...because art makes life better

...that supports emerging artists

...that doesn't break the bank

...to feed my brain

...to give to my mates

...so my walls tell me stories

...with my Aeroplan rewards points

...when I celebrate something good

...that reflects how I think

...to fill my apartment

...that I can share with my friends

...for wedding presents (instead of toasters!)

...because posters are crap

...to understand more about the world

...to give to my friends

...for birthday presents

...as an investment

...in a heart beat

...all of the time!

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHS STARTING AT $25!

Kerry Shaw, “Animal City 2″, from the series Animal City.

Kerry Shaw, “Animal City 1″, from the series Animal City.

What’s not to love about these photographs? They make the cow seem majestic, a donkey, positively regal, and the common zoo creature practically sexy. Kerry spent the evenings after working her shift as a waitress, contemplating the vacuous suburban landscape where she was living at the time, and photographing the streets that were void of humanity.

Animals became stand-ins for the displacement Kerry felt, and communicated the awkwardness of living in this type of urban sprawl. “I was fed up with how mundane it all seemed, and romanticized the visual of a giraffe standing beside my car, or an elephant at the telephone booth. Both events would have made this place much more exciting. I was interested in the idea of animals we wouldn’t normally see in the city becoming part of the landscape. Like a squirrel or a raccoon, they just exist as part of our every day. In this case, the night seemed like a perfect time for a zoo animal to roam freely, and ‘take back’ their geographical space.”

Kerry Shaw is commercial and fine art photographer, currently living in Toronto. Her work debuted on CITY TV’s Fashion Television as an emerging participant, and won “Naked in the House 2004″, an annual nude photography competition and Fashion Television documentary testing and showcasing Canada’s best commercial photographers. She had her first publication in the 2006 release of Magenta Foundation’s “Carte Blanche”, a photography book showcasing 200 of Canada’s brightest photographers.

Kerry working on location

Let me know what you think of this work by submitting your comments below.

Happy Collecting!

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Why not put that bouquet on pause and give your mom the gift of art this year instead. Flowers are a beautiful thing, but art lasts forever. You’re also doubling the goodness by investing in the careers of young artists at a pivotal time in their career. Lucky them, lucky mom.

Here’s a few floral arrangements you can give your mom that will make those blossoms last forever. Mother’s Day is on Sunday, May 13th so place your order quickly so we can ship on time!

FREE SHIPPING for the next 24 hours, when you purchase a pair of prints 11×14″ or larger – anywhere in the world!

Tom Hull, “Untitled #11″	Tom Hull, “Untitled #4″

Matthew Hammond, “Tulip, Sainsburys, 15 Days”	Matthew Hammond, “Sweetheart Rose, Tesco, 7 Days”

Beatriz Diaz, “Eryngium bourgatii”	Beatriz Diaz, “Nigella Damascena”

Happy Mother’s Day to all you gifted children!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Caitlin Duennebier, “Untitled no.12″, from the series Quiet Summer.

Caitlin Duennebier, “Untitled no.6″, from the series Quiet Summer.

I’ve been asked before whether I thought photography continues to hold an important place among all the new technologies that are being developed – is photography still important? My answer is a most definite yes. There is something visceral and powerful in a still image, a moment on pause that becomes elevated, that takes us out of the details of distraction and offers a certain clarity that simply can’t be expressed in the same way as say, a video.

Certainly, this is the case with an artist like Caitlin Duennebier. Even more when you consider the two images we are releasing today in the context of her broader work (I always look at photographs in terms of the series they belong to – otherwise it’s sort of like looking at someone’s fancy hat without seeing the brain underneath). These photographs go through a life, and open our eyes at intervals that we would normally take for granted, becoming documentation of a powerful shift at the moment it has occurred. I like how Caitlin describes it:

“Quiet Summer is a collection of moments recorded after a considerable realization: an outcome that changed my view of the world completely. Events were photographed that seemed unimportant. Quiet mornings and hot nights, a type of laziness that can only be attributed to peaceful boredom or the lull of depression. These photographs are drawn from the aftermath of this cognitive change.  Sometimes the beginning is so taciturn, full of self-reflection, that it’s hard to realize that anything is different.”

I have so much more I could say on this subject, like how these images let you layer in your own soundtrack, your own life experiences. I can hear the sound of a cicada buzzing, the weight of humid air…makes watching the video seem kind of, well, lazy.

EYE BUY ART in the news

A wonderful article appeared in the Telegraph Journal, the provincial newspaper for the province of New Brunswick, on the exhibition that opens next week. Our thanks to Jennifer Campbell for such a graciously written piece.

Check out this brilliant video essay, produced by Daylight Magazine, narrated by Eamon Mac Mahon.
If you are a fan of Eamon’s aerial photographs this is a must watch.

Enjoy yourselves happy collectors!

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

We have some exciting news to share.

We are very proud to announce a major exhibition taking place at the Beaverbrook, the provincial art gallery of New Brunswick in April. Forty-four large photographs by all seventeen of our Canadian artists and two Americans have been have been purchased, and are being donated to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery to become part of their permanent collection. The majority of this work will be included in an exhibition called Collecting Photography, Collecting the World – based on a famous quote by Susan Sontag “to collect photographs is to collect the world”.

How appropriate, given that we set out with a mission to send photographs by today’s most important emerging photographers, to collectors around the world. Since launching in 2009, we have shipped art to over 20 countries – most recently to an award-winning resort in Great Exuma, The Bahamas. Being included in a public museum is a great career booster for these twenty emerging artists, and it feels amazing to have accomplished something like this.

Tableau Magazine, Beaverbrook Art Gallery

The exhibition, curated by Terry Graff, will also include photographs by Edward Burtynsky,  Diana Thorneycroft, Genevieve Cadieux, Robin Collyer, Thaddeus Holownia, and many others. The exhibition opens on April 22th, and will continue to June 10, 2012, with plans to tour it across the province. The official opening takes place on Thursday, April 26th.

The exhibition was organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of New Brunswick, and the City of Fredericton.

For further information please send an email to emily@eyebuyart.com or call me at 416-200-8774.

Watch your inbox for next weeks latest release! 
Bringing fine art to fine people (I just made that up. I like it).

Happy Collecting!
Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Amy Stevens, “Confections (adorned) #23″, from the series Confections, 2012.

Amy Stevens, “Confections (adorned) #24″, from the series Confections, 2012.

This is our second instalment from the wonderful, wonka-world of Amy Stevens. Since our last visit Amy completed a summer long artist residency at a bakery in Ireland, was a Hey Hot Shot 2010 finalist at 20×200, and won an Excellence in Photography Award at the Lishui International Photography Festival in China.

Today we bring to your lucky eyeballs this exuberant celebration of the first day of spring, of Easter, of the view from Amy’s window, and your birthday – 365 days of the year. Amy started doing these photographs as a response to turning 30. She ordered a cake-decorating kit from marthastewart.com that went horribly wrong (or right depending on how you look at it), which ended up becoming the inspiration for the work you see here.

I love how these cakes have evolved. They are a celebration of imperfection, the joy in doing and enjoying the process as much as the end result. Amy created this work specifically for EYE BUY ART and your collecting pleasure. Cut me a piece cause I want some!

To read more about Amy visit her Artist Page.

Other work available by Amy Stevens

EYE BUY ART in the news

Fairmont Magazine, Winter 2012

Thank you to our partners at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, and to the wonderful women of Spafax for the great coverage in the Winter 2012 international edition of Fairmont Magazine. It’s a gorgeous publication and we are proud to be included.

House & Home Blog, March 5, 2012

Thanks also for the blog love over at House & Home, to Editorial Assistant Beth Edwards and our friend Katherine Yaphe at the wonderful magical world of Oliver Yaphe. Happy Spring to you too!

Here’s to everything coming up tulips for you this week also.

Happy Spring Dear Reader!

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Nikolai Ishchuk, “EP’(2)”, based on the series Essential Process, 2011.

Nikolai Ishchuk, “EP’(1)”, based on the series Essential Process, 2011.

Is it okay to like something just because I think it’s beautiful? I can’t help but fall into these photographs like a high school crush. I’m diving into a pool of mandarin soaked maraschino liqueur, but like the kind in a Shirley Temple that I drank when I was 10. Like a sunset on pause, they are the photographic equivalent of J.M.W. Turner and The Weather Project rolled into one. I’m high on peony fumes. Inhaling these photographs into my brain synapses, transporting me out of my February blues into an intoxicated dream.

The photographer who made these has a BA (Honours) in Economics and Sociology from the University of York, a Masters of Philisophy in Modern Society and Global Transformations from the University of Cambridge and is about to start a postgraduate course in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Seriously?

Watch out for this guy. Nikolai was chosen from among 35 artists to exhibit at The London Open at Whitechapel Gallery in 2012.

Happy Collecting!

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Eleanor Lindsay-Fynn Come, 2008

Sexy times await Dear Valentineers! From now until midnight on February 14th, get 10% off all photographs that contain the colour red. Because we can. Here is a sampling of photographs available for your purchasing pleasure.

For the full list visit the colour red in our search section.

Get in touch with us if you’re interested in framing. We can make it happen.

Oh Happy Day!

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Beatriz Diaz, “Eryngium bourgatii $5.89, Metropolitan Plant & Flower Fort
Lee, NJ”, 2009 from the series 99¢ Archetypes of Nature.

Beatriz Diaz, “Nigella damascena $3.99, Botanica Inc. Brooklyn, NY.”, 2009
from the series 99¢ Archetypes of Nature.

Valentines Day. Love it or lump it. These photographs, plastic flowers transformed into high-brow masterpieces, are perfect for the Valentine lover or cynic. Two perspectives fit smartly into one neat frame – like those awesome HSBC ads in airports around the world – rendered here as an exercise in opposites. A symbol of beauty to bestow upon your lover, and an ironic take on one of the most commercialized holidays of the year. Either way, they’re going to make your Valentine swoon at your purchasing ingenuity.

The series, 99¢ Archetypes of Nature by Mexican photographer Beatriz Diaz, profiles a collection of artificial plants purchased in stores around New York City. “I was walking through Queens, photographing another project when I found a house heavily decorated with plastic plants. I continued my walk but through the days the image of that house was still bothering me. I could not stop thinking about plastic plants, how they are made only for decorative purpose and how their lack of life contradicts the whole idea of their existence.”

I love people who make our lives more interesting because they can’t stop thinking about plastic plants. To read more about Beatriz Diaz and her illustrious career (she is a fulbright scholar and was sponsored by Jumex) visit her artist page.

(Incidentally, if you’re not sure what Jumex is, I wrote an article a while back on contemporary art in Mexico City, and have a long-standing love affair with everything Mexico, including Beatriz).

EYE BUY ART framed and ready to hang

Make your purchase by Friday, February 3rd at noon and we will ship the work framed to you in time for Valentine’s Day. We don’t offer framing as a product online yet, so if you’re interested send me an email and I will make all the arrangements for you emily@eyebuyart.com

10×8″ | unframed $25 | framed $114.95
14×11″ | unframed $50 | framed $169.95 
20×16″ | unframed $250 | framed $369.95
24×20″ | unframed $500 | framed $699.95 
40×30″ | unframed $1000 | framed $1,299.95

Shipping is an additional cost according to your destination. 
Free pick up if you’re in Toronto.

