Eric Joyner has a seemingly endless fascination with robots; not just any robots, mind you, specifically those wonderfully bizarre tin robots from the 1950’s, largely made in Japan and often constructed in inexplicable configurations; oh, and doughnuts, lots of doughnuts.

Joyner was an illustrator with clients like Random House, McGraw-Hill, Levi’s, Sprint, Hasbro Warner Brothers and Microsoft; and had received awards from the Society of Illustrators and Spectrum art collections. He began to enter juried shows with his own paintings of urban landscapes, Mexican masks, cartoon characters and… tin robots. The latter captured his attention and as his presence as a gallery artist grew and he transitioned into gallery art full time, he focused largely on that theme; oh, and doughnuts, lots of doughnuts.

Joyner’s site has galleries of his work, arranged by year, in which you can find numerous examples of his favorite subjects, which also include plastic robots, particularly the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, and a few movie an TV robots, like Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet (my personal favorite) and the Robot from Lost in Space (who I found out actually had a name: “B-9”, as in “benign”); oh, and doughnuts, lots of doughnuts.

When browsing the galleries, be sure to click on the images to see the larger versions. His work is much more painterly than you might assume, and large in scale. He doesn’t give the dimensions in on the site, but you can see some of his pieces in this video interview on Art Babble.

You can also find a few more images of his work on his blog, Ruminations from a Tin World, though it’s only a few posts.

There is a book of Joyner’s work, titled, as you might expect, Robots and Doughnuts.

As you go back in years through his blog, you’ll find other somewhat related subjects, like tin spaceships, hot rod models (driven by tin robots, naturally), tin cars and other collectibles; oh,… and doughnuts, with and without sprinkles.

A simultaneous fascination with detail and uncluttered open spaces led to an unusual combination of the two for Nigel (NJ) Cox, an Irish born artist now living and working in London.

Cox calls his stye Photorealistic Minimalism, and gives a description here of its inception and of the original work that started him on this particular path.

The majority of his recent paintings in that style are of figures walking away from the viewer, prone and foreshortened, or otherwise positioned so that their faces are not a prominent part of the composition, forcing you to see the figure as a figure, not a portrait. This is not only an unusual compositional choice but a contrast to Cox’s other emphasis which is portraiture.

You can browse through pages of thumbnails on his site, either from the home page or the Paintings page, and can continue to click through the larger images in the pop-up window.

For even larger versions of his work, including the image above, top, “The Black Basque” (larger version here), see Cox’s blog, Paintings from the Street, which also includes work not shown in his primary site.

Cox paints in oil on linen, and works in the traditional method of layers of glazes.

Ukrainian painter Evgeni Gordiets was trained at the National School of Fine Arts, State University of Fine Arts and the State Academy of Fine Art, all in Kiev, Ukraine.

You will sometimes hear his paintings referred to as “sunny” or “serene” Surrealism. Though I doubt that Gordiets adheres to the actual tenants of the original Surrealists, his work does show their influence, but without the intention to shock or disturb. Instead, he offers a contemplative twist on reality, painted in a bright, detailed manner.

His work suggests a confluence of Magritte and Eyvind Earle, with a touch of Arnold Böcklin thrown infor good measure. You will also find brushes with pointillism and, as you go back in time, more straightforward landscapes and still life, rendered with a similar approach.

Gordiets compositions often follow similar themes, with foreground gardens or rocky outcrops set against an expanse of water and distant, sun bleached cliffs. They evoke a stillness and sense of timelessness, a feeling accentuated by a technique that carries hints of Renaissance landscape, though with a much lighter palette (see my posts on Jean Fouquet and Giovanni Bellini).

His palette is often light in value but muted in color intensity; at other times the colors are preternaturally brilliant and outside the range of nature’s normal colorations; including trees with blue or purple crowns.

I can’t find an official site for the artist, but he is represented by several galleries. [Correction: there is an official site, it just didn’t show up in my initial search. I didn’t think to simply look for the artist’s name as the domain. Here is the official site: http://evgenigordiets.com, and the gallery page: http://evgenigordiets.com/art.html]