Kurt Halsey

I haven't talked very much about art yet, which is sort of strange because art is the only thing I've stuck with since I discovered I loved it. I've tried everything from ballet to skating to bass lessons to waterskiing and eventually I throw everything I temporarily obsess over into the metaphorical waste basket and move onto the next exciting endeavor. But art is something which is incredibly close to my heart, which I guess you could have noticed because I think film is art and books are a kind of art, etc etc. But ART itself is so precious and beautiful and it's very difficult to come across a kind of artist which grabs onto the valves of your heart and squeezes them until the blood rushes to your head enough to feel a kind of lust for canvas, paint, paper, pens... whatever kind of media gets you going.

The artist I wanted to share today is Kurt Halsey. When I was a lot younger and listened to a lot of 'punk' and ska, I would flip though album art and Google search featured artists who I really liked. One of them was Halsey, who I discovered inside a Less Than Jake CD booklet (LTJ, by the way, is one of the few bands I still enjoy from my 'let's act punk rock phase' back in high school. I will probably write about my current distaste for modern pop punk music eventually) and immediatly fell in love with. What made him stay on my Internet Explorer Favorites menu was the way his work looks so simple and honest but isn't simple at all. It's very difficult for an artist to finally find their niche in the style of art they eventually pursue (this is something I still struggle with; my paintings are split between wild oils and acrylic realism, while my sketches are more focused, albiet raw and amateur), and Halsey has a wonderfully definitive style that he features in his work. His characters are simple but are lively and real and remind me of the kind of people who drink coffee at night and lay on the grass at the beach after the parking lots are closed and drive at unholy speeds on the highway at unholy hours of the morning when nobody is around. In a way, I feel like I'm one of his characters and so it's easy for me to get lost in his work.

Another great thing about Halsey is the way he features simple lines of text across many of his sketches and paintings. Although the lines aren't full of literary devices or are exceptionally clever works of penmanship, they perfectly reflect on how the characters feel. And yes, I mean feel. There is something about his art that makes me believe his faces feel more than most people do, especially when he adds a cute line, such as "my heart beats too big" next to a melancholy looking girl (you can find that piece in the "work" section of his website, and I recommend you do). I remember an old painting he once had posted years ago which featured only crude stars over a navy backdrop with text that said "all the stars in my sky were for you." How beautiful is that? Answer: pretty super beautiful.

When it really comes down to it, what I'm trying to say about Halsey and the reason I shared him with you is because he is one of the most influential artists in my own life, and if any of you have ever seen sketches I've done (ask to see my commuter cup, for example) then you'll see how he's become a part of my life in terms of art. Needless to say, check him out - I can't see anyone not loving his warmth.

http://www.kurthalsey.com/