Happy Cinnamon Hearts,

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Jon Horvath, “Fifteen Strange Seconds”, 2010 from the series Passages.

Jon Horvath, “The Whole Enormous Sadness of a Shirt”, 2010 from the 
series Passages.

I’m writing this with one hand on the keyboard and the other wrapped around my umbrella drink as I check out the view from my treehouse in Dominica. Lucky me! Tis the season for escape, and if you can’t get on a plane then allow Jon Horvath to take you on a photographic journey like you’ve never been on before.

Using iconic passages from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Horvath creates a kind of photography as performance act. Driving the alphabetical county highway system in Wisconsin’s back roads, Horvath transforms Kerouac’s text into a physical path as he traces each lettered highway with his GPS. For Fifteen Strange Seconds, Horvath began driving at Highway F, went to Hwy I, back to F and so on until the text was complete.  As Horvath describes, “Highways, roads, and tracks have long been featured in America’s cultural psyche. Ours is a society of constant motion and nowhere is this more evident than within the manic travels of Kerouac’s text. Using GPS technology to track each drive, newly generated line drawings emerge as evidence of Kerouac’s text being physically written in the landscape.  I am interested in the (dis)connection between Kerouac’s era and my present day as it pertains to spontaneous acts and the sensation of freedom.”

Each of these photographs covered nearly 300 miles of Southeastern Wisconsin’s county highways and took just over six and a half hours to complete. The images that emerge are both an homage to Kerouac’s spontaneous method of writing, and a new visual symbol for his words.

To read more about these images check out Jon Horvath’s artist page!

EYE BUY ART in the NEWS

Thanks to the editors of Daily Candy (again) for the big bump in traffic!

Happy Travels Dear Collectors,

Emily

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

10% off all prints – Nov 28 to Dec 5

Savvy subscribers, welcome to our first ever site wide sale, exclusive to your inboxes only. We’ve seen a lot of black Friday / cyber Monday sales for everything from tube socks to cappuccino machines.  So in a page lifted from Oxfam’s promo (and others), “no holiday shopping crowds, just life-changing gifts”.

We’re not likely to have another offer like this for a while – so think about it. Here are the 12 Reasons of Christmas why you should buy art instead:

1. Start an art collection for the kid who has everything.
2. Bring your neighbour a $25 print instead of fruitcake.
3. Secret Santa someone the gift of art. Like this.
4. Buy a gift that lasts; art is a keepsake that you and your spouse will have this forever. 
5. Support REAL artists instead of the liquor store (that one’s debatable).
6. Support real artists.
7. Buy art in your pj’s and skip the mall.
8. Honestly, why wouldn’t you buy art from emerging artists? Support their career and give twice.
9. Gift certificates. Takes the guess-work out of choosing the right gift.
10. Corporate gifts, could there be anything cooler?
11. If you purchase 2 or more prints, you pay the same amount of shipping.
12.  Because Santa says so.

On now until December 5th at midnight. 10% off any print, any size. Just enough time to ship to you before Christmas day. Ho-ho-holy cow, get on it! Use promo code:

DECKTHEWALLS

Happy merry-making dear friends!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Wendy Given, A. Hypogaea albus (Peanut Elf), Fig. 2, 2008 from the
series A. Hypogaea albus (Peanut Elf).

Wendy Given, A. Hypogaea albus (Peanut Elf), Fig. 9, 2008 from the
series A. Hypogaea albus (Peanut Elf).

Every once in a while someone really special comes along, like American artist Wendy Given. Wendy is one of those people who puts the “art” in artist. I feel at peace knowing that someone is out there, spending their time coaxing little elf heads out of peanuts by very carefully carving their faces out of the seedpod. With focused lighting, careful placement of shadows, and the use of a macro lens, each peanut assumes a distinctive identity which become readily available for us to see.

Another thing I really admire in an artist is their unwavering commitment – someone who is truly dedicated to their craft. Wendy is one of those people, and has dedicated much of her artistic career observing and documenting the otherworldly and the supernatural – exploring an ongoing fascination with myth and magic. With exhibitions and titles like “How to Explain Magic to a Dead Rabbit”, “Of Augur and Auspice: No 5 (from under the pillow)” and “Turn Your Back to the Forest, Your Front to Me” one feels drawn into the narrative without even having seen the picture.

I think these would make the perfect gift for the kid who has everything, writ large on a dining room wall, or next to the kitchen cupboard! Whatever the reason, if this doesn’t whet your Christmas-Elf whistle, I’ll be making you fruitcake in August.

Wendy is planning a solo exhibition at Nationale in Portland, OR this year, and her work is going to be included in the 10th Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, WA.

EYE BUY ART in the NEWS

Finds Under $350, Canadian House & Home, November 2011 issue.

Many thanks to the editors at the national version of Daily Candy for the stupendous shout out, and to the editors of House & Home for including us in your November issue of the magazine!

Happy November Collecting Dear Santas – and don’t forget about our permanently reduced shipping rates – in the St. Nick of Time!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Our shipping elves have done some wily negotiating with Santa Canada Post, and have reduced rates by as much as 60% to some areas. We have also dropped the $5 handling fee when ordering additional 8×10″ and 11×14″ prints!

Here are some highlights to whet your collecting whistle:

• all shipping into the United States has been reduced – on all sizes!
• international shipping has dropped from $100 to $45 (30×40″), and from $80 to $30 (20×24″).
• shipping across Canada has been reduced on all prints sized 16×20″ and above.
• purchase up to four additional prints and pay the same shipping as if you were buying one (8×10″ and 11×14″)

See you on Tuesday for the new image release – it’s better than peanuts in a candy bar!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Isabel M. Martínez, The Weekend #6, 2009 from the series The Weekend

Isabel M. Martínez, The Weekend #9, 2009 from the series The Weekend

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

We love pumpkiny, spooky October. The smell of freshly fallen leaves, bedazzling costumes, fuzzy sweaters – and ART! To celebrate our love for this very fine month, we are offering FREE SHIPPING on all print orders anywhere in the world until this Sunday, October 23 at 11:59pm.

Now is the time to get your order in – either for yourself, or as an affordable gift idea for birthdays, weddings, early bird Christmas presents…Just enter the code OCTOBER2011 in your shopping cart to redeem your free shipping deal!

EYE BUY ART in the NEWS

EYE BUY ART photo in the London Underground

Eleanor Lindsay-Fynn, Looking at Contemporary Art Can Be a Perplexing Affair

Check out EYE BUY ART’s photograph by Eleanor Linsday-Fynn in the London Underground! This exhibition was curated in response to a commission Eleanor Lindsay Fynn received from Art Below to show work from her Yellow Faces series in the ad space on Platform 1 of the Bakerloo line in Regents Park Tube during October to coincide with Frieze Art Fair.

“We are really excited to work with Eleanor on this project, no one will understand her work more than Frieze goers and if they don’t understand it on their way to Frieze, they will definitely understand it on their way back!” – Ben Moore, Director of Art Below.

EYE BUY ART with AEROPLAN POINTS

Photographer CARLOS OSORIO – Emily McInnes (former organizer of the Contact photography festival in Toronto) came up with the idea of making framed art works an option for travel rewards and took it to Aeroplan earlier this year. She figured people who travel likely also like art but may not have the time to visit galleries. Also good exposure for emerging artists too. She has already plumbed this market with her online gallery. Aeroplan loved it and launched it last year.

One thing this article doesn’t tell you is that my WATER BROKE (!!!) an hour before the Toronto Star photographer came by to take this photo. Special thanks to Paul Dalby and Carlos Osorio at the Star, and to our friends at Aeroplan for making this happen!

To make a purchase using your Aeroplan Points click here.

WELCOMING OUR NEWEST MEMBER OF THE TEAM!

Emily McInnes, EYE BUY ART (photo: Maja Hadjuk)	Gideon buys art — even in his sleep!

Happy October Collecting you Creepy Ghouls!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Museum 5, 2009 from the series Past Perfect

Museum 6, 2009 from the series Past Perfect

Today, Dear Readers, we delight your inbox with work by Jason Larkin, a very important young photojournalist from the UK who has turned away from the day-to-day aspects of photojournalism to investigate a deeper story about the profound changes taking place in Egypt. In his series Past Perfect, Jason examines how museums in Cairo in particular, are shaping past and current ideologies of the country’s history for both tourists and Egyptians alike.

As Jason describes “By deciding how the past is presented and memorialized, museums not only preserve the past, they also play an important role in the construction of our ideologies, identities and the understanding and interpretation of ourselves…Using space, materials and design, curators can venerate events, revere heroes, and imbue history with a sense of grandiosity. Through the aesthetics of the displays, museums and their curators help the public understand history, but more importantly, reveal and mould Egypt’s identity.”

Jason dedicates his time to developing larger bodies of work that engage and reflect on current affairs which play out more in the periphery, seeking another more comprehensive viewpoint of an often misunderstood and ignored reality. Much of his work focuses on identity and how, whether viewed from an individual or collective group within society, it fluctuates as the environment and social situations constantly shift and evolve.

In July of this year, Daylight Magazine released a compelling multimedia podcast of Jason discussing his recent body of work; the construction taking place in Cairo’s desert outskirts. See the images and listen to the podcast here.

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Untitled Interior (Flag Rug), 2006 from the series Living Arrangements

Untitled Interior (World), 2010 from the series Living Arrangements

Sarah Malakoff is one of the artists whose work we featured during Flash Forward Festival BOSTON this summer. She was among five artists selected to participate in EYE BUY ART by our team of local experts from The Institute of Contemporary Art, the School at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Harvard Art Museums.  All the Boston photographers who were selected are on the cusp of significant growth in their career, and have been deemed  ”the ones to watch out for” by our team of local experts!

Sarah’s most recent show was reviewed on Artforum.com and in the April 2007 issue of Art in America, as well as in Artnet Magazine, PDN Online, the Boston Globe, Nest and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has been exhibited at The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Trustman Art Gallery, The DeCordova Museum, The Portland Museum of Art, The Danforth Museum of Art, The Photographic Resource Center, and San Francisco Camerawork among many others. In 2011 Sarah received a Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She currently resides in Boston and teaches at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Click on the images above to read more about Sarah’s work!

NEWS

I’ve spent the better part of this summer working on upgrading our website to version 3.0 with our team of little elf geniuses at EYE BUY ART. The new site will include some very fancy new features to make your art buying experience even more fun! We are aiming to launch in October so stay posted for updates! In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter by clicking the “sign up” button on your top right.

Sending rays of website dreaming over to you, dear art lovers!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Untitled #6 from the Series Lines, Squares, Circles.

Untitled #7 from the Series Lines, Squares, Circles.

Looking at Toronto photographer Jeremy Gesualdo’s images is like peeling back the layers of an onion. He collects vintage family photographs that he finds online, with scenes that contain imagery that is universally familiar and nostalgic. The layers you see have been crafted by hand using yarn and textiles typically seen in traditional, folk art forms such as crocheting, knitting and embroidery – which he has then re-photographed and presented as a special edition for EYE BUY ART.

The images Jeremy creates give the photographs a sense of dimension, and references the Constructivist period in art history during the late 1920′s. The series provokes questions about how we respond to formalist design, and how we experience precious objects of sentiment; perhaps allowing new meanings to unfold as we look at familiar family photos in this new context.

