Oscar Cahén, Painter Extraordinaire - Oscar, Celebrated Illustrator

By guest author, Jeffrey Spalding C.M., R.C.A Artistic Director, Museum of Contemporary Art CalgaryThe passage of time does much to alter our perceptions. Art history holds a place of great distinction for the work of Oscar Cahén as a painter. His dazzling colour and inventive compositions earned him the admiration of his contemporaries. His erudite European training prepared him to be a role model and leading figure in the band of abstract artists...

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Murray Tinkelman Describes His Process

A lot of people are understandably impressed when they see one of Murray Tinkelman's illustrations....... but even more so when they have a chance to see it up close. I asked Murray to describe his working process to me and he kindly obliged..."I do a drawing; a very tight, complete, as accurate as I can get it pencil drawing on tracing paper - and it's laborious and time consuming - and then I spray it with fixative. I put the drawing on a lightbox...

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It's Aliiiive!!! Murray Tinkelman's Movie Monsters!

Many an illustrator reaches a point in his career when financial reward and creative reward become mutually exclusive.Murray Tinkelman reached that point about thirty years ago. In an interview in Illustration magazine #23 he told Dan Zimmer, "My whole feeling about art and illustration changed, really very dramatically, in the '80s. Before then I used to get nervous if the phone didn't ring, because I didn't have an agent; but in the '80s I got...

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Murray Tinkelman's Curiously Creepy Mechanimals

In the 1980 book, "The Illustrations of Murray Tinkelman," the author writes that Murray's "Mechanimals" might have been "built by an obscure inventor who fancied himself a cross between Dr. Frankenstein and Henry Ford."For his part as that "obscure inventor," Murray said, "I draw them strictly for myself, for sheer enjoyment.""They give me a chance to grow, to experiment, and to make mistakes. Every artist needs to be able to make mistakes, but...

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Murray Tinkelman: How a Rhino Turned into Cthulu

It started with a rhino...Actually, let me back up. Murray Tinkelman had already been working as a professional illustrator for about a decade and a half by the time he noticed that photo of a rhino in his studio that day in 1970. No doubt the photo of the rhino was something he had clipped for reference. That day it intrigued him. He took out his 0.50 technical pen (his preferred weapon) and began hatching...The hatching grew into an illustration...

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