My new favorite artist

Since I didn't go to art school, and I didn't even take art after elementary school, I'm incredibly behind the curve when it comes to art appreciation and general knowledge about artists. That is my caveat for all of my friends who DID go to art school (Hi Seth and Steven) so that I don't look like a complete ignoramus when I say who this person is, and that I had never heard of them before in my entire life.

Caveat ended, I can now say that my new favorite artist is Ralph Eugene Meatyard. I can't think of anything more exiting to me than taking the realism implicit in the medium of photography and just tweaking it a tiny bit to make the images haunting, but still credible. Sure, photographers have been doing this for ages, and I'm probably not saying anything new here, and okay, the masks in some of his photos take the tweak a little far, but I still love them. Mike was less enthusiastic about most of his work than me. But we both enjoy our art a bit on the gothic side.

That's enough of that diatribe for now. Enjoy this lovely Meatyard photograph ("Madonna") I'm borrowing from Masters of Photography until I can afford to get my own...