Happy summertime collecting dear art lovers!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team

Eric, 2005
From the Series Moving

Sarah, 2005
From the Series Moving

Greetings Dear Colllectors, from the melting inferno that is Canada.

Yes, tis true. It gets hot here, and today is supposed to be 38°C with a humidex of 49°C (120°F for those who use Farenheit). Hopefully you’re sitting in a babbling stream in the middle of a cool forest as you read this. If not, let me help you put a visual on it with these images that have floated through to your inbox, courtesy of Toronto artist Adam Rankin.

These images document the family canoe; that mystical vessel that paddles us through starlit skies and black velvet waters, as the cottage door slams shut echoing off the lake. It represents summer. The coming together of families, our common history, and the bond we have with them. In this case, Adam has documented each of his family members standing in their red canoe, floating in places where they share a collective memory on the eve of selling their family home in Edmonton, Alberta. In Eric, Adam’s father floats in a pool where he taught Adam to swim, and in Sarah, Adam’s sister hovers in the parking lot of the local shopping mall, now abandoned. The image is frozen, but represents a passage in time as we move on and become dislocated from one another.

Adam Rankin holds a degree in Visual Communication from the University of Alberta. His commercial clients include Timberland, VISA, Adidas, and The Heart & Stroke Foundation. In 2010 PhotoLife Magazine featured his work among the “top 5 trend setters of the year” and Art Buyer Heather Morton called him “one of Canada’s most exciting young photographers”.

EYE BUY ART in the Press

Many thanks to Alice Yoo, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of My Modern Metropolis for including us on your list of the Top 10 Places to Buy Affordable Art.

Stay Cool Art Lovers!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

The wedding season has arrived upon us – along with dilemmas of what to buy the newly minted couple. Instead of spending money on a gift that may end up in next year’s garage sale, consider the gift of art.  Art is something the couple will hang onto for the rest of their lives, it will have a special place in their first home, and can be passed along to the future generation of kiddies and become part of the family history.

Art sometimes has a reputation for being expensive and elitist. However, we’ve worked very hard to connect young, emerging artists with potential collectors like you by making their art affordable and easy to buy online. We work with a team of professional jury members through our partnership with the international photo competition Flash Forward, and we are building a team of expert advisors in cities across the globe to bring focus to the rising art stars of tomorrow.

We believe anyone can have their own collection and there is a print for every budget.  So whether you’d like to spend $50, $250, or $500+ you can find the perfect memorable wedding gift.

$50 | 11″x14″                        $250 | 16″x20″                        $500 | 20″x24″                        $1,000 | 30″x40″
Edition of 150                        Edition of 50                           Edition of 25                             Edition of 5

All fine art photographs are sold in limited quantities, and once they sell out they are gone forever. Each photograph comes with a certificate of authenticity and arrives within a week of purchasing depending on where you live. See below for more purchasing details!

EMILY’S WEDDING GIFT PICKS

The Classic Couple:

BUY: click on the image

The Romantics:

BUY: click on the image

The Modernists:

BUY: click on the image

The Optimists:

BUY: click on the image

FRAMING

While we don’t offer framing to everyone, if you would like your print framed, email info@eyebuyart.com and we will make special arrangement for you. All our frames are wood and UV plexi glass for easy transport and longevity. You can choose to have it framed in white, black, or birch to suit the bride and groom’s style and décor.

SAVE ON SHIPPING

All photographs are available individually, or in a pair that we have carefully chosen to hang together (as you will see on our homepage). However, you can save shipping costs when you purchase 2 or more prints at once!

GIFT CERTIFICATES

If you’re unsure what to get the bride and groom – just let them decide for themselves! Gift certificates are available in any denomination you choose. You can download our fancy gift certificate form and put it into a card, or simply send the gift certificate instantly via email whenever you like.  See our Gift Certificate page for more details, or send us an email to info@eyebuyart.com with any questions.

Happy wedding day bells dear readers!

The EYE BUY ART Team

Georgie Friedman
Flight VI, Ascent III (Flares), 2010
From the series Flight Series

Georgie Friedman
Flight VI, Descent III (Landing), 2010
From the series Flight Series

I was in Boston recently to launch the first in a series of EYE BUY ART exhibitions we will be presenting across the globe this year in partnership with Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. In Boston, I worked with a team of Curatorial Advisors from some of the city’s most reputable institutions, and put together an exhibition of images that speaks about the city in a unique way – through the eye’s of the most up-and-coming emerging photographers. Today, I’m very excited to release into the electronic universe, the first of the photographers who were selected to participate in this exhibition.

Georgie Friedman is an artist who is pushing the medium of photography in a very innovative way. She works with a team of engineers to send digital cameras into the stratosphere, using high-altitude weather balloons to create photographs that are representations of time. The images shift from the concrete to the abstract, through darkness and light, distance and motion. They emphasize a lack of human control, and the subtle shifts of the slow ascent, or the chaotic randomness during the fall back to Earth.

Georgie Friedman received her Masters of Fine Arts in 2008 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University’s joint degree program. Her current projects include several photographic series and experiential video installations. The Boston Globe named her as a “Rising Star” and in February 2010, The Boston Phoenix called her, “one of the most exciting new media artists in the region.”

Boston Curatorial advisors:

▪                Randi Hopkins, Associate Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art

▪                Jeannie Simms, Photographer, and Professor, School at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

▪                Laura McPhee, Photographer, and Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

▪                Michelle Lamuniere, Assistant Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums

▪                Kim Chapin, Deputy Director of Photography, The Boston Globe

SHIPPING UPDATE

The Canada Post postal strike is over and packages will continue to ship as normal. Thanks so much for your patience.

Happy collecting dear readers!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team

Sean Galbraith, “Hydraulics Factory – Interior #1, Buffalo, New York”

Sean Galbraith, “Big Red Coalbreaker – Interior, Youngstown, Ohio”

Toronto-based Sean Galbraith is an urban planner and a self-taught photographer. His devastating and beautiful images of urban decay, frozen in time, run contrary to the rapid rate at which these buildings are being demolished, and run contrary to the incredible impact they once had on our individual and collectives lives. Sean’s urban exploration gives us a rare opportunity to glimpse inside these abandoned factories throughout the industrial northeast of North America, and allows us to honour the quiet majesty of these machines as they lay dormant in their disused state. As Sean describes:

“All buildings have a story, a history, a life, and a death. Industrial factories rust. Office buildings slowly crumble. Residential buildings are reclaimed by the elements. It is a rarity that these buildingsʼ evolutions are witnessed by those outside their walls”.

To read more about this work please visit Sean’s artist page!

FATHER’S DAY IS JUNE 19TH

Art is the perfect solution for Father’s Day! Our limited edition, signed, fine art prints will stay in the family forever and will be a constant reminder of what a little smarty pants you are. Please place your order before the end of the week to ship in time for the 19th.

EYE HEART BOSTON

EYE BUY ART at Flash Forward Festival		Film Crew		Alanna, our Marketing and Social Media Coordinator
Checking Out the Art		Flash Forward Festival Public Art installations		Our New Friend Michael Itkoff, Editor of Daylight Magazine

Thank you to everyone in Boston for making our exhibition such a huge success! Boston is an amazing place,  and we are excited about all the talent coming out of the photo community – we are so grateful for all the support you gave us! A special thank you as well to our newest collectors, the artists, the curators, and especially to our partners at Fairmont Battery Wharf and their parent company, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.

NEWS FLASH***EYE BUY ART’s exhibition will remain up in the Fairmont Battery Wharf Lobby for the rest of the summer. Here’s your chance if you’re visiting the city or if you missed it during the festival. Use our QR Code to purchase prints directly from your cell phone!

Fairmont Battery Wharf - Lobby
3 Battery Wharf
Boston, MA 02109

EYE BUY ART IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FLAVORPILL

We are really excited to tell you about our latest love affair – we have joined forces with the team at Flavorpill “a network of culturally connected people, covering events, art, books, music, and pop culture the world over. Highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between: if it’s compelling, we’re sharing it.”

…and we’re loving it.

If you join the flavorpill New York mailing list right now you may catch it in time to see our mailer that goes out this afternoon.

Happy Collecting Dear Art Lovers!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

“Edouard-Montpetit Station” from the series Benched

“Place St-Henri Station” from the series Benched

I grew up in Ottawa, about a 2 hour drive from Montréal. It’s always been a place that has a particular… je ne sais quoi; a place that, when I visit, makes me feel like my cool factor just went up a notch. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. In this series, John van der Woude captures the essence of the city’s unique and colourful history – it’s multi-faced, multi-cultured society. In these simple, slightly ironic photographs that are devoid of people, human impact is clearly present. As John describes in his artist statement, “they are a sociological typology; giving insight into their subject by comparing and contrasting many examples of the same thing.”

On the surface, these images are simple documentation of the benches in Montréal’s subway stations. While there is no human presence being shown, there is still evidence that these benches are used on a regular basis; be it through graffiti, the slightly worn surfaces or by the varied aesthetics that have influenced the design of these platforms throughout the decades.

John van der Woude is an award-winning artist who studied art and design at Camosun College in Victoria, BC and received his BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, NS in 2007. He has participated in numerous exhibitions across Canada, and is included in public and private collections including the Bank of Montreal Corporate Collection and Starfish Properties. He currently lives in Kelowna, BC.

EYE BUY ART in Boston

We are presenting an exhibition from June 2 – 5th as part of Flash Forward Festival BOSTON. The exhibition will be presented in the Fairmont Battery Wharf’s hotel lobby, and will feature a selection of photographs available for purchase from the 2010 Flash Forward Group show, along with a presentation of work by local, emerging Boston photographers that have been carefully selected by an amazing team of curatorial advisors from the community.

A very big thank you to our advisors who helped put this project together, the artists, and especially our partners, Fairmont Battery Wharf and their parent company, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts for their generous support of this exhibition.

Boston Curatorial advisors:

▪                Randi Hopkins, Associate Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art

▪                Jeannie Simms, Photographer, and Professor, School at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

▪                Laura McPhee, Photographer, and Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

▪                Michelle Lamuniere, Assistant Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums

▪                Kim Chapin, Deputy Director of Photography, The Boston Globe

Happy collecting and hope to see you in Boston!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

“Sweetheart Rose, Tesco, 7 Days”, 2007	“Tulip, Sainsburys, 15 Days”, 2008

Fine art photographer Matthew Hammond was a UK winner of the 2009 Flash Forward Competition, where I was first introduced to his work. I totally fell in love with these majestic portraits of flowers that Matthew rescued from grocery store chains, in the neighbourhood where he lived. He removes the flowers from their undignified surroundings, restoring them to their rightful place – as stoic and elegant portraits of beauty and strength. I release them to you, dear reader, in time for Mother’s day as they so perfectly epitomize the grace and sacrifice of those many women whom have ushered us into this world.

Matthew Hammond is an American and British dual citizen who had his first photograph published in the UK magazine Amateur Photographer at the age of 13. He graduated with a BA in Photography, Film and Imaging from Napier University, Edinburgh in 2003, and with an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport in 2006. He has exhibited in both solo and group shows in the USA, Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic and throughout the UK. He currently lives in Edinburgh, UK.

EYE BUY ART that lasts longer than Flowers

Mother’s Day is less than two weeks away. On Sunday May the 8th, do something a little bit different for your mom, and give her something long-lasting; a keepsake from the most important little gem in her life! All the work we present on EYE BUY ART has been carefully curated, and selected by a jury of professionals in the field of art and photography, so you can’t go wrong. Please place your order before the end of the week so it’s guaranteed to arrive in time.

