Jacob Brostrup is an artist who splits time between Odsherred, Denmark, and Barcelona, Spain. He graduated from the Danish National School of Design in Copenhagen.

His creations are focused on semi-realistic paintings full of vivid colors and details and within the last ten years, Jacob has achieved wide recognition for his work, characterized for his complex ability to bring out light in his multi-dimensional imagery.

Jess is a contemporary artist from Black Mountain, NC who works primarily with wool as her sculptural medium. She received her BFA from Warren Wilson College and is currently working on her MFA at Georgia State University. Along with making exhibition work she loves running her craft fair business, Heart Felt Designs, attending residencies and teaching workshops.

Jess explains her work by saying, “My medium of choice is wool, and my work combines the traditional craft of needle felting and figurative sculpture. Needle felting is a process in which I roll up wool and then by stabbing it with a barbed needle I force the fibers to lock together. The denser the wool gets with each poke of the needle, the more detail I get. I think of wool as being similar to clay in that I can add and subtract freely as well as bend and mold with a felting needle. Wools ability to appear hard can trick the viewer into questioning the medium. At first glance, a piece may appear to be made of stone or even paper. Using wool allows me to create a strong, soft structure while providing a warm and neutral surface onto which a viewer can project a narrative or emotional response. My creating process tends to begin intuitively. Like many artists, observing humanity and reflecting on my own life influences me; the subject and voice tends to come later. My previous work has been a way for me to process my own personal growth, trauma I experienced as a child, and self-image. In my past work I took a more abstract approach to cultivate concepts in transition to a sculptural practice. For example the repetitive craters in two of the works illustrate the impact of trauma that compromises the integrity of a “thick skin”. Craters and folded patterns in the surface of the works illustrate the chaos caused by traumatic experiences that influence self-image. The majority of the figures and forms have proportions based on my own measurements and function as self-portraits.”

Christina Lucia Giuffrida is an Australian artist, now based New York City. Ideas on nostalgia, nationhood and queer storytelling lie at the heart of her practice, that spans sculpture, painting and ceramics. Through these mediums, intimate fantasias of love, hope and fear play themselves out against the backdrop of ‘The Great Outdoors’.

Giuffrida earned her BVA in Sculpture from the University of Sydney and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She is the recipient of the ‘Art Start’ grant from the Australian Federal Government and the ‘Emerging Artist’ grant from the Ian Potter Foundation. Recently she has completed residencies in Italy, USA and the Dominican Republic. Her work has also been featured in Frontrunner Magazine, New American Paintings and the Harvard publication ‘Peripheries: A Journal of Word and Image’ (Fall 2020). Selected exhibitions include Space Gallery (USA), The Art Vacancy (USA), The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (USA), Sotheby’s (USA), ABC Stone (USA), M. Contemporary (AUS), Articulate Gallery (AUS), Verge Gallery (AUS) and Home Gallery (AUS). Her work is held in private collections in both the United States and Australia.

Heather Sundquist Hall is an artist based in Smithville, Texas. Her work is heavily influenced by narratives, nostalgia and details.

Heather’s illustrations have become pieces of her own stories whose purpose is to preserve memories like souvenirs.

Much of Heather’s focus is on the details. It’s the subtle floral pattern on a curtain, or the kind of plaid a certain couch was that she sat on in November of 1986 that she is most attracted to explore.

Heather’s work is also an attempt to honor the past, either by way of exploring it’s authentic parts or through her own interpretations.

Although Heather’s work illustrates her personal stories, it is her hope that when making and sharing art, that she can create a connection with the person looking at it, inviting them to pause for a quiet moment, to feel even just the smallest pull on their heartstrings. Heather hopes to help them recall their own narratives, the stories that have helped to shape them and the ones that they live by.

Efraim Rodriguez gives a prominence to woodwork. Created from cuts or assembly of different types of wood collected in Spain, where he’s based. The artist combines in his works the strong presence of the materials and a meticulous technique, which brings a richness of texture and nuances.

Efraim Rodriguez’ sculptures convey innocence, delicacy and, although they are realistic, one can sense a surreal touch, as if the imagination of the children were part of the process, especially evident in the elements that surround them, or from which they seem to emerge.

Michael DeLuca is an artist from the Philadelphia, PA area who understands drawing as a medium unto itself. Working exclusively with pastel on paper, he uses 2-dimensional graphic shapes as subject matter to explore ideas of gesture, motion, and cause & effect. His shapes are intentionally flat, but malleable; minimal, but full. And Drit’s their uncoordinated ability to expand, stretch, slouch, or bend that interests Michael the most.

Ledelle Moe was born in Durban, South Africa in 1971. She studied sculpture there at Technikon Natal and graduated in 1993. Active in the local art community, Moe was one of the founding members of the FLAT Gallery, an artist initiative and alternative space in Durban. A travel grant in 1994 took her to the United States where she embarked on a period of study at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Sculpture Department Master’s program. She completed her Master’s Degree there in 1996 and soon after accepted an adjunct position in the Sculpture Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland. Later she taught at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC, Virginia Commonwealth University and St.Mary’s College of Maryland.

Ledelle explains the work by saying, “Most recently I have been exploring notions of monumentality and the human form through a series of sculpted figures. Created with a process that begins with the digging and gathering of soil from various locales and progresses in the studio through such actions as welding, casting, modeling, and carving, I create these figures in order to open up narratives that speak through both image and materiality. At the core of these works are reflections on place. Over the past year I had been traveling to various countries including Dhrangadhra in India, Gaborone in Botswana, and Durban, Cape Town, and the Karoo, in South Africa. In each location I gathered sand and dirt and embedded this sampling of earth into cement carvings of small birds and figures. This small gesture for me, spoke to a larger issue of land as identity. I was also conscious that in journeying to locales both familiar and unfamiliar the works that I created were a very direct response to my tactile experiences of that site. For each work I used the local aggregate from that place in an attempt to ‘mark’ or reflect on that place and its history.”

Originally from Minnesota, Michelle Jader now lives and works in San Francisco, California. She worked for nearly 10 years as a marketing consultant before following her heart and earning an MFA in fine art painting from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco.

Her work explores moments when we willingly and unwillingly dive into the next phase of our life. Whether it’s moving to a new city, starting or ending a relationship, having a baby, or quitting a job, these moments of endings and beginnings are alternately terrifying and exhilarating. We jump, dive or fall, armed only with faith in ourselves, as our lives change.

Transitions like these include the sense of falling, lack of control, and the feeling that anything is possible. We’re vulnerable in these moments and despite our efforts, our actions seem to be more public than other times in our lives. To capture these feelings, Michelle paints a series of images on semi-transparent, acrylic panels. The push and pull inherent in viewing different images on separate surfaces support the work’s theme and provide an exciting way for Michelle to paint motion, change and emotional release.

Jess Franks is known for vibrant acrylic paintings that dance the line between realistic and abstracted. As a former magazine graphic designer by trade (including work for Greenville Magazine, South Carolina Magazine, and Mechanical Engineering Magazine), she has spent countless hours on her computer poring over photography. A few years ago she discovered that painting not only allows her to delve back into a more tactile world, but also to create scenes in radical colors that no photo could capture. She uses the familiar structures of the natural world around her to explore new palettes, resulting in paintings that are at once both unexpected yet accessible. Jess now maintains a full-time art studio.

In between paintings, Jess has spent much of her time researching how social media and online commerce can create communities and sustain artists through nontraditional avenues. She has found an incredibly interactive art-collecting community on Instagram and uses that platform as her primary location for studio updates and shop news. Jess has placed in multiple contests on Minted, including first and second place wins in the Minted X West Elm contests, and a third place win in the Minted X Domino contest.

Liz Steketee lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children where she maintains her own art practice. For over a decade, Liz was a member of the photo faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute where she specialized in digital imaging, compositing, mixed media, and the handmade books. In 2004, Liz completed her MFA at SFAI where she received the prestigious John Collier Award of Excellence for her thesis project. The project was based on the turbulent circumstances surrounding the birth of Liz’s first child, Emma. After completing her graduate studies, Liz dedicated her work fully to art practice and teaching. In 2017, Liz moved into a full time studio practice. Liz’s personal work focuses the notions of photography and its role in family life, memory, and our sense of self. Her most recent work explores mixed media; particularly the combination of textiles, book arts, sculpture, and photography.

