By
Fanny Gentle

ARTIST COMMISSION: FANNY GENTLE


We love supporting new talent. Every issue, we try to feature a few commissioned works from some of our favorite artists. We give them free rein of a full-spread; the only limitations are the generous dimensions of the page. For our Spring 2015 issue, the New York-based painter and illustrator Fanny Gentle contributed Against the Grain, a swirling, hypnotic dreamscape of man dwarfed by the grandeur of nature. “I love the image of people being surrounded and engulfed by nature,” she explains. “For this piece, I found an old image of loggers from the mid-1800s. I love the hugeness of the trees and the abstract shapes they make lying on the ground, the rings telling time.”

The former model, who also works with textiles and embroidery, says the message of her painting is both clear and conflicted. “It’s about the bravery and fastidiousness of the lumberjacks,” she says, “but also the foolhardiness of humans trying to conquer their every surrounding. It has an otherworldly quality to it, but at the same time, it’s deeply human.”

By
Fanny Gentle
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