G-Nie Arambulo’s Boysen print ad campaign ‘Flowers’ won a Bronze Campaign Lion at the 2009 Cannes International Advertising Festival. This was the second ever Cannes Lion award won by the Philippines and first ever in the print category. The brief seemed straightforward – make flowers out of paint splashes – but it was indeed a simply-said idea with a much more complex process. Arambulo explained that every single part of the photographs [each petal, each color, each stem] was done individually with actual splatters of Boysen Paint, high powered, high-speed flash, a Hasselblad camera, and a Phase One Digital back. The project required “perfect timing, along with the right combination of lights, equipment, skill, and perseverance.” From a distance the ads may look like any other old photographs of flowers but get a little closer and it is clear they are far beyond that. These flowers were not from mother nature but, rather, man-made through and through.

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One can say without a doubt that Swedish artist Linnea Strid’s forte is painting water in a way that confuses the onlooker as to whether the piece they are looking at is a photograph or a painting. Strid must have studied water in so much depth [mentally, visually, and physically alike] that she knows it inside and out. It seems as if she knows all of its characteristics and behaviors like one would know their best friend. Linnea knows when it moves, how it moves, where it moves, why it moves, and in turn truly moves all people that view her work.

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