Braden Bandel is originally from Kansas City, Kansas. He earned a BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited works in Portland, OR. Kansas City, MO. Providence, RI. and Brooklyn, NY.

Braden explains his work by saying, “I am invested in the idea of painting as a container for the psychological. Much of my research is concerned with the role of gothic fiction as a means of processing individual and collective fears and anxieties during times of rapid social, technological, and political change. Drawing a connection between literary fiction and the fiction of the painted image, I attempt to translate some of the ambitions of fiction writing into the realm of painting. I have a proclivity for the fantastical and the melancholic, which have remained as abiding themes in my work.”

Stefaan De Croock, aka Strook, is a Belgian contemporary artist. He mastered in fine arts at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. In 2011, he became a full-time artist. He has been expanding his boundaries ever since, both literally and figuratively as galleries in Stockholm, Miami, Bangkok, Montreal and Mexico City picked up and lauded his ever more layered and meaningful collages, sculptures, installations and paintings.

The central theme of his oeuvre can be distilled to ‘time’, a given that has always inspired Strook. This is noticeable in his chosen raw work material: ‘old’ wood. He finds it at what he calls ‘non-places’: desolate, eerie locations where humans once intervened but that were left carelessly, recklessly, ruined. Think of a deserted monastery, a perished fishing boat or an abandoned bar. He collects and later uses scrap materials to form his monumental works. In doing so, the artist grants these objects a return to the human timeline and connects their past with a new future, location and purpose.

Stefaan explains his work by saying, “To me, the discarded materials are something magical. They possess a certain spontaneity that’s impossible to recreate. The colors, the paint, the relief… They form an esthetic imprint of everything that ever happened to the materials. You can ‘see’ time. It’s a privilege to be able to use it.”

Stephanie Cobb is an M.F.A. Candidate at LSU College of Art + Design and has received a B.F.A. in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design. She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions including galleries in Savannah, Louisville, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baton Rouge, Monroe, College Station, and France. After graduation from SCAD, she focused her professional experience in museums and for nonprofit organizations in the art and science fields.

Cobb has attended residencies at the Burren College of Art (Ireland) in 2017, Kentucky Foundation for Women (Louisville) in 2018, HOME (Philadelphia) in 2019, and with the Arts Council of Brazos Valley (Texas) in 2020. Currently, Cobb is living and working as an Instructor of Record for LSU College of Art + Design in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and known for large-scale installations and sculptures that manifest his interactions with American pop culture and the Latinx experience, Justin Favela has exhibited his work both internationally and across the United States. His installations have been commissioned by museums including the Denver Art Museum in Colorado and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. His latest major project, Puente Nuevo, is on view in Fort Worth, Texas, at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, through June 2020. He is the recipient of the 2018 Alan Turing LGTBIQ Award for International Artist. Favela hosts two culture-oriented podcasts, “Latinos Who Lunch” and “The Art People Podcast.” He holds a BFA in fine art from UNLV.

Justin explains his work by saying, “As a multidisciplinary artist, I like to express my identity exploring the notions of authenticity and place using familiar materials to make large scale installations, sculptures and paintings. My interest in art history, Latinx culture, community, celebration, home and my obsession with pop-culture inform my practice with the intention of dismantling institutional hierarchies, making my work accessible and fun. As a queer person of color in the United States I believe that expressing joy, taking up space and simply existing is a political act.”

Dutch artist Eric Basstein started painting on an early age and at the age of 19 he went to art school.

After 10 years in the music scene he felt that the need to paint again got bigger and bigger. In 2015 Eric decided to switch back to painting and this time with full focus. He took his experience from his musical background with him, and used that for his paintings.

Inspired by the similarities between art and music, the way modern music is created by combining samples just like paintings are constructed by layering imagery, he developed a process that uses this approach when constructing work. Combining images from fashion magazines with a piece of a comic book illustration or a part of classic painting, felt similar to sampling a bass line or snare when creating hip hop music.

Born in Jackson, Michigan, Jason Middlebrook earned a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz before pursuing graduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Middlebrook gathers his creative inspiration from both nature and technology, transferring their complex relationship into works of sculpture, installation, painting, and large-scale drawing. Despite these various mediums, Middlebrook’s work consistently references art-historical traditions, styles, and movements. For instance, his sculptures crafted from hardwood planks, which he began in 2008 after relocating from New York City to Hudson, New York, feature painted abstractions. They are collisions of nature, art-making, and history that exemplify the artist’s approach.

Zena Holloway is a British photographer, specialized in creating still and moving images while working in water. Using the solitary and open space of the ocean environment, she takes the underwater aesthetic and makes her own magical setting. Her images capture the deep, and often complex subconscious connections, we have to oceans, lakes and waterways.

Born in Bahrain and raised between London and pretty much everywhere else in the world, she went on her first dive in England as a teenager. She lived in Egypt and then the Caribbean for a number of years before qualifying as a PADI instructor and Commercial Diver. Charmed by the magic of the underwater world, she began experimenting with a camera and decided to chart her own course in an ultra-niche profession.

Zena explains her work by saying, “My underwater photography illuminates the space between myth and reality. On the one side, our seas and oceans are powerful symbols from folklore and fairy tale, places of enchantment but also mystery and danger. On the other, water is an eternally present and powerful truth, nourishing, sustaining and commanding our respect. Somewhere in between is a world of imagination that I am inspired to bring to life, in the process asking questions about ourselves, our relationship with water and our responsibilities to the natural environment.”

Caleb Hahne is a Denver based artist who’s paintings address themes of memory, vulnerability, intimacy and boyhood. Through storytelling, he reflects on a liminal space, often eliciting memory. He received a BFA in Fine Arts from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2014 and currently lives and works in CO. He was an artist in residence at ShowPen from September 2013 to August 2014 and is currently in residency at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, both located in Denver. He recently completed a traveling artist residency with Southwest American Bullet (SWAB).

Erik Thor Sandberg lives and works in Washington, DC. Sandberg is known for his masterful oil paintings of the human figure and landscape. Creating inventive imagery ranging from panoramic to intimate, Sandberg pushes the skillful illusionism of master painting to the contemporary edge of Magic Realism.

His work has been exhibited at public and private venues internationally, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; and Baker Museum, Naples, FL. Sandberg’s paintings are also included in numerous international private collections.

Julia Fullerton-Batten was born in Bremen, Germany. Her early life was spent in Germany and the USA, but after her parent’s divorce she and her siblings moved to the UK. There she completed her secondary education, then studied photography at college. Subsequently she assisted professional photographers for five years before a first commercial assignment kick-started her career in 1995, and first gained recognition as a fine-art photographer in 2005.

Julia’s use of unusual locations, highly creative settings, street-cast models, accented with cinematic lighting are hallmarks of her very distinctive style of photography. She insinuates visual tensions in her images, and imbues them with a hint of mystery, which combine to tease the viewer to re-examine the picture, each time seeing more content and finding a deeper meaning. These distinctive qualities have established enthusiasts for her work worldwide and at all ends of the cultural spectrum, from casual viewers to connoisseurs of fine-art photography.

The foundation of her success was ‘Teenage Stories’ (2005), an evocative narrative of the transition of a teenage girl to womanhood. This and sequel projects portray the difficult stages and life situations of an adolescent girl’s transition to womanhood as she grapples with the vulnerability of her teenage predicament – adjustments to a new body, her emotional development and changes in her social standing.

Hollis Heichemer was born in Binghamton, New York, and currently splits time between Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Heichemer’s abstract paintings are deeply inspired by nature, and her own experiences and interactions with the natural world.

Hollis explains the work by saying, “Painting and drawing is an investigation into the edge of where reality and imagination are blurred and where tragedy and beauty are interconnected. I find an expression of this blurred line can be explored through an association with the time of day when night is falling, when the sudden darkness is at once confusing and threatening. Through painting, I am creating a space where one senses, experiences something which then alters our relationship within that moment. The colors of my paintings are drawn from my relationship with the outside world which I then connect to a bigger picture, to a series of reactions—responses that begin once the colors are on the canvas. I am drawn to painting in order to go into a deep space, colors I can look into and want to look into because they invite me with hints of finding something. My paintings are the experience of this unknown space.”