EYE BUY ART at the Flash Forward Festival in Boston

I was in Boston last week making plans for the exhibition we will be presenting as part of the Flash Forward Festival being held in Boston from June 2 – 5, 2011. The festival will feature highlights from the critically acclaimed Toronto event, along with numerous lectures, panel discussions, workshops and events that have been customized for the Boston experience. Book your tickets now and come stay with us at the Fairmont Battery Wharf - destination focus for the Boston event!

Happy springtime shoots popping up in your yard!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

“Untitled” from the series Reconstructions 2

“Untitled” from the series Reconstructions 3

I’ve noticed an interesting trend emerge over the last number of years, where young artists draw on childhood memories to create photographs that are almost semi-autobiographical and deeply personal. Sarah Mangialardo pushes the envelope even further, creating photographs that are a kaleidoscope of the real and imagined, past and future, myth, construction, spirituality, sexuality and even the sinister. In “Untitled” from Reconstructions 2 (TOP), Sarah describes her process:

This image was made in my little one room apartment in downtown Montreal. I was in the first year of my MFA and was still trying to adjust to a new city where I didn’t have many close friends. I started writing short stories as a release from the boredom and this image came from one of those stories. In fact, this image is more of an installment in a larger batch of images that tell the story of a girl’s struggle to adulthood in a world where magic and violence, as well as hope and trauma, exist simultaneously. I am really interested in the relationship between storytelling and photography, as well as the ability of photographic images to exist so tenuously between the realms of the real and the imagined.

I love the places Sarah takes me. I’ve been following her work for many years and I’m excited to finally be releasing these images into your hot little hands, dear collector. Visit Sarah’s artist page to read more or click here to watch a short video.

EYE Heart Boston

Reconnaissance mission to Boston last spring (I bought the shirt)

We are going to be presenting an exhibition during Flash Forward’s satellite festival being held in Boston from June 2 – 5, 2011! I’m heading down in the next couple of weeks to plan it out and will keep you posted – we have some exciting stuff to tell you about!  The Boston version of the festival, which we first held in Toronto last October, will will feature highlights from the critically acclaimed Toronto event. Book your tickets now and come stay with us at the Fairmont Battery Wharf - destination focus for the Boston event!

EYE BUY ART in the Press

MaryAnn Camilleri and I had a great conversation with Anderson Smith of One-Hour Photo; a brand new radio show dedicated to photography, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Many thanks Anderson and ArmadaFM for the opportunity to promote the upcoming Boston Festival. You can listen to our conversation here.

Interesting article in Mcleans a couple weeks ago, “Would Picasso Have Sold Online?”. The article cites eyebuyart.com among others, in a piece that talks about buying art online: game changer or selling out? Curious to know what YOU think – send us your comments!

Many thanks to writer Joanne Latimer for including us in the conversation.

Happy collecting dear art lovers!

Emily McInnes
Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

“Astrophotography” from the series Solar Maximum

“Solar Eclipse (Crowd Watch)” from the series Solar Maximum

I first met the promising Andrew B. Myers last year at Ryerson’s School of Image Arts in Toronto – and wasn’t surprised when he was selected as one of Canada’s 35 emerging photographers in 2010 as part of the Flash Forward competition. Solar Maximum is a series of vignettes tied loosely together by their collective involvement of the sun. In this series, sharp, direct shadows couple with a pale and sun-bleached palette to showcase tiny narratives involving what we know the sun to be during it’s most noticeable phase in noon-day summer. A crowd of onlookers about to witness a solar eclipse, and sky-watching equipment hastily pulled out from the back of a pick-up truck tell the story of a collective and profound experience made otherworldly through the eye of Andrew B. Myers.

Sending sun rays of springtime dreaming over to you, dear art lovers!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Untiled 1, 2009 from the series The Women of Tabakro

Untiled 2, 2009 from the series The Women of Tabakro

CJ Clarke is a documentary film maker and photographer who has travelled to the Middle East, Romania, Sri Lanka, India, Mali, and numerous other locations on assignment for agencies such as Sightsavers International, Christian Aid, World Picture News, The Guardian, and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. At just 24 years old, CJ has already won the Ian Parry Award (2006), the Observer Hodge Award (2005, 2006), the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Competition (2006, 2008, 2010) and the Press Photographers Year (2009).

These photographs are a celebration of their subject; powerful and dignified portraits that have been sensitively observed, and act to honour the individualism and spirit of these women, who are so crucial to the socio and economic well-being of their communities. The images from this series were taken in 2009 while CJ was in Mali, working with the international development agency Christian Aid, who were looking at renewable energy initiatives and how they effect the well being of the local people. They were welcomed into the village of Tabakro by a group of women dressed in vibrant and colourful clothing, who were singing traditional songs, accompanied by men playing the drums. CJ was captivated by the beauty and dignity of these women, and began to take each of their portraits.

In his spare time, CJ also acts as a consultant for Changing Ideas, a charity whose purpose is to support and develop the use of visual imagery in humanitarian campaigns. Expect to hear more about this ambitious, change-making young photographer in the future.

For more information please visit CJ’s artist page.

CJ Clark

Belfast Exhibition

Published in Flash Forward

VALENTINE LOVERS SPECIAL

We had a huge response to our holiday shipping promo, so we’re doing it again. From now until February 14th, we will be offering free shipping on purchases of two or more prints anywhere in the world. There’s plenty of work available to get your lovers heart pumping, so act quickly to make sure it delivers on time (like by Monday at the latest). Please forward this note to your lover art friends, so they can take advantage too!

Flash Forward Festival Boston

Big news from the team at Flash Forward – it was announced today that a satellite festival will be held in Boston from June 2 – 5, 2011, and will feature some of the highlights from the critically acclaimed Toronto event. Book your tickets now!

Blowing little heart shaped kiss icons at you…puff.

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Iro III, London, 2008 from the series Susurrus

Iro III, Portohelli, 2008 from the series Susurrus

Happy 2011 to you dearest EYE BUY ARTer,

This year feels special. There’s a hint of magic in the air. Something ever so subtle, but profound in its fierce little entity. Quite like these photographs I release to you today, dear art lover. Sometimes photographs have this power; an ability to put a moment on pause, and to freeze its perfection for eternal contemplation. Not quite revealing itself to you fully, allowing you to fill the empty space with ideas of wonderment and abandon.

The photographs we release to you today are by German born, London artist Anja Schaffner, who is currently doing a residency in Los Angeles. We love her globe-trotting photographic style that defies place and time. As she describes in her artist statement:

There are moments when I want to slow things down. I stare and 
imagine those moments on hold. It is like when someone says ‘pssst’ 
and you stop and listen for a short while. Afterwards, things continue 
in their usual way… some images continue to hum though. Taking photographs is one way of creating a sense of continuity in life. Photographs never end, but perhaps new images can stop the old ones 
from haunting us. Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound; a murmur.

We Susu-suriously love this work. To read more about it visit Anja’s artist page.

With magic of the new year in my eyes to yours,

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Stay in your pajamas and skip the mall. Our gift certificates are available in any price denomination you choose, and can be printed and customized, or sent to your recipient instantly via email. It’s easy — and the best part is you don’t have to do the deciding. Once your giftee has finished gushing at your remarkable ingeniousness they can just go online and choose the work they want themselves.

Also, EYE BUY ART turned one year old this month, and for a limited time over the holidays we are offering free shipping on purchases of two or more prints – anywhere in the world.  Our $25 and $50 prints can be grouped and shipped together to a maximum of 4 per package, so buy art in multiples, and double the art buying love.

Download our PDF or send instantly via email

Happy lunar eclipse winter solstice, and much gratitude to all of you on this magical day.

Emily McInnes 
Founder and Director 
EYE BUY ART

EYE BUY ART Headquarters

EYE BUY ART turns one year old this month. For a limited time during the holiday season, we want to express our gratitude by offering free shipping on purchases of two or more prints – anywhere in the world. Double the goodness by giving the gift of art and keeping one for yourself. You can also avoid the last-minute shopping spree at 7-11 on Christmas Eve and purchase our gift certificates instantly.

Start your holiday shopping now – and THANK YOU for sharing in our year one success!

2010 HIGHLIGHTS

• EYE BUY ART with Aeroplan Rewards. EYE BUY ART makes the announcement that we’ve teamed up with Aeroplan – Canada’s premier coalition loyalty program – to make it possible for you to collect art using Aeroplan rewards. It’s a pretty exciting concept, and we hope you like it too!
• Emily McInnes, Founder and Director of EYE BUY ART was chosen as one of 15 “women entrepreneurs who make a difference” from among 1200 global applicants to attend a private workshop hosted by Seth Godin in New York. Seth is one of the  most influential thought leaders in the world, and highlights of the program were published on his website, Squidoo a few days ago.
• Within our first six months we shipped art around the world to Canada and the U.S., Mexico, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and South America and received glowing reviews in Real Simple, Daily Candy, Springwise, Brainpickings, Linda Magazine, The Big Picture Magazine, Experience Magazine, The Toronto Star, and more…We also conducted a lecture at the Pratt Institute in New York!
• We launched Flash Forward, a 5 day, biennial international festival of emerging photography, in Toronto in October and had visitors flying in from all over the world to participate in this hugely successful inaugural event.
• EYE BUY ART is featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Fairmont Magazine, with expert tips on how to buy art when you’re travelling, and what to look for when starting and building an art collection. We are very excited about our budding love affair with Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. More on that in the new year…

Oh Happy Times Dear Collectors,

The photographs we are releasing into your hot little hands today are by Zhao Renhui, a rising young star on the London art scene who has been collecting awards like it’s the Titanic on Oscar day. I’m seeing some exciting new territory being explored in photography right now, and these images are no exception. Zhao Renhui pushes the boundaries of image making into the 21st century, with this fascinating body of work that explores the blurring intersections between science, documentary, fine art, entertainment and reality.

In January of 2009, Zhao Renhui was invited by the Institute of Critical Zoologists to join them on an expedition to an uninhabited island in the Indonesian Archipelago.  Pulau Pejantan has drawn increasing attention from researchers for its extremely unusual geological features and remarkable biodiversity. From curiosities such as the ghost hare (a black and white animal that seems to share a genetic background with extinct species of both hounds and hares) to spiny burrowing anteaters, brightly colored dune-dwelling rock pheasants, and improbably oversized felines such as the heavy oncela and the iriamondi cat, Pulau Pejantan provides scientists with an extraordinary opportunity to study what is essentially a closed ecological system.

To read more about this project, please visit the Institute of Critical Zoologists website.

GREAT NEWS + INSPIRATIONS

Check out this gorgeous new image we released yesterday by Natalie Obermaier! Her first image SOLD OUT so we added this one so you can continue to collect her images as a set during the holiday season.

• EYE BUY ART is featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Fairmont Magazine, with expert tips on how to buy art when you’re travelling. Thank you Alexandra Blum, Arjun Basu and Eve Thomas!

• Thank you to Art Consultant Hughene Acheson and newspaper columnist Christopher Hume for the spectacular coverage in this weeks Toronto Star! (and a special thanks to our friend Alison Dalglish-Pottow for the introductions :)
• Are you looking for something other than a cheap plastic toy from Walmart to give to the little person on your list? Think of giving them artwork instead – one collector recently purchased a $50 photo from Amy Stevens “Confections” series to give to her niece, which she will have hanging on her wall from now till forever. Brilliant!

