I'm Mike. And I'm Jaime. And together we're the Bests of BestArtStudios
and this Blog is about us... Hopefully by the end you'll know us a bit better.
We're a married couple in our thirties, living in the Midwest with our
two dogs (Blueberry and Spectre) and our kitties (Crookshanks and Tigger). We're
both self-taught artists and super nerds. Mike loves: Comic books,
robots, and Star Wars. Jaime loves: Reading books and reading books.
We sell original paintings and printed reproductions of our original
paintings. Our art is a really a good window into our personal lives.
There is a decree of personal taste, the things we find exciting or
interesting, in each of our paintings, not to mention emotional
expression. Like all humans, we have a variety of emotional happenings
in our lives and painting is a good release of that.
We're also the Muse in most of our paintings. The picture above was taken as a reference for the painting pictured below... You'd be surprised by just how often our faces and forms are incorporated into our work.
We have a large in-home studio: plastic from floor to ceiling, so we
can be as messy as we want to be. It's equipped with all the necessities of
painting as well as an ipod docker and a television. We spend hours and
hours in our studio everyday and when a new batch of canvas comes in,
you'll normally find music on as we both throw the first bits of paint
at the canvas--creating backgrounds and rough subject is lively work and
so we like lively music for such times. When we finally sit down to
create detail, the television comes on for Mike's entertainment, while
Jaime listens to a book on her Kindle.
Mike draws inspiration from a variety of other artists (Banksy, Alex
Ross and Stan Lee, to name a few) and the general Science Fiction genre.
His “Robot Apocalypse” series is both an original creation as well
as a story he's developing. And of course an obvious throwback to a popular theme
in Sci-fi history.
On a personal note... Mike is a Star Wars collector. Action Figures, replicas, posters, etc. We have an entire room in our home that we call the "Star Wars" room. It plays host to thousands of action figures and homemade dioramas depicting Mike's favorite scenes from the movies.
Mike sketches out his work before he puts paint to the canvas. The sketch on the left was the little sleeping girl in "Night Time Protector" (which is pictured below).
He is currently illustrating a book on his Robots that might or might not be made public, only time will tell. It is full of wonderful things and new "models" of robots that will one day be incorporated into his original paintings. In this book he tells the tale of the little one-shoe girl who the robots all seem to want to help. The teddy bear that has only recently come to life (in the original paintings "Night time protector" and "You got him, you got him") and just what lead to the Robot Apocalypse.
We're hoping you'll all get to see this book one day. If nothing else at least excerpts from it.
Jaime's Artwork is kind of opposite from her personality. Where she is generally happy her characters are mostly sad, where her life is full of love her paintings often depict the lack or loss there of.
Jaime is positive to the point of annoying others (as she is told frequently). She has been compared to JK Rowlings “Hermione Granger” on more than one
occasion for her ‘Know it all ism’. And in social clicks most would
consider her a “nerd”. But she makes no apologies for her personality and balances it nicely with a fair amount of "Good Luck" and a decent sense of humor. If she isn't painting then there is a good chance she's reading.
Jaime's work is influenced by the Fantasy and Fairytale worlds found in popular fiction. Tim Burton's influence can be felt if not seen in several of her most popular series.
With her series "In the shade of poison trees" and "Between darkness and Wander" Jaime has created a fantasy world that is all her own. The former being a twisted love story and the latter being a tale of adventure and travel.
Jaime's series Heartache and Poetry is one of beautiful sadness. The Minimalism in these paintings is meant to add impact to the overall feeling of heartbreak.
Our Original Paintings and Fine Art Prints can be found in our
Zibbet Shop.
Promotional deals and previews of our newest pieces can be found daily on
Facebook.