Mwanel Pierre-Louis is an Artist based out of Miami, FL. His work combines realism and abstraction in a narrative that draws from personal interactions and pop references. Mwanel’s paintings feature juxtapositions of fragmented experiences and a strong emphasis on the relationship between subject and color. Born in NY, from Haitian descent, he’s spent time living and absorbing the culture from New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Pierre-Louis attended New World School of the Arts’ high school program in Miami, Florida and Art Center College of Design’s illustration program in Pasadena, California.

Rob Matthews was born in North Carolina and raised in Mississippi and Tennessee. Matthews received his B.F.A. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and his M.F.A. from the Virginia Commonwealth University.

In addition to multiple solo exhibitions at various commercial galleries, Matthews also had solo exhibitions at Virginia Commonwealth University, Emory and Henry College and the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa as well as inclusion in shows at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, AR.

Lillian Blades was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1973 and currently resides in Atlanta, GA. She holds a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and an MFA in Painting from Georgia State University. In addition, Lillian has studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and Caversham in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Lillian’s works are predominately mixed media assemblages and are made with an assortment of materials, both found and constructed by her in her home based studio. Her childhood home of Bahamas, ancestral background of West Africa, and her late mother, who was a seamstress, influences her art. These influences appear through use of her color palette and objects that evoke memory and history.

As a public artist she enjoys collaborating with other artists and groups on large-scale assemblages such as The East Atlanta Library. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout various galleries in the United States, as well as The Bahamas, Trinidad, Germany and South Africa. Her public commissions include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Jean Childs Young Middle School.

Holly Cerna is a figure painter whose works explore the relationship between the temporary, tangible physical body and the intangible, eternal metaphysical body (spirit or mind) set in contemporary mundane contexts. Her subjects emit a glowing inner light representing the soul, communicating how consciousness might appear if visible. Through color theory, saturation, contrast, and perspective, her work expresses her fascination with the human condition.

Holly’s paintings are characterized by the use of commonplace objects, settings, and her everyday experiences. Her pieces comment on the everyday aesthetic of middle class life and compares it to our “magical” inner world by using daily life as subject matter in an atmosphere of transcendence.

She tries to establish a connection between audience and subject by objectifying emotions or mental states and exposing the duality that develops through different interpretations. These captured moments could go unnoticed in their original context.

Aaron Feltman is a recent graduate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with a BFA in painting. In the summer of 2019, he participated in the Yale Norfolk Summer Residency alongside 24 rising seniors from art schools across the country.

In his work, Aaron explores themes of desire that often get confronted by a combating force of repression. Lush layers of vibrating colors attract a viewer and force them to engage with the reality of the figure depicted. An interplay of inventive color with a western-rationalized body produces a dichotomy between a desire for freedom and a longing for stability in an ever-changing world. Thus, Aaron finds inspiration for his figures from a Western canon, often quoting specific paintings from art history and redefining them in relation to his time and personal experiences of gender and sexuality. He also draws inspiration from the irrational color worlds of Bonnard and the geometrically defined compositions of Balthus and Arshille Gorky’s early figure paintings. In examining where these formal concerns intersect, Aaron begins to construct worlds of his own that make this psychological friction visible.

Spencer Herr is a contemporary American painter best known for his use of traditional realism, pop culture iconography, and text. Herr, self taught, earned a BA at Northern Arizona University.

Spencer explains his work by saying, “My work transposes historic icons and artworks to highlight the finer and often overlooked narratives contained within. Frequently using text and layers the paintings are presented in carefully assembled yet sometimes chaotic combinations to tease the context to the surface. Often employing the use of text bubbles the work gives a critical voice to the culture these figures defined. Art is given a certain degree of authority by asking the viewer to not question it. This work asks us to dig deeper into the moral lessons art history has offered us.”

Alexis Childress is an Atlanta based photographer and mixed media artist born and raised Illinois, relocating to Georgia in 2013. Inspired by Afrofuturism, her work manifests as visual interpretations of her experiences growing up as a black woman in the rural Midwest, confronted with racial tensions and generational oppression; using technology to examine race, culture, social transition, and self-identity. She received her BFA from Georgia State University.

Alexis explains her work by saying, “Deriving inspiration from Afrofuturism, I create surreal, digitally created compositions that use technology to explore the meanings of race, culture, and autobiography. Being raised in a majority white Midwestern community, I was exposed to a bland, biased explanation of African American culture, history and societal allowances, confused about the black and white spaces in my life. My use of digital manipulation imitates the cultural manipulation I endured growing up in the Midwest, channeling technology as a medium for the visual representation of lived experience. By constructing combinations of photographs, digital marks and found imagery, I represent the strategically designed, fabricated culture of black people that was presented to me while examining and critiquing my own black history and the black experience in America. Integrating digitally created shapes into my compositions allows me to visually replicate the power structures that exist within and dictate Midwestern social systems as well as racially oppressive systems throughout the country. Through digitally transferred paint drips and smears, I symbolize the confusion and suspicions I have of what is inside of me and who I am, caused by propinquity to a non-inclusive environment that influenced my self-perception and instilled a distrust within myself. In addition, the photographic exploration of the pockets, curves and shapes of my body, provide me the power to rediscover my own blackness. Creating parallels between the body passed to me through generations and the true history of black people. Ultimately, allowing technology to demonstrate my mental and physical navigation of racial identity, cultural history and lived experience. Creating final compositions that are structured and designed, yet hold meaning and information within every mark.”

Nuno Viegas, also known as Metis, is a Portuguese artist born in Faro and raised in Quarteira.

After completing his studies in Visual Arts at the University of Algarve he moved to Rotterdam, The Netherlands where he discovered a new artistic identity and began to develop his paintings strongly influenced by the graffiti scene. This has been the focal point of the artist’s production and its greatest source of inspiration.

Nuno presents us a contrast between the visually aggressive and sometimes dirty reality of traditional graffiti and its peaceful and clean representation in his works. The approach to this theme is a continuous tribute to all those who dedicate part of their lives to this scene. Graffiti Writers who keep it real and alive in a time where the definition of graffiti tends to get blurred and mixed with street art.

Stom500 is an Illustrator and Muralist based in Strasbourg, France. A graphic designer by training, his universe is a cartoon-like de-fragmented imagination. This generally reveals delirious animals from literature or popular culture, in particular Les Fables de La Fontaine. Stom500 thus gives these figures a contemporary and new existence, all with lightness and technical complexity.

Kayla Mahaffey is an artist based in Chicago, IL.

Kayla explains her work by saying, “Living in our society can be tough and most of the time we have to make the best of it. A wild imagination can take you so far, but at the end of the day we need to realize and observe the world around us. And the world around us is where I find my inspiration to paint. Colorful paintings that contain hints of whimsy and realism that tell a story of inner thoughts and personal issues that sometimes go unheard. Being born and raised on the South side of Chicago, IL, only ignited my love for all things art. Seeing the struggle and the support from the community made my work evolve to a concept that is personal to me. I continue to further my technique, and creativity in my field in order to paint a beautiful picture of a new world for those around me.”

Amanda Greene is a commercial and fine art photographer from Danielsville, GA. She earned a BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

Greene’s work focuses on recapturing scenes from her Southern childhood. She describes her work by saying, “I am drawn to colors, different ways people are creative, how people decorate and celebrate, produce stands, handprinted signs, grocery stores, plastic flowers, moments of beauty. I like finding creative marks left by people in different settings. These images are mostly taken in my home state of Georgia, many of them in the county where I live. There are some images from other states as well, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana.”

Maya Freelon is an artist from Durham, NC.

Maya describes her work by saying, “In 2005 I discovered a beautiful accident in my grandmother’s basement; a stack of tissue paper was stained by water from a leaking pipe. Finding the watermarked paper changed the trajectory of my artistic career. Over the course of a decade I have experimented with tissue paper in a myriad of ways and patented several creative processes including Tissue Ink Monoprints, which is a complex application of dyeing paper and blending ink onto another substrate. When the tissue paper is dried, it’s ripped and reformed into Tissue Quilts and recycled sculptures. I also create Tissue Spirals out of paper, using the smallest scraps and tape. My most recent experimentation incorporates the use of a pottery wheel, which creates a visual vortex, resulting in Spinning Tissue Ink Monoprints, and Spinning Tissue Ink Mono/Photo Prints.”

Alfred Conteh is a painter from Atlanta, GA. He earned a BA in Fine Art from Hampton University and a Master in Fine Art from Georgia Southern University.