With Art Loving in my eyes to yours,

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

EYE BUY ART in partnership with Aeroplan – Canada’s premier coalition loyalty program – has made it possible for you to collect art using Aeroplan rewards. Imagine that next time you’re paying for gas, stepping off the plane in Peru, or buying a head of lettuce, you’re actually building an art collection, and investing in the careers of the art stars of tomorrow. We are the sole merchant in the fine art category – it’s a pretty exciting concept, and I hope you like it too.

Start your collection now and redeem your rewards in time for holidays.

Great News + Inspirations

• I just got back from a game-changing three days spent with Seth Godin, one of the most influential marketers in the world. I applied to attend a private workshop he was hosting for women entrepreneurs who make a difference – and was one of the 15 women accepted from over 1200 global applicants. We talked about some pretty big ideas, which we will be publishing in the form of an e-book that I will share with you soon. Exceptional highlight: Seth cooked a homemade lunch for us every day!
• Check out these video highlights from the Flash Forward Festival including interviews with me, MaryAnn Camilleri, and Alec Soth of Magnum Photos!
  
• EYE BUY ART is featured in this month’s issue of The Big Picture Magazine. You can read the online version here. Our special thanks to Editor Gregory Sharpless for making this happen!

Have a great weekend!

Emily McInnes
Founder and Director

The EYE BUY ART Team!

Webisode Still: Andy Adams in conversation with Tom Hull

After Co-Directing an amazing five days of Flash Forward Festivalishness, I thought things would be winding down, but instead, they’re just getting started.

We are totally smitten by our mini-collaboration this week, with our new muse Andy Adams, who we met at the festival, and who produces the inspiring work you see each day on Flak Photo (follow them if you aren’t already). Andy is one of the people we invited to be an interviewer in our upcoming webisode series, where we pair important, and sparkling personalities in conversation with the artists whose work you see on EYE BUY ART. Here’s a sneak peek (above) of Andy Adams talking to Tom Hull in front of his shipping container project that we presented as part of Flash Forward Festival.  Thanks Andy, for giving Tom’s work the universal high-five on Wednesday!

Webisode Still: Alec Soth in conversation with Jonathan Gitelson

Today, Flak Photo is featuring the work of another EYE BUY Greatist – Jonathan Gitelson, who we paired in conversation with photographic legend Alec Soth, a member of Magnum Photos. We love Jonathan, and we especially love people like him who make our lives better by doing the work they do. Jonathan spent six months collecting discarded club flyers off his car windshield, and off the street – and then another three months sewing them into the car cover you see in the photographs above, taken in front of the venues that were passing the flyers out in the first place.

(Amazing) News + Ideas

• I’ve been DYING to tell you this – I found out on Monday that I was one of only 12 women entrepreneurs selected from 880 applicants around the world, to attend a FREE, MBA-style workshop being led by Seth Godin at his office in New York. I almost fell off my chair when I found out! It sort of feels like finding the golden ticket that gets me into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Can’t wait to meet the other 11 women who I will be sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience with….!
• We will be gathering at the EYE BUY ART headquarters this coming Tuesday to host our first ever Creative Space of Enlightment Committee meeting, where we are going to hatch a plan to change the world – and come up with our webisode release schedule :) So hang tight, we’ll keep you posted.
• Get the Coles Notes version of Stephen Mayes Flash Forward Festival lecture “Restructuring the Photographic Landscape” as recapped by Tribble & Mancenido on their blog today. Great job you two – thanks for sharing!

Enjoy this beautiful weekend you have ahead of you and – BUY MORE ART - because artists know how to turn trash into ideas.

Cheers Everyone,

Emily McInnes
The EYE BUY ART Team!

Jonathan Gitelson, The Congress Theatre

Eszter Burghardt, Fjord of Wool

Magda Biernat, Green Bay Resort #5, Taiwan

Natalie Obermaier, Drink of Water

DAY TWO of Flash Forward Festival and I’m already using toothpicks to keep my eyes open so I don’t miss a beat. One of the best parts so far is hearing all the wonderful accents floating around the exhibition spaces. A symbol of the incredible number of people who have made the journey to Toronto to be a part of this very first festival with us. I got to meet Andy Adams from Flak Photo last night and his lovely wife (I’m on a crusade to move them to Toronto), and got a chance to introduce Stephen Mayes from VII Photo Agency in New York to my friend Avril Benoit, Director of Communications for Doctor’s Without Borders. Turns out they worked on a photojournalism project together.

Most of all, it’s just really exciting to be meeting the all wonderful, inspiring artists face-to-face (for the first time in many cases) who are part of EYE BUY ART, and who are the reason that I have the best job in the whole world.

So, without further ado, please let me welcome you to the FOUR artists who will be gracing the surface of your computer screens this afternoon. Among this group we have Jonathan Gitelson, who is visiting us from Vermont. His work is included in some of the most prestigious collections in the world, including the Victoria & Albert, The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney – but what really got me was the terrific story behind his work (N.B. Jonathan really is as nice in person as he looks in his headshot).

We would also like to introduce Eszter Burghardt – who creates landscapes out of raw wool that she brought back from Iceland, and Magda Biernat who was paired in conversation yesterday with the Editor-in-Chief of enRoute Magazine for the Artist Interview Mini Series we will be bringing to you in the next few weeks.

Finally, we would also like to introduce you to the work of Natalie Obermaier who is visiting from L.A. Natalie was a Studio Manager, Master Printer and Model for the controversial photographer Jock Sturges, and is now taking very striking portraits of her own.

The festival is on for three more days. Look for our EYE BUY ART QR Code to read more about the artists in the exhibitions, and on the shipping containers, and to purchase instantly from your mobile phone!

Please visit the website for more details on Flash Forward Festival and please forward this note to your art-loving friends, inviting them to join our mailing list!

With Art Lovin’ in my Eyes to Yours.

Emily McInnes
The EYE BUY ART Team!

Gabriela Herman, Jump

Darren Rigo, Displacement #16 (Purple Stuffing)

Jinyoung Kim, Untitled #4

Tom Hull, Untitled #11

We are shooting lightening bolts of excitement through the internet universe today, dear art lovers. For today, we are releasing photographs by one… two… Three… FOUR very significant artists as part of our special collaboration with Flash Forward (I’m the Co-Director of the festival along with my illustrious and unstoppable colleague MaryAnn Camilleri of The Magenta Foundation).

Each of the artists whose work we are releasing today will be exhibiting their images on a monumental scale – on building facades, on shipping containers – in places that are delightfully unexpected and well outside of the traditional museum context. (Now, if you know a thing or two about me, you’ll know how much I love art in public places).

Between this week and next, we will be releasing a number of artist’s works at once – as opposed to our bi-weekly routine – so that when you visit the festival next week you’ll be able to purchase the work you see, in the exhibitions and on the streets, directly from EYE BUY ART.  Look for our QR Code to purchase instantly from your mobile phones!

When the festival ends on October 10^th, we will bring the focus back to the individual work by presenting an Artist Interview Mini Series, where the artists you see on EYE BUY ART will be paired in conversation with an Olympic Gold athlete, a magazine publisher, a chart-topping musician and a humanitarian from Doctor’s Without Borders. We love the mash up of conversation that will come out of this!

Please visit the website for details on Flash Forward Festival events including:

exhibitions and hours
artist workshops
lectures
panel discussions
curator talks
art openings, and more…..

Gala Launch Tickets are almost sold out.
There’s still time to buy your tickets online but please act quickly!

Great News + Inspirations

(I know, I know. You can’t take much more of this excitement. We know how you feel).

• EYE BUY ART’s new site is ALIVE!!!! Zippy fast speed, new share icons, simplified checkout and super sexified all round. Please have fun – and tweet, share and “like” the fruits of our IT Master of the Universe’s hard labour (he was up all night to launch for us today :)

• Check out the wonderful article in The Ottawa Citizen that came out today mentioning EYE BUY ART and my number one super fan, Glenn McInnes. (Thanks Dad! :) and thank you to Peter Simpson for the lovely words.

Please forward this note to your art-loving friends and invite them to join our mailing list!

With Art Lovin’ in my Eyes to Yours.

Emily McInnes
The EYE BUY ART Team!

Dearest EYE BUY ARTers.

We finger-lickin love these self portraits by US artist Kevin Van Aelst. The images are from the series Fingerprints, in which each of his 10 fingerprints were reproduced using various materials and objects that hold a certain significance to his past: Right Index Finger is made out of cassette tape from mixes that his friends used to make for him, while Left Ring Finger is created out of mustard, and photographed alongside objects that remind him of his elementary school year

Both of these images are as meaningful as they are clever. They draw from everyday materials – objects, or foods that we are all familiar with – to formulate a new visual language that offers a fresh perspective on the daily routines that can ultimately influence our lives and shape our identities.

Kevin is someone to keep your eye on. At 25 years old he was called “the freshest up-and-coming photographer” in a New York Times review and his work has been commissioned by high-profile publications such as GQ, Business Week, Fast Company and Scientific American. He is also a weekly contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

Kevin Van Aelst was selected as a US winner of the Flash Forward 2010 competition, and his work will be exhibited in Toronto as part of the upcoming Flash Forward Festival Group Show taking place from October 6 – 10th.

IF YOU LIKE KEVIN’S WORK CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO.

News + Inspirations

Flash Forward Festival Gala Launch! October 5, 2010 Mildred’s Temple Kitchen 80 Hanna Avenue, Liberty Village Toronto $75 BUY ONLINE Ticket price includes: a 360 page, full-colour festival catalogue ($40 value) / open bar / fancy snacks / a 5×7″ limited edition EYE BUY ART print. Score!

Please forward this note to your art-loving friends and invite them to join our mailing list!

With Art Lovin’ in my Eyes to Yours. The EYE BUY ART Team!

1. Close your eyes.
2. Press your fingers onto your eyelids with a bit of pressure.
3. Wait 5 seconds.

You now have a window into the wonderful, hallucinogenic, digitally altered, far-out world of Lydia Anne McCarthy and the “form constants” that inspire her work. There are so many things we could say about this; like how we think Jeff Warren and Lydia should collaborate on The Head Trip Vol. 2, and how we really like anything that makes us think about science. But frankly, we think Lydia says it best herself in this excerpt from her artist statement:

My work is concerned with the concept of multiple dimensions in space, and alternate realities that exist simultaneously in our everyday lives.  I am interested in the potential for these realities to be glimpsed through our interactions with, and experiences within, our environment.

The screens are based on neuroscientist Heinrich Kluver’s ‘form constants’, or patterns that one sees while hallucinating.  I am interested in how screens both admit and deny matter and how, by pushing this even further through digital manipulation, I can use them to alter space and create a new, unsettling environment where barriers begin to break down.

Lydia fuses the interdisciplinary practices of psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and neuroscience to create her photographs. Her work has been recognized by jury members Joerg Colberg (of the highly influential blog, Conscientious), and Jane Farver, Director of the Visual Arts Center at MIT. She earned a BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Lydia was selected as a US winner of the 2010 Flash Forward competition and her work will be published in the upcoming edition of Flash Forward 2010.

Read more here!

