Taliah Lampert

My handsome husband just completed a 5 hour endurance mountain bike race on Sunday, and will be going to Vancouver in a few weeks to do the BC Bike Race - a seven-day stage race from Vancouver to Whistler.  This boy LOVES bikes, specifically mountain bikes.  Although to my knowledge Taliah hasn't done many mountain bike portraits, I still dedicate this post to my hubby. :)

When I saw this photo on Apartment Therapy, I was immediately in love with the artwork (although that little shelf big enough for a book is kind of cool too).  And even thought they look like track bikes, I thought of Chris.  The artist is Brooklyn-based Taliah Lempert, and her reverence for all things bike can be seen in her art.

A track cyclist herself, she lives and works in New York, and her subjects are, in her words, "bikes [that] are, or have been, used daily for transportation, messenger work and/or for racing, They are worn and customized uniquely, being at once a specific bike and a collective symbol of empowerment."  

She seems to work in just about every medium, from paint to drawing, to screen-printing and pastels.  She sells t-shirts, postcards, posters, prints, and even a bicycle colouring book.  Check out her site bicyclepaintings.com or her store on Etsy.  The prints are quite affordable.  Unfortunately, she doesn't work from photos, preferring to paint the bike in her studio, so I can't commission one for Chris (although she may not do mountain bikes - "roadies" and mountain bikers for some reason often don't mix...).  Too bad - as this is one place where our obsessions can co-exist!  *UPDATE* Taliah wrote to assure me that she has nothing but love for mountain bikes as well! )  :)