Alfred explains his work by saying, “This body of work is a visual exploration of how african diasporal societies in the south are fighting social, economic, educational and psychological wars from within and without to survive. The honest and false narratives of history embodied in this series are primarily personified in patinated colossuses that commemorate the people, culture, and battles that the populations they tower over have fought and continue to fight. We are at war on two fronts.”

Wihro Kim is an artist based in Atlanta, GA. His work primarily consists of paintings of dreamlike spaces that deal with perception and memory.

Kim received his BFA from Georgia State University in 2015 and has been exhibiting work consistently since graduating. He has shown locally with MINT Gallery, Hathaway Contemporary, Mason Fine Art, and Mammal Gallery amongst others and internationally with the Ionion Arts Center in Kefalonia, Greece. He was recently awarded “Local Best in Show” for MINT Gallery’s 3rd Annual Juried Exhibition and is a 2016-2017 WonderRoot Walthall Fellow.

Terri Loewenthal is an Oakland-based artist whose work examines the intersection of landscape and psyche. In her series, Psychscapes, Loewenthal investigates the sublime expanse of land and sky romanticized in the still-potent mythology of Utopian California. Psychscapes are single-exposure, in-camera compositions that utilize special optics developed by Loewenthal to compress vast spaces into complex, evocative environments. These photographs combine straightforward landscape photography with explorations into the psychology of perception.

Terri describes her work by saying, “I was referring to these images as psychedelic even before I made them. To have a psychedelic experience is to free your mind from its normal constraints. When I had the idea for these images, I was able to shift the colors of the natural world in my mind. Water was pink and leaves were blue. I’ve always been envious of painters’ ability to shift reality in whichever direction they choose. With this work, I wanted to do something similar: create a world that is familiar yet also wild, otherworldly. My work is a marriage of calculation and spontaneity. I have a toolkit and a sense of what might happen, but at the same time, it’s a surprise. I love the idea of making an “impossible” image. “

Deandra at a young age started creating for the sake of her imagination. She didn’t know that down the line she would be creating surreal self-portraits of herself and sharing them with the world. Over the past seven years Deandra has learned more about herself, her craft, and the hard work it takes to pursue ones dreams. Now Deandra is creating artwork that hopefully will help inspire other artist of all forms to create and imagine what’s in their hearts.

Deandra explains her work by saying, “As a photographer I’m always trying to capture and create an image that appeals to both myself and my audience. Creating art shows my creativity and my hard work for what I love to do. My new series ‘New Beginnings’ showcases a new chapter in my life. I want my artwork to express more of new things that I haven’t yet tried, and it reminds me of just how passionate I am about my artwork something that I haven’t felt in a while. Sometimes it can be hard to create and come up with ideas, but as long as I’m willing to get though the hard times and express what I feel in my heart and share it with the world, then I’m truly happy. “.

Nadia So is a storytelling illustrator who explores the subconsciousness within herself. Her works showcase hidden thoughts and emotions that humans experience on a daily basis that are often kept within themselves. By using this as her subject, she wants to encourage people to explore their inner thoughts and to further explore their own identity.

Colombian by birth, Dairo Vargas is a contemporary fine artist who draws influence from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to cast a connection with our behaviour in modern society. His abstract work directly references the old masters while simultaneously conveying differing psychological states.

Vargas is interested in the representation of external responses from internal experience and vice versa. Each image gives access to subconscious memories and emotions. The paintings appear to be either in stillness or movement and the fluid brush strokes invite the viewer to reflect on personal memory and encourage introspection.

The work aims to capture the thinking process. Vargas uses gestural free association to represent the mind at the point it connects to a higher energy, releasing unlimited thoughts and emotions.

Marcello Petisci is an artist based in Brussels, Belgium.

Marcello explains his work by saying, “My painting is realistic, even hyper-realistic, often with iconographic images of cars which I put in all possible states and situations. Before starting to paint I examine the variables of the types of objects painted, the form of the main subject and the place it is given within the painting. Each element in the picture has been considered and then chosen for the space it occupies in relation to the other elements already in place. “

With a keen interest in storytelling through her art, Monique Revell’s works centre around portraiture and landscapes that engages with the complex underlying emotions of her protagonists. Moving from traditional two dimensional canvas to ceramics and stoneware, the paintings are now incorporated as surfaces onto more robust and organically shaped forms. Revell also continues to paint, her work being vibrantly coloured, detailed and starkly lined.

Teri Keegan-Castrop is a sculptor living and working in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. She received her BFA in sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work is primarily Narrative Multi-Media Installation / Sculpture utilizing found objects and the figure meticulously modeled and cast in plaster. Teri has shown her work at the Kansas City Artists Coalition, as well as various galleries throughout the Midwest. Her videos have been shown on KCPT and Directors cut at Viridian N.Y.

Teri explains the work by saying, “I create installations and realistic plaster cast figures that suggest the incredible beauty, infinite expressiveness, and endless subtlety of the human form. Marci Waiting is about lost moments from the past, and things that you wish you could have or should have acted upon. My work reflects experiences from the lives of people I know and love, as I strive to narrate their life stories. I am intrigued by how life’s fragments can define and mold a person’s perception of themselves and others. The concept for each work often comes to me as a full-blown image, and I develop the audio/visual component over time. By making my adult figures smaller than average, I hope to emphasize the importance of memory and how our childhood experiences constantly inform and shape our adult selves.”

Adi Suanjaya was born in Badung, Bali and was educated in fine art at the Indonesia Institute of Art, Yogyakarta. He now lives and works in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia.

Nastia Zabrodina, aka Enze, is an artist based in Moscow, Russia.

She explains her work by saying, “my works, they exist in the world without borders, my characters have no nationality, race, clothes and sometimes gender, their skin could be red like blood, their veins are electric wires and their friends are any creatures who prefer speaking the language of symbols and colours.”

Aniebietabasi Ekong, aka Baddieani, is an artist, photographer, clothing designer and model based in Quincy, Massachusetts. Ekong graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in architectural studies. He credits his experiences growing up in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the U.S. with helping to shape his eye for design.

Jing Qin is an artist living and working in Knoxville, TN. She was born and grew up in Henan province, China. She earned her BFA and MA with honors at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. She is currently painting, drawing and exhibiting in the USA.

Jing Qin’s works are frequently figurative images which are depicted against backdrops of obscure interiors. While she develops each work instinctively, without knowing the finished result, each painting has a strong sense of narrative. She deliberately build a antagonistic narration by mixing elements from her fantasies with a commonplace of mundane world.

Jing explains the work by saying, “The truth may reside behind absurdity. Fantasy may come from reality. Surrealism is more real than realism. My works do not come from my personal experience and surroundings alone but exist as a hybridization of Chinese scenarios and American daydreams. Though I am aware of being both the narrator and creator of my paintings, the narratives remain undefined. Instead, they are generated by my unconscious, then developed and formed by the experience of viewers. I set my characters in a flatness that I call a non-logical space. The ambiguity of their gender and skin tones make them abnormal, even uncanny. They seemingly engage in meaningless tasks while holding ordinary poses, blending the odd with the ordinary. This ambiguity comes from the supernatural being presented as the mundane, and vice versa. I’m interested in prompting viewers to call into question the limits of narration, making psychological realism and surreal flights of fancy indistinguishable.”

William Reinsch is a self taught figurative painter who has been exhibited all around London including the Royal Academy and the Saatchi Gallery. In his work he explores themes of anxiety, confusion and mortality.

Kristen Rowell is an artist from Rock Hill, South Carolina. She has received her BFA in painting and sculpture from Winthrop University. Rowell uses materials such as paint, sand, powdered sugar, paprika, and graphite in many of her works. She pours, throws, and drops them onto the substrate, allowing the materials to fall wherever the do. It is beautiful to let go of control and allow materials to speak for themselves. The accumulation of materials creates a beautiful image of layers and history.

Self-taught paper artist Kelly Joy Ladd grew up in Orlando, Florida. Although she has never been formally trained in the arts, throughout her life, Kelly has always created art in one form or another. Kelly is often surrounded by scraps of paper while she carefully constructs them into intricate patterns that she often visualizes during meditation and yoga. She is inspired by rhythmic repetition, texture and pops of color. Creating art is a joy for her and she hopes to share that feeling with others.