News + Inspirations

• Tickets are on sale NOW for the Flash Forward Festival Gala Launch on October 5^th. They are already selling fast and we haven’t even sent out the evite yet! $75 gets you the festival catalogue ($40 value), fancy snacks and an open bar – meow!
• We need volunteers! Positions are now posted on the Flash Forward website. Fill out the registration form by September 10^th and join us for orientation.
• Flash Forward Festival newsflashes are being sent out on a regular basis with highlights of events taking place each day. Sign up for the newsletter!
• Our unflappable team expert Aviva Phillips here at EYE BUY ART is working hard to bring you work from the 2010 Flash Forward competition. Look for images from EYE BUY ART being presented in exhibitions and unexpected installation sites throughout the festival! Thank you to our superstar teammate Aviva!

With Art Loving in our square patterned eyes to yours,

The EYE BUY ART Team.

Greetings Fellow Earth Dwellers!

We just spent the last 10 days driving around on dirt roads through mountain passes in British Columbia in a borrowed Honda Civic. Needless to say, that little car will never be the same and frankly, neither will we. Deforestation, clear-cutting, mountain pine beetle outbreaks, forest fires –it makes The Day After Tomorrow seem like yesterday.

These images by UK photographer Simon Carruthers act as a profound and silent reminder of how the choices we make impact the world we live in. Everything we own has been extracted from the natural world, and when we no longer require it we return it to the earth as waste.

The series Cycles was inspired by a sustainability report that the artist read in 2006 that concluded that the UK was using over three times their share of global resources. Wanting to explore this further, Simon began work on this ongoing project that looks at the methods and the results of an accelerated climate of consumerism – an issue that is shared both globally, and on a localized, individual level.

Simon Carruthers was selected as a UK winner of the 2010 Flash Forward competition. His work has been featured in Wallpaper*, The British Journal of Photography and CAN Magazine and he is currently working on a project documenting the recent surge of redevelopment taking place on London’s long neglected canal system.

Read more about the photographer and his work.

News + Inspirations

• EYE BUY ART was featured recently on RealSimple.com listed among the top 9 sites to find affordable work by emerging artists.
• EYE BUY ARTist Amy Stevens is doing an artist residency at a bakery in Ireland. Follow her blog for the most recent antics of a pastry-girl-gone-wild!
• Save the date: October 10, 2010 (a perfect 10!) is the closing party finale for the Flash Forward Festival, which is taking place throughout Toronto’s Liberty Village starting on October 6th.

About EYE BUY ART

EYE BUY ART offers limited edition photographs at prices that start at $25 each. It is a carefully curated, juried, online art gallery that represents an exciting new generation of emerging photographers from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. EYE BUY ART’s roster of images comes from our sister organization, Flash Forward; an annual competition that showcases the future of photography and is considered to be one of the most important emerging art incubators in the world.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

We love these images – and the power of the adult imagination reclaimed! “Hunter” and “Mischa” are the latest in our photographic masterpieces being released to you, dear collector, by Canadian artist Lizzie Vickery.

Lizzie fabricates these highly charged little worlds from microscopic stage sets that she constructs herself, using a combination of handmade props, dollhouse furniture, playscale military accessories and Japanese collectable miniatures that she finds online. There is a Truman Show-like quality to the squeaky clean pretense of Lizzie’s imagination, where perhaps, you could imagine Ken entering rehab and Barbie on husband number three.

As Lizzie describes in her artist statement: When we play as children, we play with idealism. We play as we should, imagining stories about the lives we wish to someday have; tales of falling in love and family life, going camping in the corvette and eating dinner around a perfectly set dining table. These constructed miniature scenes tell the tale of an incident in a fictitious characters life. Not the flawless lives we had once imagined, but the messy, ironic and inconclusive realities of becoming a grown-up.

This series was chosen by the 2010 jury, as a winner of the annual Flash Forward competition and was exhibited as a solo show at Toronto Image Works in 2009.

Join the List!

Join the EYE BUY ART mailing list to get first crack at the editions before they are released to the public, as well as up-to-the-minute news about art, the artists and us.

Read more about the images and submit your comments because we love hearing from you!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Good Tuesday art lovers!

Today we release to you, 2 images by UK photographic super-talent Jo Gane, from the series Alternative Suns. Brace yourselves to be enchanted by the merry-worlds made by these magical and sinister man-made constellations, based on childhood memories growing up in Coventry in the West Midlands.

The photographs in this series were shot during many long nights in the familiar landscape surrounding her childhood home. A landscape that once contained dens made in hedgerows, nature to discover, a thousand places to explore with the innocent wonder of childhood – made strange by the darkness of night. A strangeness that resonates with change as the artist becomes increasingly distant from this rural landscape.

Artificial light punctuates the darkness of the landscapes she creates, imitating the natural glow of the sun during daytime, and creating the atmosphere of a never-ending day. This light pollution affects the natural order of things, causing birds to sing and flowers to bloom in the middle of the night. Animals remain awake. The lights produce a gravitational effect on insects, drawing them in towards the glow.

Read more about these images here and here.

News + Inspirations

• EYE BUY ART at the Mascot. The exhibition, which launched as a fundraiser for The Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, continues in Toronto to Aug 16th and is a great chance to see prints from the site in person!

  EYE BUY ART
  July 16 – August 16, 2010
  The Mascot
  1267 Queen Street West
  Toronto, ON

• You probably know by now that EYE BUY ART is the sister organization to Flash Forward. We will be releasing images from the winners of the 2010 competition starting in the next few weeks, and also – make sure to mark October 6 – 10^th in your calendars when we will be presenting the biennial Flash Forward Festival in Toronto’s Liberty Village.

• Save on shipping by purchasing multiple prints at once. Our 8×10” and 11×14” prints can be grouped by size and shipped together to a maximum of 4 per package. This is a great option when you’re considering buying the work as a diptych – to hang on the wall side by side, or one on top of the other.

Join the Mailing List

Join the EYE BUY ART mailing list to get first crack at the editions before they are released to the public, as well as up-to-the-minute news about art, the artists and us.

Read more about the images and submit your comments – we love hearing from you!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Join us at this FREE event happening tonight at The Mascot in Toronto! The event will include an EYE BUY ART exhibition, a silent auction and drinks to whet your Friday night whistle! The evening is presented by increaseyourodds.ca, an online publication dedicated to providing accessible information about healthy living, cancer prevention and cancer treatment. Increase Your Odds is participating in the Weekend To End Women’s Cancers and needs your help and support to raise funds for cancer research. All proceeds raised during the silent auction will go directly to the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation.

EYE BUY ART’s exhibition continues to August 17th.

The Mascot
1267 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M6K 1L5

Opening reception: Friday July 16. 7-10pm
Silent Auction will run for the duration of the evening

New Image Release

EYE BUY ART will be releasing 2 new images by UK photographic superstar Jo Gane, from her series Alternative Suns next Tuesday, July 20^th. Prepare yourselves to be enchanted by the merry-worlds of these magical and sinister man-made constellations, based on her childhood memories growing up in Coventry in the West Midlands, UK.

Until Tuesday…

^{Art Loverly Yours,}
Emily

^{The EYE BUY ART Team}

Eamon Mac Mahon, Port Dover, Ontario, 2008
BUY NOW
11×14″, Limited Edition 150
$50

BUY ALL SIX AND SAVE ON SHIPPING
The Canadian Souvenir Special Boxed Set

Includes all six, limited edition, 11×14” photographs from The Canadian Souvenir series.
For a limited time, shipping will be included in the purchase price, no matter where you live.
Act quickly because only 25 of these sets are available!
$300

EYE BUY ART on Canada Day

Oh happy day, dear Canada, as we blast off fireworks in celebration of the final release in our six part series based on the theme “The Canadian Souvenir”! The inspiration for this project comes from the souvenir section at the airport, and our fascination with how we market ourselves to tourists – because nothing says the “authentic Canadian experience” like a plastic inukshuk bottle stopper, or a stuffed beaver in a hockey jersey.

Each week, starting in May, six artists from EYE BUY ART released a site-specific, limited edition print in partnership with the Drake Hotel. Each image is limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each. Photographs from the series are available individually, or, you can save on shipping for a limited time and purchase the entire series as a boxed set for $300.

The final installment in our series by Eamon Mac Mahon, was photographed in Port Dover, Ontario, situated on the north shore of Lake Erie, and perched on the cusp between Canada and the United States. This image perfectly encapsulates our reverie – and our complex relationship – with the natural landscape that surrounds us; allowing it to grow freely, and at the same time, plundering it’s resources. Read more about this image on eyebuyart.old

News

• EYE BUY ART is featured in the current issue of Amsterdam-based Linda Magazine, one of the most widely read women’s magazines in the Netherlands – and judging by the number of prints we are shipping that way – we believe it. Dank Je Linda Magazine!

• Adam Kuehl and Angus Rowe MacPherson’s images from EYE BUY ART are featured in the current issue of Experience, the in-flight magazine for Bombardier’s private luxury-class jets. Arjun Basu – you rule.
• EYE BUY ART has a permanently installed satellite exhibition space at the new Drake General Store on Bathurst Street in Toronto, and will be showing all six images from The Canadian Souvenir series at their Rosedale location. Special thanks to our friends Mia Nielsen and Jeff Stober at the Drake Hotel for playing with us on the Souvenirs project – and an extra special universal high five to the artists and collectors who made it all happen!
• Watch for a special exhibition of EYE BUY ART at The Mascot in Toronto, in partnership with The Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation and one of our all-time favourite organizations Fisheye Corporation. We’ll send your invite soon!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team!

Angus Rowe MacPherson, Fishing, 2008

BUY NOW

8×10″ | Limited Edition 250 | $25
11×14″ | Limited Edition 150 | $50
16×20″ | Limited Edition 50 | $250
20×24″ | Limited Edition 25 | $500
30×40″ | Limited Edition 5 | $1000

EYE BUY ART for Father’s Day

…because it’s SO much better than a lame tie or a pair of golf clubs. Give your special pop the enduring gift of art: Save on shipping by purchasing multiple prints at once, and as always, our gift certificates are available in any price denomination you choose. If you need some inspiration try our handy search tool using the keyword “Father’s Day”!

EYE BUY ART at the Drake

The next and final image from our 6 part series on the theme “The Canadian Souvenir” will be released on July 1st, Canada Day, and will be by photographer Eamon Mac Mahon. Each image from this series will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each.

Read more about the images from this series and submit your comments – we love hearing from you!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Part 5 of 6: Mark Kasumovic

Oh Canada, true north strong and free is a line from our national anthem, and a symbolic reference to our independence as a nation and emergence as a natural resource-based economy. The Canadian landscape symbolizes a departure point in our history, where the economic framework in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century – which was based on urban, class-based industry – simply wouldn’t work in a place where timber was the dominant commodity.

Founded upon European demand, the timber trade brought investment and immigration to eastern Canada; it fostered economic development; and it transformed the regional environment far more radically than the earlier exploitation of fish and fur. As Mark Kasumovic references in his title, lumber has long been a staple in the Canadian export economy, and is the resource we are most widely recognized for. In his ongoing series Ideal Landscapes Mark refers to the role that photography plays in documenting the landscape, which historically, has been used to beautify the world around us. In this image however, the use of flash and commercial lighting techniques are used less to create beauty out of a fictionalized stage, and more to call our attention to the landscape as a commodity – a bucolic re-rendering of the majestic landscape as a somewhat undignified pile of lumber.

