that can help define hot. Out of all the art i saw the most expensive one was Birth of The New Consciousness by Leslie A. Brown. The painting was selling for $28,000 dollars. The size of the painting might have contributed to its price, but its hard to tell because there were no other paintings of comparable size. Other works form this artist were also expensive, so it might just be that Brown is the hot thing right now. the quality of the panting its self is amazing. The Painting is filled with many details and and abstract symbols, that allow the mind to wander and find its own meaning.