Kelly Joy explains the work by saying, “I love the process of creating my art. I love working with my hands and feeling the paper between my fingertips. It is very meditative as I repetitively cut, rip and glue pieces of acid-free paper to the canvas. I love transcending a simple piece of paper into a 3-D piece of art. Color excites me, but I also honor the sleek simplicity of black and white. Even more, I’m enthusiastic about texture and dimension. I’ve created different ways to make texture with paper using ripping and cutting techniques. I love the playful, unexpected and dimensional element that textured paper brings to canvas. The intention of my art is to evoke a sense of wonderment through the patterns of thousands of pieces of paper used to create one of my pieces.”

Naomi Devil was born in Budapest, Hungary and now splits her time between there and Vienna, Austria. She studied Painting and Graphic Design at the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna as well as architecture at the Technical University Vienna. Her work can be found in various museum collections across Budapest and Austria. She has also exhibited across Budapest in more than 20 solo shows since 2005.

CREATURE CREATURE is an artist duo consisting of Chanel Tang and Ambrose Rehorek. They first met at university and ‘flirted through art’ until they formed an official union in 2011 under one name. Both with a background in fine art and graphic design, their work is a blend of both these practices with strong historical influences, mixed with a love of street art and illustration. Creature Creature play with the idea of duality, east meets west, and the natural world.

Born in Adelaide, Ambrose has a Degree in Visual Arts from the University of South Australia. Chanel was born in Wellington, New Zealand, moved to Australia in 1998 where she did her Degree in Fine Art at Monash University. They met doing a Graduate Diploma in Graphic Design at RMIT.

About Serge:

Serge Serum is a self taught Los Angeles based artist who does not scare easily when it comes to the complexities of the human psyche. Using reality as a springboard, he “makes a scene” of the ordinary by distorting peoples’ likenesses, in both his painted portraiture and outrageous photographs. His work has a curiously chaotic, and yet grounded feel to it. Often employing the use of heavy brushstrokes next to delicate details; powerful warm colors next to soft neutrals. Serge endows a feeling of ease in existing within what seems to be a messy actuality. The bold style facilitates a sort of fill-in-the-blanks dialogue with viewers that are captivating. His photographs are far from unclear, though, with almost startlingly bright colors draping his subjects, who appear incredibly confident and comfortable in their costume-esque garb.

David Schermann is an artist based in Vienna & Burgenland, Austria. In his project “Bigger Than Us”, Schermann brought a Russian spacesuit deep into the mountains of Vorarlberg, Austria. Digitally painted red, the sweeping mountains and valleys take on an otherworldly quality, like a deserted mirror of Earth. Both familiar and alien, the setting provides the perfect setting for the lone cosmonaut to wander and contemplate the vastness of the universe.

Thomas Ascott is a painter based in South Florida.

Thomas explains his work by saying, “Inspiration, for me, is just my accumulated experiences, things I’ve seen, heard, touched and felt through my life, jumbled about in my mind and abused by time until they show up on a piece of paper. I would love to point to a sketchbook of ordered images that would tell this story, but, as often as not, the images are spit out on scraps of envelopes near a computer or a convenient napkin ringed with coffee. Growing up in East Tennessee, I spent a great deal of my childhood wandering through the Smokies, especially the Chimneys Picnic Grounds on the Little Pigeon River. I passed many hours of many summers scrambling over rocks in the middle of streams and exploring caves and trails. The Smoky Mountains and the Little Pigeon River are the internal background to almost all of my work. No matter what the central element of a piece may be, the natural flora and fauna of the Smokies creeps in, whether in the obvious form of a Smoky Mountain songbird or salamander, or in the less obvious form of rhododendron leaves and lichen-covered boulders.”

Self taught artist and habitual doodler, Craww lives and works in Sheffield, UK drawing inspiration from daydreams, music, comics, nature, gin and an overactive imagination,

His work is a stream of consciousness ramble through the woods, uncovering secret stories and ambiguous connections, it’s direction influenced as much by accident and a short attention span as design. It is a world populated with skulls, crows and melancholic girls embraced by flowing lines and natural forms.

He enjoys seeing his creations taking on a life of their own as their world is realized with a mixture of elegance, balance and disciplined chaos, using oils, acrylic, graphite, charcoal, ink and whatever else is at hand.

Following a career in graphic design, his art is informed by a sense of balance and narrative flow, making sense of the seemingly chaotic drips and washes of colour.

Christopher Konecki is self-taught artist based in San Diego, CA. He is known for completing large scale aerosol murals, fine artwork including paintings and miniature sculptures, as well as various public and private site specific installations. Konecki’s work is explorative of social consciousness, generally irreverent, and focused on subjects that are both serious and absurd. His use of found and ‘repurposed’ objects in his work advocates the reassessment of typical ideals of function and beauty. Elements of nature often collide with harsh urban landscapes and elements of street art and graffiti, symbolizing the ongoing struggle between the harmonious coexistence of these two competing monumental forces.

Konecki has exhibited in galleries throughout Southern California. His expanded work includes participation in international mural festivals in New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico. In 2015, Konecki completed the largest mural in San Diego covering 9,500 sq ft of the 7-story parking structure at 707 Broadway. Konecki is responsible for the curation of tentpole events in the San Diego art scene such as Warehouse 1425 and the ongoing curation of the event space SILO in Makers Quarter which has resulted in nearly 100 murals. Konecki also co-founded Cohort Collective with a small group of well-known dedicated artists that continue to produce live art events and exhibitions in San Diego and beyond. Alongside non-profit organizations Pangeaseed Foundation and Surfrider Foundation, Cohort Collective co-curated Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans San Diego 2016 creating over 20 large scale public artworks that promoted various pressing environmental concerns. Konecki’s installation work may be viewed in numerous establishments, including Oxford Social Club at the Pendry Hotel San Diego, The Container Yard DTLA, Waypoint Public Restaurants, Park and Rec, Silo in Makers Quarter, Hub Marketplace, Form15 and the Arts Center of San Diego.

Hong Sungchul was born in Korea and earned a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Hong-ik University in Seoul as well as an M.F.A. in Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts.

As an artist he embraces modern technologies and various media within his work. The concept of the current body of work has evolved from an earlier stage of his career. His use of numerous staggered elastic strings upon which the imagery is printed, communicates his unique concept of visual consciousness. The broken images interlace and transform to reveal a final image, incomplete until the dynamic interaction of the viewer. Through these engaging three-dimensional works Hong Sungchul attempts to unveil the virtual object through his use of distorted and fragmented imagery resulting in stunning visual effects.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Alea Hurst began her journey into drawing and painting in high school. She produces two-dimensional works, particularly drawings and paintings, which range from traditional to experimental and mixed media approaches. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Georgia in Athens in 2013. She is currently working towards her Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited various places including the University of Georgia, Beep Beep Gallery, and Mason Murer Fine Art’s Fresh Blood. Her work also has been featured in multiple publications and purchased by the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Most recently one of her pieces is featured in the series 4 bottle labels for Collective Arts Brewing in Ontario, Canada. Her current work focuses on the roles of masks and reversing those roles to comment on the evolution of society.

Alea explains her work by saying, “Foremost in my work, I am experimenting with painting in a new way by prepping and priming fabric for oil painting. I am attracted to pattern in my work and picking the fabric specifically for each painting becomes part of my creative process. The fabric also plays another key role; I let the fabric show through in unexpected areas. Sometimes it is left alone, others it has been glazed over to form the clothes themselves. This creates an illusion often making it difficult to tell what is actually painted and what is not.”

Dana Hargrove, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee University, Scotland with a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honors in Painting. She continued her education in the USA with a Master of Fine Art from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Hargrove is a Professor of Studio Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida where she now resides.

Hargrove concerns herself with ideas that frame our perceptions of the land and our sense of place and space, she employs a range of media from photography, collage, sculpture and installed paintings including large scale site specific works.

Dana explains her work by saying, “Landscape, and how we manipulate it to fit preconceived ideals or corporatized molds, is familiar territory for my art practice. Whether I am exploring the urban environment with its homogenized grid of rectangular blocks, or examining how culture frames and re-frames landscape, I remain responsive to how our perceptions of the world and sense of place are shaped by human design. As a conceptually based artist, I move freely between mediums, using painting as a familiar touchstone, yet often incorporating sculpture, video, and photography within my installations. My recent work includes spatially illusionistic representations and three-dimensional relief paintings, which offer synthesized versions of geological outcrops, cairns, or even cityscapes. The works create spare, simulated landscapes where my constructions begin to play with the space of hyper-reality.”