Mark Kasumovic (along with EYE BUY ARTist Becky Comber) was among eight emerging contemporary photographers commissioned recently by Harbourfront Center to create a large-scale photo installation along Toronto’s waterfront exploring Ontario’s Greenbelt. His work was chosen as the Ontario winner in the Bank of Montreal BMO 1st Art Competition in 2009 and has exhibited recently at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), Edward Day Gallery, Toronto Image Works and The Department of Canadian Heritage.

EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece in partnership with The Drake Hotel around the idea of “The Canadian Souvenir” which will be released to you once a week, for the next six weeks (the last of which we will release on July 1^st, Canada Day). Each image will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Part 4 of 6: Robyn McCallum

We’re not exactly sure how this most innocent of nature’s beasts has become synonymous with the lumberjack culture of Canadian cool – but we like it. Like Becky Comber’s Maple Leaf icon, the beaver has been exploited into one of the most recognized symbols of Canadian identity; stuffed beavers wearing hockey jerseys are sold in airport gift shops all across the country, and its image is minted onto the front of our 5 cent coin.

Robyn McCallum’s research for “Canadian Beavers” included several visits to local gift shops and “trading posts” where we tout our authentic Canadianess to our dear, unsuspecting tourists. Plastic inukshuk bottle stoppers and RCMP cutting boards pile up in kitchen cupboards all across the globe as mementos of the ultimate Canadian vacation. Robyn works with, and amplifies the kitsch of this typical Canadian iconography, by re-appropriating it into the image we see here. She uses elements borrowed from her ongoing series Patrimony, in which traditional representations of women in art history are deconstructed and re-presented in a modern day context using “Pin-ups” and pop-culture images of the 20th century.

Robyn McCallum is a Toronto based artist and curator who received her BFA from Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts in 2008. Her work centres around issues of gender and representation, and often uses humour as a means of social critique. Robyn had a solo show last year at Pikto Gallery in Toronto and has exhibited internationally at Sid Lee Collective’s Starving Artists in Amsterdam. Her work has been published in Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward 2009, and will be published in the June issue of enRoute – Air Canada’s in-flight magazine.

EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece in partnership with The Drake Hotel around the idea of “The Canadian Souvenir” which will be released to you once a week, for the next six weeks (the last of which we will release on July 1^st, Canada Day). Each image will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Part 3 of 6: Marshall Byrd Sterling

All hail the Queen and her chipped ceramic pet tiger! Monday, May 24^th is Victoria Day, a federal Canadian statutory holiday, better known as May two-four. Most people think this holiday represents the number of bottles that fit into a case of beer that one drinks as they open their cottages up for the season. This image comes as a welcome reminder of what this day truly means, with its symbolic references to colonialism, the commonwealth and the shaping of an uncertain Canadian national identity.

Marshall Byrd Sterling took this photograph through a window onto the porch of a house in Halifax, Nova Scotia – the nation’s first permanent British town and home to Pier 21 (our version of Ellis Island) where 1.5 million immigrants, war brides, displaced people, evacuee children and Canadian military personnel passed through between 1928 and 1971. The portrait of Queen Elizabeth that hangs on the wall inside the porch, was photographed by Josuf Karsh, one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time. Karsh, who is of Armenian descent, immigrated to Canada from Beirut on New Year’s Eve, arriving in Halifax in 1925 on the Oceanliner Versailles.

In commemoration of Victoria Day, and to celebrate her Majesty, the Queen of England’s upcoming visit to Parliament Hill on Canada Day, we give three cheers and a bucket o’ beer to Marshall Byrd Sterling for bringing us this latest installment in our series The Canadian Souvenir in partnership with the Drake Hotel. Read the review of the touring Flash Forward Group Show, and Marshall Byrd Sterling’s images in this recent article from the Boston Globe.

EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece around the idea of “The Canadian Souvenir” which will be released to you once a
week, for the next six weeks (the last of which we will release on July 1^st, Canada Day). Each image will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Part 2 of 6: Angus Rowe MacPherson

Welcome, dear collectors, to the second release in our six part series, in partnership with the Drake Hotel, based on the theme, The Canadian Souvenir. This week’s image takes a decidedly different approach to our national identity; a more ambiguous, and slightly murkier view of the Canadian landscape and the cultures that exist between the seams of the airport version of ourselves that we sell to tourists. Perhaps along the lines of what David Cronenberg might have schemed up if he were on a booze-infested camping trip with his buddies!

This is quintessential Angus Rowe MacPherson, with his highly stylized and articulately produced images that suggest a re-reading of the most ordinary of scenes. In this case, a fisherman in hip waders communing with nature, drinking a Carling O’Keefe. We like that this image challenges our stereotypical understanding of the characters we encounter in life – who often end up being quite the opposite of what we expect.

Angus Rowe MacPherson’s work (along with EYE BUY ARTist Adam Kuehl) is featured in the recently released issue of Experience, the in-flight magazine for Bombardier’s private luxury jets (see pp. 46/47 in the online edition). He was born and raised in Iqaluit and now lives and works in Toronto, Canada. His work has been exhibited in Canada, Denmark, China, Japan, the UK and the United States and current projects are top-secret, but may include deer, riots, and an unnecessarily complicated machine.

EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece around the idea of “The Canadian Souvenir” which we will release to you once a week for the next six weeks. Each image will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 150, and sold for $50 each.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Part 1 of 6: Becky Comber

We can’t think of a better symbol than the maple leaf to kick off our six part series of images in partnership with the Drake Hotel, based on the theme “The Canadian Souvenir.” It’s an iconic symbol of Canadian national identity, fresh off the forest floor as spring emerges and sap trickles from the trees into steel buckets, becoming our iconic Canadian national food – maple syrup. We can practically see the beavers waving to the people paddling their canoes across a frost-filled northern lake!

As Becky Comber describes: “I wanted to work with the powerful image of the maple leaf, perhaps Canada’s most overly used symbol of pride. I was incredibly struck by the clichéd baggage that this little shape offers, at the strength it holds, and how it’s complicated sides point in so many directions. I have been spending a large amount of my free time in the woods this spring and was inspired to see that when the forest floor first thinks about turning green these seemingly dead little branches turn out to be small saplings sending out crumpled little distorted maple leaves. Maybe this common shape needs new life: as a beautiful symbol worthy of admiration in its own world without all the responsibility.”

Becky Comber (along with EYE BUY ARTist Mark Kasumovic) was among eight emerging contemporary photographers commissioned recently by Harbourfront Center to create a large-scale photo installation along Toronto’s waterfront exploring Ontario’s Greenbelt.

EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece around the idea of “The Canadian Souvenir” which we will release to you once a week for the next six weeks. Each image will be strictly limited to an 11×14” in an edition of 100, and sold for $50 each.

Read the curator’s blog here.
http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/upfront/2010/05/meet-becky-comber/

EYE BUY ART for my Mom

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 9th! Gift certificates are available in any price denomination you choose. You can send them instantly, or download our EYE BUY ART custom design and hand deliver it with a kiss.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

We’ve been frolicking away in the warm weather, talking ideas with the art-giftedly talented brain that is Mia Nielsen, Curator of the Drake Hotel in Toronto. More art incubator than hotel – we have decided to jump into their hotbed of culture to partner on an exciting program of site-specific, limited edition prints on the theme of “Canadiana”. I’ve always been fascinated with the souvenir section at the airport, and how we market ourselves to tourists. Nothing says “an authentic Canadian experience” like a stuffed Purple Moose Wall-Mount, or a Wildlife Trio in a Canoe pasta bowl. EYE BUY ART’s Canadian-based artists will each create a site-specific piece around the idea of “the Canadian souvenir” which we will release to you once a week during the entire month of May. More information will follow in our next newsletter – and be sure to act quickly because each image we release will be limited strictly to an 11×14” in an edition of 100.

EYE BUY ART for my Mom

Mother’s Day is on May 9^th – fill her heart with the love of art!  Save on shipping by purchasing multiple prints at once, and as always, our gift certificates are available in any price denomination you choose. Please place your Mother’s Day orders as soon as possible, our shipping deadline is fast approaching on Tuesday, April 27^th. If you need some inspiration try our handy search tool using the keyword “LOVE”!

News + Inspirations

• Flash Forward BOSTON – our touring exhibition of the winners of the 2009 competition opens this week at the Griffin Museum of Photography. Read the exhibition overview and check out EYE BUY ARTist Marshall Byrd Sterling’s image promoting the exhibition
• In celebration of this year’s book + exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Flak Photo is featuring 30 photographers for 30 days from Flash Forward on their website.
• EYE BUY ART will be in New York at the end of the month to lecture at the Pratt Institute’s Arts & Cultural Management Program for masters students in not-for-profit. Many thanks to Hilary Burt for the invitation – we are extremely excited!
• EYE BUY ART is reading The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark: the curious ecomomics of contemporary art. “Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall” – Andy Warhol. Thanks to EYE BUY ART collector Mike Manson for the recommendation!
• For more up-to-date, on the fly, breaking news alerts like these from EYE BUY ART be sure to join our Facebook conversation and follow our tweets as we post information about art, our artists and us.

Art Loverly Yours,
Emily
The EYE BUY ART Team

Angus Rowe MacPherson, Fishing, 2008

Angus Rowe MacPherson, Hunting, 2008

Welcome to March, and the possibility that it isn’t going to snow forever! We are thrilled to introduce our next artist to you – an emerging talent who grew up in Iqaluit, Nunavut in the tundra of the high arctic, who lived in London and Tokyo, and has so far settled in Toronto (I wonder if he makes new friends by telling them he lived in an Igloo?).

Angus Rowe MacPherson’s images remind us why we love what we do. They remind us why art is important in a world where most people go to work and become robotic versions of themselves. Angus goes to work and creates slightly prankish, meticulously composed and technically brilliant environments that somehow elevate our everyday lives into supersonic status. Already an accomplished commercial photographer by the time he was in his 20s, Angus uses his commercial background – and cinematic devices such as lighting, fog machines, actors and props – to construct slightly surreal, Esquire-esque portraits of a fictionalized world of his own invention. We also love that he chose this time of year to create them – that ponderous and elusive transformation of life as it emerges from the frozen world we have just witnessed.

Angus Rowe MacPherson’s work has been exhibited in Canada, Denmark, China, Japan, the UK and the United States and we recently discovered that the images we are releasing here will be published in the Spring issue of Experience, the in-flight magazine for Bombardier’s private luxury jets. Fancy THAT.

Tell us what you think.

EYE BUY ART…in Twos

Save on shipping by purchasing multiple prints at once. Our 8×10” and 11×14” prints can be grouped by size and shipped together to a maximum of 4 per package. This is a great option when you’re considering buying the work as a diptych – to hang on the wall side by side, or one on top of the other. In almost all cases the work we have chosen for this site is intentionally paired, with 2 images that work together by the same artist to create maximum impact.

Framing your Questions

Is framing something you’re interested in knowing more about? We are planning on posting a page with our framing tips soon. For now, feel free to email us with your questions. Also, we actually mean it when we say we want to hear from you. We are real and true human beings that work on this project – and we love what we do! We jump for joy when we get your letters and emails – so please join us in conversation and ask us everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Have you bought a print from us yet? How did you like it and where is it hanging? We want to know:

Comment here.

News + Inspirations

• Internet marketing guru, TED Talk speaker, and author of Tribes, Seth Godin, gave EYE BUY ART and founder Emily McInnes a massive plug to a live audience of 1600 people yesterday, showing a slide of our homepage featuring Ryan Shude’s Diner and citing us as change innovators who are leaders in the field. Thank you Seth!
• EYE BUY ART was featured on Springwise and went out to their database of 120,000 followers. We had sales around the world and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Amsterdam-based Linda Magazine – apparently the most widely read women’s magazine in the Netherlands. Dank Je Springwise!
• Adam Kuehl’s images – and a nice plug for EYE BUY ART – will also be featured in the upcoming issue of Experience Magazine (fun factoid: apparently the average net-worth of the magazine’s reader is $1 billion). Meow!
• EYE BUY ART has a permanently installed satellite exhibition space at the new Brassaii on King Street West in Toronto (congratulations to Designer Guys Anwar Mekhayech, Matt Davis and Allen Chan on the re-design). The exhibition launch features EYE BUY ARTist’s Robyn McCallum and Ryan Schude.
• jury as the “ones to watch out for”. Watch here for a clip of our Festival Co-Director MaryAnn Camilleri: If we invest in emerging artists we are going to build a stronger arts future– and that’s really what it’s about
• For more up-to-date, on the fly, breaking news alerts like these from EYE BUY ART be sure to join our Facebook conversation and follow our tweets as we post information about art, our artists and us.

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

Good Friday Lovers and Collectors,

A quick note before we head to a tiny cabin in a tiny corner of le snowy Québec to snuggle with our favourite tiny Valentines.

Limited edition, fine art photographs starting at $25.

There is still time to place your Valentine’s Day art purchase. Get your order in by no later than this Sunday, February 7th to ship in time for Valentine’s weekend (Canada only, sorry). If you’re outside of Canada send us a note and we will try to make special arrangements. Or, if you just prefer the convenience, our Gift Certificates are available anytime in any denomination you choose.

Gift with Purchase

EYE BUY ARTist Eamon Mac Mahon was the subject of a Bravo! documentary series, called Snapshot, featuring up-and-coming photographers to watch out for in Canada. We just got our hands on a few copies and will include one in the first 10 orders we receive for Eamon Mac Mahon prints (sized 11×14” or larger). What’s not to love?

News + Inspirations

• Eamon Mac Mahon’s upcoming solo exhibition takes place in March at Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto.
• Flash Forward Festival (our sister organization) is taking place from October 6 – 10, 2010 in Toronto’s Liberty Village. We have some very exciting news to tell you about, so stay tuned in early March when we will release further details on our lineup of exhibitions, events, special guests and exciting partnerships!
• We are working on the release of our next artist on March 1st – we are so excited about it we can hardly contain ourselves! The new images, and the story around them, will get your heart racing. Hang tight and we’ll let you in on our secret soon!

Until then…

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

January is a bit of a non-month we’ve decided, squeezed between December and February as an inconvenience towards our true destination – spring! We know that Valentine’s contrarians say this is a fabricated holiday but we can’t help but succumb to all those deep delicious colours and the ecstasy of it all. A dose of warm kisses as we say goodbye to Non-uary and turn our sights to brighter things.

Whatever your state of romance (our friend Terry D used to call Valentine’s SAD: Singles Awareness Day) we say kiss yourselves with art. We can’t think of a more enduring love gesture.

Will you be my Personalized Valentine?

Make your purchase before the Valentine’s Day shipping deadline of Monday, February 1^st and we will handwrite a personal message from you onto a card and include it in the package to your recipient. It’s easy. Once you’ve made your purchase, send a secret-to-us love note to kissme@eyebuyart.com and consider it done. Now THAT, Paris Hilton, is hot.

If you’re looking for inspiration and a fun distraction from your work routine, try our search tool using the keyword “love”, or search for art by colour. On the other hand, you can relieve the pressure altogether and give your smoky lover a gift certificate instead. You can send those instantly, or download our EYE BUY ART custom design and hand deliver it with a kiss.

News + Inspirations

• Shipping Deadline: Please place your order by Monday, February 1^st to ship on time for Valentine’s Day. There may be wiggle room depending on where you live, but remember we only ship once a week.
• Watch for EYE BUY ARTist Eamon Mac Mahon’s upcoming solo exhibition at Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto. The buzz is building and we are proud to be part of it!
• We think Robyn McCallum’s work makes a Valentimely and interesting addition to the dialogue found on Art Daily about a new exhibition on the history of nudes in photography. Thanks to Glenn McInnes – father of EYE BUY ART’s founder and Robyn McCallum super fan – for scoping that one out. Maybe we will ask him to create a reading list for us!
• We love www.fisheyecorp.com – connection architects, social media experts and frankly, a great inspiration to us. Thank you for your guidance and watch it unfold…

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team!

Welcome art collectors into this new decade brimming with optimism. The air is a-sparkle with goodness and to celebrate we bring you our next artist Canadian Eamon Mac Mahon, whose work is the visual counterpart to this optimistic new decade and a perfect way to breathe light into your January.

Dare we say, these images remind us of one of the most famous living artists of all time, Gerhard Richter, who paints from the photographs he has taken. We think Eamon does the reverse, painting these images using his camera. They are universal and hard to place in any particular period of time, somehow capturing a gesture of nature that is both quiet and powerful. Such is the mystery of this wonderful world we live in.

Eamon is the most free-spirited person we know – and his images are a window into the world he experiences. He spends months flying around Northern Canada in a bush plane, and is on his way to Hawaii to continue work on his new series Kalapana. Eamon’s work has been published in The New Yorker, W Magazine and National Geographic and one of his images sold recently for nearly three times its value, raising over $7000 for people living with Aids.

Toronto Airport Installation, 2008                Lost in the clouds                          Eamon Mac Mahon

What’s New

We launched one month ago and since then have shipped prints to Canada, the US, Belgium, the UK and Mexico. Thank you to our first collectors. We love you. Our enormous gratitude also to Seth Godin for the wonderful endorsement “thanking us for what we do” and to the team at Daily Candy, Fashion Magazine and Design Edge for your great coverage. Also check out today’s write up in Vitamin Daily.

Colour-your-world crimson and check out our fancy new search tool – now you can look for art using the colours of the rainbow! And don’t forget, if you’re searching for the perfect gift then maybe you’ve already found it. Our gift certificates are available anytime, in any denomination you choose.

With our enormous gratitude for an inspiring, art-loving first month!

The EYE BUY ART Team

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Insta-Gift Certificates

Stay in your pajamas and skip the mall. Our gift certificates are available in any price denomination you choose, and can be printed and customized or sent to your recipient instantly via email. It’s easy — and the best part is you don’t have to do the deciding. Once your giftee has finished gushing at your remarkable ingeniousness they can just go online and choose the work they want themselves.

Coming Up Next

It is our capital P pleasure to announce that Canadian super-talent Eamon Mac Mahon’s work will be available next on EYE BUY ART in January. We had the distinct honour of working with Eamon when we installed 20 of his grand format aerial photographs along the moving sidewalk at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 2008. His client list reads like the who’s who of the magazine industry — his work has appeared in The New Yorker, W Magazine and National Geographic and he just announced an upcoming solo exhibition at the soon-to-be launched Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto. We can’t share the images yet — but sneaking a peek on Eamon’s site will get you in the high-flying spirit. http://www.eamonmacmahon.com/

Eye Candy

Check it out — EYE BUY ART got a great write up in today’s Boston edition of Daily Candy. Who knew, our walls CAN talk after all! Thank you Trufflepig Travel boys for hooking that one up for us. We love you! Also watch out for an upcoming mention in Vitamin Daily.

Holiday Schedule

Our gifted and genius print team is on a happy holiday hiatus. Please go ahead and place your order but note that our next print run won’t take place again until the first week of January. We will be back on track with our usual weekly schedule then and look forward to filling your hearts with art in 2010.

Until then, our warmest of wishing-wells to you!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART

We are over the moon and into Jupiter at the fantastical and amazing amount of support we’ve received so far – and it’s only DAY FIVE! We had a great write up yesterday in Fashion Magazine and figured we’d hit the jackpot when we received a personal phone call from none other than Seth Godin himself sending us his good wishes.

Holiday Shipping Deadline: Tuesday, December 15^th at 5:00pm

If you want to make sure your special honeysmooch receives their gift in time please make sure to get your holiday purchases in by no later than Tuesday, December 15^th at 5:00pm. There may be a little wiggle room depending on where you live, but remember, we only print orders once a week! For exact shipping times to your location please refer to our dedicated shipping page.

Gift Certificates

All hail the web-programming spirits and our gift-certificatedly talented designer Kelsey Blackwell for making this holiday miracle come true. If you’ve missed the shipping deadline or would rather spend your time knocking back cocktails – no problem – our gift certificates are officially available for your purchasing pleasure. Your loved one is sure to shout out with glee!

Buy Gift Certificates now

If you haven’t already, have a read through our ART 101 and FAQ pages. If there’s anything further that you’d like to know please – just pop the question. OH! And post your comments. We really do want to know what you think!

Art Loverly Yours,
The EYE BUY ART Team

EYE BUY ART is proud to be part of a growing movement of people who want to make art more accessible, affordable, and fun to buy! We are an online art gallery representing an exciting new generation of emerging photographers who are on of the cusp of significant growth in their career. They are “the ones to watch out for” according to our jury of experts in the field of art and photography.

Limited edition, signed photographs starting at $25 – no kidding!

If you like what you see – WONDERFUL – you’re hired!!  We could really use your help to post, twitter, twink, tickle, feed, fire-away and love this to as many people as possible. We’re counting on you to help us get people buying art. Share the love and post it far and wide.

Give the gift of art!

We will be introducing gift certificates within A DAY OR TWO! Can you imagine – no more scary busy malls full of unhappy Christmas Eve shoppers. No more wedding gift toasters and no more stress about last minute shopping. Follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook page to get the most up-to-date information.

Save on Shipping!

Our web programming elves have been hard at work to allow you to purchase multiple prints at one time. Our 8×10” and 11×14” prints can be grouped and shipped together to a maximum of 4 per package (a $5 packaging/handling fee will be applied to each additional print). If you want to purchase an 8×10″ and an 11×14″ print, and ship them together – no problem – we will package your prints in the largest sized envelope.

So how does it work?

EYE BUY ART is the sister organization to Flash Forward, an annual competition that showcases the future of photography and is considered one of the most important emerging art incubators in the world.  The idea is simple: make art affordable so more people can own it. It’s exciting to collect art, and even more exciting to be a part of an artist’s growth. We will release a new image every single week, direct to your inbox. (Right now, expect a new image to be released once a month or so, as we get our engines going). Make sure to sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t already, so you can get first crack at the editions before they go public.

If you encounter any problems, we really apologize for that. We’re new, so we’re bound to hit a couple of kinks along the way. Let us know so we can fix them.

EYE BUY ART community

We will be launching the EYE BUY ART community in the coming weeks as well. The community will be a lot like Facebook – but for art. This feature will allow you to connect with the artists one-on-one, speak to other collectors, join groups of like-minded thinkers and share your thoughts on photography and people you love. We are also in the planning phase of our EYE BUY ART iphone application. If you have any ideas you’d like to share we’re all ears!

Come and join us! There’s more to explore…