Scott Allen Roberts is a Los Angeles native living and practicing in New York. A fine art major from the University of Southern California and post graduate from Parsons the New School, Scotts’ observational landscapes explore cosmological, ontological, and phenomenological concepts surrounding the ideas of existentialism and the human condition. In the history of landscape art there have always been questions of how humanity fits into its environment. Having experienced close familial death early on in his life with the loss of his parents, themes of mortality both haunt and enlighten his work. The burning human questions of ‘Where do we go when we die?’, ‘Where did the world come from?’, or ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ were the first of many that Scott pondered in his youth and contemplated in observation of landscapes. ? Roberts’ landscapes borrow from many styles to create work that is bold, graphic and fantastical. His landscapes ask humanities questions of the unknown, enticing the viewer through vibrant color, larger scale formats, and hints of the decorative. The viewer is drawn into an allegory filled with metaphors. From a contemporary perspective, Roberts typically employs the use of reflections, cast shadows, and portals such as windows or doors as a question of where our actual and virtual lives intersect, and the illusions that accompany both sides. Scott continues to explore his personal journey through art and allows the viewer insight into not just his, but their own deeper feelings with the work.

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo immigrated to Canada at age 11. He is a graduate of The Ontario College of Art and Design (2001) and obtained his MFA degree at Concordia University in 2008. He has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in venues such as The International Print Centre in New York, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, MAI (Montréal Arts interculturels), Sur Gallery in Toronto, The Mexic-Arte museum in Austin, USA and Casa de las Americas gallery in La Havana, Cuba among others.

Osvaldo explains his work by saying, “Using drawing as a vehicle for storytelling, my ongoing body of work is a constant revision of historical, cultural and personal experience. The main concepts I revisit are issues of collective memory, historical trauma and cultural identity within a global context, explored through the possibilities of narrative. My work process is an intuitive construction of memory as a form of personal myth-making that casts political commentary, voices modes of resistance, and most recently speaks to a process of re- construction and healing. Originally from El Salvador, my drawn imagery deploys elements of pre-Columbian mythology, Salvadoran popular folklore and iconography sourced from historical and contemporary visual culture to revise and manipulate appropriated imagery into personal mythic narratives onto paper. In addition, I also situate the human body as a symbol and site for trauma in reference to personal and collective experiences of war and loss that marked El Salvador during the civil war years in the 1980\’s, – a time my family and I lived through, and as a result of which, emigrated to Canada. Over time however, the act of drawing has become a response to re- imagine memory as a place where myth and personal experience converge and reconcile.”

Gregory Ferrand received a degree in film from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1997 and promptly headed off to Buenos Aires, Argentina to teach English to business people. While living there he kept an illustrated journal in which he experimented with different media and recorded his observations about the culture and people around him. In doing so, he came to understand two things about himself: 1). that he was a painter and 2). that he was fascinated by the subtext of human interactions. He returned to the States in early 2000 and began painting seriously.

Gregory pulls on influences as wide ranging as comics, Mexican muralists, and 1950’s fashion to create paintings that reveal the beauty of living. His background in film is evident in the strong use of narrative he employs to tell stories about characters and situations that do, have, and will exist; gently unmasking the psychological or emotional state of the subject, inviting the viewer to share and/or identify.

Greg explains his work by saying, “My most recent work explores the feeling and reality of being disconnected and alienated (which results in multiple personal realities), despite and sometimes because of the close proximity in which we live to one and other. It is ironic that we, as innately social animals, often struggle to feel connected with friends, family, our communities, society, and the world at large. To overcome this, we set aside our basic instincts and learned biases in order to be ‘open.’ We hope, by doing so, to form a connection, so that we can reassure ourselves that we are not alone, that we share the same reality with someone else.”

Richard Westerhuis is a Dutch photographer who’s work emcompasses staged photography as well as intuitive in the moment.

The “dramatizing elements,” as the artist calls them, are what makes his images their narrative power: his subjects are performers, professionals and amateurs. Whose interior self can differ greatly from their projected selves. Working together with those who are not afraid to be themselves. Whenever this is expressive or modest and are willing to open up. Those who throw off their masks. He believes there’s a beauty in being vulnerable.

In a world dominated by artificialness, representation and autogry. Is it still possible to be yourself? Are we still unique? With a background in psychology, Richard investigates through photography which roles of individualism and collectivism affects our social interactions and relationships. In ways by looking at our self and others. Staging from his own observations and creativity moments of our daily lives.

Richard explains his work by saying, “An ocean is like a human being I feel a deep spiritual connection with. The waters are sacred and should be protected. Water will always be our most precious resource of life. However, it also difficult to fully grasp nature because our oxygen needing bodies are not able to reach this underwater world. When our brains are made up of 75 percent of water surely we must be able to experience the deepest oceans in the imagination of the mind. Westerhuis challenges the viewer to fantasize what the experience of unexplored nature looks like and in this way dares the viewer to take a look beneath the surface. The Whanganui River in New Zealand finally has its human rights. The Iwi (tribe) has been fighting for the rights of this living whole since the 1870s.”

Elisa Mearelli is an artist based in Morciano di Romagna, Italy. She earned a Bachelors degree in Multimedia Design and a Masters degree in Visual Design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, Italy.

Elisa explains the work by saying, “I was born in Fabriano, a town with a historic tradition of paper making so I have a strong bond with this material and my works are made just of paper. For me the paper is not just a support to cover with color, but rather is the true protagonist of the work of art. My studies focalize on the necessity of leaving an indelible mark on the paper by means of strong invasive action such as making holes and cuts in it. None of my works can be erased or covered over with color. The paper has been cut, there is no going back; it has its own form, it tells its own story, like the human skin.”

Alina Slimovschi is an artist based in Timisoara, Romania.

Alina explains the work by saying, “Along fifteen years of artistic development, my work encompassed different fields of experimental and theoretical research, starting with the personal life experience, later engaged in a philosophical and metaphysical, nonetheless social field of action. My latest interest resides in the feminine figure, not as a portrait but as an archetypal vehicle for different human emotion as well as for certain aspects of metamorphosis. I consider intricacy and metaphor, symbolism, ambiguity or directness as tools for my paintings and portraits in my endeavor to evoke a series of shifting emotions, themes and experiences, from loneliness and loss, to love and desire, to the need to cope and the need for privacy.I use the path of narrative-driven images with symbolic twists and turns embedded within them, in scenes with mixed potentials, encouraging free interpretation. My goal is to create a paradoxal, ambiguous but still easily readable image for both soul and mind; a synthesis of fantasy and real-world memory, delicate, but determined, innocent, but sensual, the hunter and the haunted in the same time.”

Yael Caffrey is an artist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Yael explains the work by saying, “The figurative image is one of the common themes in my work. Enlarging, breaking down and reassembling images with a clear goal of provoking both discomfort and admiration in the piece itself, and by extension, within its viewer. In an area often shunned in the pursuit of the aesthetic I have found interest in researching the distorted appearance.”

London based conceptual painter and illustrator Raman Aso’s niche lies in creating compelling and informative images that provoke emotion and capture the darkness committed by man’s own senselessness. She continuously teaches herself how to paint, draw and create as much as she can whilst delving into many variations of crafting her work. Aso’s practice consists of not sticking to a sole medium, but instead blending a variety of styles together in order to reach her outcome. The heart of her paintings derive from her Middle Eastern heritage, along with her experiences and issues she feels need to be brought alight. With Aso’s work embodied in mood and tone, she allows herself to transfer and mold the same textures and grains she is drawn to – onto her canvas. A recent graduate of Arts University Bournemouth, Aso has exhibited her work in London a total of six times in the past year alone – allowing her to continuously showcase her work to the masses whilst passionately expressing herself at the same time.

Todd Jones is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in painting, drawing, and photography. He is currently living and working in Columbus, Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and double majored in studio art and psychology at Florida State University. His work adds a visual dimension to psychology through his artistic process. Graphic design served as his introduction to art and since then, he has acquired skills in a variety of genres. Jones takes an experimental approach to new materials, manipulating them in unique ways to gain a better understanding of their limitations.

He explains the work by saying, “The process of painting has provided me with endless experimentation. The exploration of layering and distortion comments on the complexity of the self and the mind. The dialogue between the controlled aspects of painting and the unexpected outcomes of process-based methods give the work a mind of its own. Such is the battle of self-opposition being fought within the mind. These works are explorations into human nature. By studying psychology, my art allows me to express this understanding. My personal knowledge, beliefs, and experiences inform how I illustrate the internal self. The self I reveal cannot be seen by the naked eye. Through my studies of how color relates to personality, these works are an exploration of identity. While studying psychology, I have been fascinated by personality development along with psychology of color. Color is used to define the piece, along with revealing the work’s personality and conflicts within. The use of colors in each work is a short visual summary of prominent characteristics. My work takes an experimental approach to new materials, manipulating them in unique ways to gain a better understanding of their limitations.”

Dejvid Knezevi is a dotted inker or what’s more commonly referred to as a stippling illustrator from Kamnik, Slovenia.

My illustrations include anywhere between 10k to 150k dots per illustration, depending on the subject matter. The motifs vary, mostly including questions about perception and perspectives, largely relying on realism and surrealism. Originally the illustrations are quite small, a surface area of approximately 12 x 12 cm, so the time it takes to complete an illustration of this size with as many dots is usually around 50 hours, more or less.

Rachel Beltz is an artist based in West Chester, PA.

Rachel explains her work by saying, “I am on a mission to make people stop and appreciate the “little” beautiful details of their everyday life. Using watercolors, I create photo-realistic miniature paintings; each of my pieces can roughly fit under a United States Quarter (for my International friends, that’s about 28 x 28 mm.) Imagine a ballerina small enough to fit under a single key on your keyboard… maybe your favorite singer… or even a ferocious tiger that could fit under a postage stamp? I have painted them all; squeezing in each and every detail. I paint for the details. Hopefully you can bring some of this into your daily life.”

Erin Vincent is an artist based in Toronto, ON, Canada.

Erin explains the work by saying, “Through the collection and manipulation of societal ephemera I consider how art is able to embody what language defies and how the amalgam of materials affect the viewer. Within the work the hierarchy of matter is eliminated forming parity between the inanimate and the living. These things possess their own liveliness, ability to engage and be engaged with. Familiar materials captivate the viewer until further consideration elicits subtle unease, evoking conflicting emotions awakened by the forms’ agency. Themes of memory, vulnerability and emotionally charged states are explored; juxtaposed against the use of a variety of processes associated with utilitarian methods that are repetitive in nature and labour intensive. The materials and methods employed emphasize the significance of process and play with the physical and psychological tensions that exist between forms and material.”

Born in L.A. in 1978, Tristan Eaton started pursuing street art as a teenager, painting everything from billboards to dumpsters in the urban landscapes of the cities where he lived, be it London, Detroit, or New York. He designed his first toy for Fisher-Price at 18 years old and soon became a driving force in the world of designer toys. Eaton’s work for Kidrobot, including the famous Dunny and Munny art toys, helped him achieve international renown and an ever-growing fan base. After forming his Creative Agency Thunderdog Studios in New York City in 2004, Eaton became a leader in the advertising and commercial-art spheres, and is regularly commissioned by a roster of clients that includes Nike, Versace, and even Barack Obama.

These days, Eaton is one of the most prominent street artists working today. Eaton’s large scale mural work features a meticulous, visual collage of pop imagery mixed with his unique personal style, all executed with freehand spray paint on a colossal scale. Eaton now focuses on his Fine Art and large-scale mural work full-time, which can be found in dozens of cities across the globe from Paris to Shanghai.

Alberto Piliang, born in Bandung, Indonesia, currently lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He mostly works with ink on paper and is inspired by classic Japanese ukiyo-e and Art Nouveu, but with more surreal twist.

Alberto explains the work by saying, “My work is my device to express my view to this world, which is a little bit cynical”.

Kristy Blackwell is an artist based in Toronto, ON, Canada.

Kristy uses figurative realism to depict her perception of the human condition. Her figures are often rendered in duplicate, suggesting strength alongside vulnerability. The use of gold leaf in some of her oil paintings creates a psychological barrier between the inner mind and the infinite unknown. There is common understanding in these personal images: beauty in sadness and in strength, beauty in vulnerability, and in protection.

Mike Campau is a big city talent with a small town attitude. While at the University of Michigan, Mike dabbled in scientific illustration, graphic design and photography. After graduating with a B.F.A., he finally found his passion of digital art – combining photography, illustration and cgi. His random interests now started to make sense.

Mike has over 20 years of valuable studio and agency experience under his belt. Through the years, he’s worked on high-profile brands like Chevrolet, WWE, Budweiser, Ford, Pepsi, ESPN, Under Armour, and Sony to name a few. His talents have also landed him celebrity projects including Tim Allen, Kid Rock, Mike Tyson, Roger Daltrey, Dave Grohl, Tracy Morgan, Zac Brown, and many more. Known for his dynamic images and clean execution style, Mike is constantly striving to not only meet, but exceed his high visual standards.

Stevie Anderson is multi disciplinary artist from England, currently based in Bali. His creative output defies categorisation. He is a painter, director, filmmaker and designer operating between the margins. His Art explores themes of symbolism, allegory, mythology and the relevance of psychedelic or altered states. Oversized canvases are crowded with fantastical figures of different proportions. He is inspired by art history, themes from ancient cultures and above all; The beautiful planet we visit.

Tony Belobrajdic is a Croation born artist who divides his time between his studios in Sydney and Croatia.

Tony’s painting style can be best described as contemporary impressionism. Painting with expressive but precise brushstrokes. Simplifying and abstracting backgrounds, using limited palette, avoiding details and concentrating on strong composition. It is the enduring process in finding the balance between evoking emotions and the desire to tell a story, to engage viewer in that search. Painting flesh of humans and animals has always been his main subject.

Jiayu was born in Liaoning, China and she is based in London & Beijing. She earned an MA at the Royal College of Art.

Jiayu works in the integrative and interdisciplinary realm of art, design, and technology, with a particular interest in the language of installation. Her artwork has always tried to provoke behavior responses and emotional resonance from audiences without giving away any instructions or explanations. She also hopes the viewers discuss the multiple relationships between human and nature, and explore the complex perspective held by people to observe the nature.

Her projects has been featured internationally and she has exhibited in museums and galleries including V&A , K11Art Space,HexiangNing Museum ,Today Art Museum, London Design Festival, Kinetic Art Fair, London Fashion Week.

Christopher Puzio is a San Diego artist who works in multiple mediums – primarily metal, to create dramatic sculptural and environmental elements. Puzio received his Master’s degree at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, where he focused and developed his passion for contemporary metalwork and design.

Christopher explains his work by saying, “My work is a study of geometry, pattern and structure found within nature. My curiosity for the natural world continues to be a primary inspiration and theme within my work. As a sculptor, I intend to build upon the traditions of metalwork and craft while developing a language of making that incorporates contemporary methods and design technology. The environments and objects that I create ultimately exist to inhabit and shape the space around us. My hope is that they inspire a heightened sense of awareness and wonder.”

Stefan Thelen, aka Super A, is a freelance artist based in Goes, The Netherlands. After graduating from the Graphic Lyceum in Rotterdam, he evolved as an artist and is now considered as one of the top street artists in The Netherlands and abroad. He often paints realistic images and fantasy figures, whether or not combined with a social message.

Super A’s work has been included in various art collections and has been exhibited internationally at renowned galleries in Europe and the US and art fairs such as Art Amsterdam, Realism and Art.Fair.

Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Clough completed her studies in art direction and graphic design at The Red and Yellow School before embarking on a career in visual art, digital design and thing-making.

Her combined interest in visual art, music and the South African street culture scene led to an experimental stint turned niche gig creating visuals for live music events. Using the stage name Fiance Knowles, Dee has performed with local artists Haezer, PH Fat, Hugh Masekela and internationals acts such as the Allah Las, Mick Jenkins, Cid Rim, The Black Lips and Black Sun Empire. She has played a bunch of music festivals you’ve probably never heard of if you’re over 45 and your primary music listening preference is Jazz (If not, see: Rocking the Daisies, Grietfest, Synergy, CTEMF, Nuworld Fest.)

When she is not VJing, Dee is doing digital design work for local companies; wrapped in a mess of threads embroidering anything from vintage rackets to shoes; lending her voice to local radio shows (Assembly Radio, Bush Radio); creating custom book covers (Modjaji Books); and working as a contributing photographer for various local and international media.

Holly Coulis was born in Toronto, ON, Canada and now lives and works in Athens, GA. She earned a BFA in Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Analia Saban is a contemporary artist working in Los Angeles. Her work encompasses drawing, painting and sculpture. She earned a B.F.A. in Visual Arts from Loyola University in New Orleans, LA and an M.F.A in New Genres from the University of California in Los Angeles, CA.

Analia often works with materials in ways that confuse or subvert their typical meaning or use in studio art practice: for example, she often casts objects in acrylic paint. She is well known for creating paintings in which the paint is sculpted by a laser. In many of her works she is involved in the “deconstruction” of painting.

Ignacio Carbo is an artist based in Valencia, Spain.

Ignacio explains the work by saying, “With the language and the poetry of architecture in mind, my ‘micro-architectures’ are ready to create new and different dialogues within the interior landscapes in which they seek to be accommodated. These “micro-architectures”, also reflect the new paradigms in architecture – focusing on natural processes and living forms. They are born both digitally and manually but finished and assembled manually, blending together the best of each process, manual and digital. They seek to be a whispered little piece of architecture that wishes to suggest sensations and promote encounters.”

Van Arno was born in Chattanooga, TN and grew up in St. Louis, MO where he attended a Christian Science school from K-12. While attending Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, he supported himself by working as a bouncer at “Club Lingerie.” By the early ’90s, his illustration resume included storyboarding for “Robotech,” deck designs for “Powell Peralta,” and box art for “Bandai Games,” but he found a niche in the music industry where his illustration and design credits are too numerous to mention.

Shifting his focus to fine art, he began to create heroic figurative works featuring religious, folk, pop culture, and mythical heroes. His “Olive Oyl” series captured much attention as he documented her life as a waterfront floozy. Van’s work has since been shown nationally in Los Angeles, Seattle, Santa Fe, Nashville and New York. Museum shows include the “Juxtapoz” exhibit “Land of Retinal Delights” in 2008 at the Laguna Museum of Art and in 2010 and 2011 at the Riverside Art Museum. International representation includes solo shows at “Feinkunst Kruger” in Hamburg, Germany in 2004 and “Yves Laroche Galerie D’art” in Montreal, Canada in 2007.

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi is a multi-form artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa whose work has garnered international acclaim.

Her series “Heros” depicts a diverse range of personalities, some familiar and others less so, thus immediately raising questions about the concept of “hero”and prompting viewers to ask themselves, “Should I know this person?” Each canvas measures 50x50cm, rendering figures just slightly larger than life, in a square, frontal format reminiscent of an ID photo. Installation at eye-level flattens the hierarchy between subjects and reinforces a sense of familiarity, but the faces shift between recognition and obscurity – a result of Nkosi’s strategic selection of subjects, our dominant art historical and ideological contexts, and her masterful use of oils. With thinned oil paint, Nkosi layers muted, flat colour over earlier, more representational portrayals – a technique which “veils” the subject and compresses pictorial space, assigning human flesh the two-dimensional, iconic aesthetic that hero status demands. But the figure is not completely consumed: Traces of the naturalistic depictions beneath; warm, nuanced skin tones; and Nkosi’s choice of ordinary, lesser-known source images (and also some “ordinary” subjects) push back against the surface to suggest complexities beyond the hero narrative. The limbo occupied by these portraits – between familiarity and obscurity, reductionism and complexity, certainty and strangeness – acts as an interrogation of the realities propagated by the powers that be. It challenges notions of singular history and the grand narrative, targeting its manufactured symbols, and encourages the viewer to do the same. While Heroes may seem at first glance like a digression from her prevailing painting subject of architecture, Nkosi sees both subject threads as the same thing – or at least, functioning in the same way. Both are constructs, monuments to ideologies. Tellingly, she refers to her architecture painting as “portraits” and her human portraits as “figures”; this inversion imbuing inanimate construction with subjectivity, and reminding the viewer of the objectifying and reductionist tendencies inherent in hero worship.

Jackie Brown is an artist based in Bath, ME. She earned a BA from Hamilton College and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jackie explains her work by saying, “My work stems from an interest in nature, science, and living systems and I believe whole-heartedly in arts capacity to enrich the way we see, experience, and understand the world around us. My primary focus is sculpture installation and I invite viewers into imagined biological systems where it can often be hard to tell if the forms are healthy or harmful growths. An important undercurrent is an interest in the human manipulation of living systems, particularly advances in bioengineering and experiments that involve combining or altering the basic components of nature. I see this frontier as fraught with both exciting and unsettling possibilities and while each work is imaginative, I hope to encourage viewers to consider the shifting nature of the world around them.”

Inspired by his lifelong love of Hip Hop and his coming of age as a boy during its golden age in the 80s, Flewellyn’s work has always been about music and its impact on his personal vantage point and outlook on the world. As a cultural form, Hip Hop emerged from a localized cultural moment only to evolve into a variegated and international form that would systemically embrace the freedom of appropriation, and the complexity of multiple voices. This idea of cultural heterogeneity has influenced recurring themes in his imagery and has shaped his belief in the positive power of cultural mash-up.

Borrowing motifs and inspiration from Japanese culture and aesthetics, a visual influence in his home since childhood, Flewellyn often depicts women in traditional Japanese garb, silks, and kimonos. The subjects, however, remain anonymous, visible only by hands, body, and gestures, seldom, if ever, are faces or individuals revealed in their entirety. The subject’s identity, as a result, is relayed by the presence of revelatory objects, tattoos, and accessories – external clues that point to something beyond the seen and allow for the aesthetic to prevail over individuation or the distraction of specificity. That being said, however, Flewellyn depicts real women based on actual people – friends, and strangers – anchoring his imagery in reality rather than unrealistic idealizations.

A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Jan Rattia moved to the US for college, earning an International Business degree in 1999. After developing a business career for over a decade, Rattia returned to school and graduated from the International Center of Photography’s full-time General Studies program in 2012. His work has been exhibited around the country, including solo shows in Philadelphia and New York. Rattia was a Studio Artist at Atlanta Contemporary, before relocating to Houston, TX in 2016.

Jan explains the work by saying, “I usually compose portrait-based photographs to depict partial stories, aimed to challenge the viewer through tension created both formally and topically. My images, often cinematic in style, are about the exploration of desire and emotions in [mostly] men, and in the end, a human connection.” –Jan Rattia

ICY and SOT are artists from Tabriz, Iran, currently residing in Brooklyn, New York., the two brothers started doing stencils in 2006, they have been contributed to Iranian and international urban art culture through their Murals , interventions, video and installations that depicting human rights, capitalism, ecological justice, social and political issues, Their work appears on walls and galleries throughout the Iran, USA, Germany, China, Norway, and globally.They transcend their histories of artistic and political censorship by using public art to envision a world freed from borders, war and violence.

Sarah Emerson is an artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her paintings and installations present viewers with highly stylized versions of nature that combine geometric patterns and mythic archetypes to examine contemporary landscape. She uses the camouflage of beautiful colors combined with a deliberate composition to explore themes that reflect on the fragility of life, the futility of earthly pleasures, and the disintegration of our natural landscape. Emerson graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1998 and she completed her Masters Degree at Goldsmiths College, London in 2000.

Frank Oriti was born and raised in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.F.A. in Two-Dimensional Studies from Bowling Green State University in 2006 and returned to his hometown shortly after. For the next year and a half he worked at one of Cleveland’s steel mills and continued painting in his spare time. In the fall of 2008, Oriti headed to Ohio University where he began creating work inspired by his past experience in the blue-collar work force. He graduated with his M.F.A. in Painting in 2011. In 2013, Oriti was featured in The New York Times and was also the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award. Recently, his work was featured in the prestigious BP Portrait Award in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

American contemporary artist Melodie Provenzano is known for her meticulous still life paintings and drawings depicting carefully constructed compositions of glassware, ribbons, toys, figurines and other objects, which create surreal environments and mock dramas that build narrative momentum as the audience assigns meaning to their relationships. Based in New York City, Provenzano has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums. She has been commissioned for selected projects by Saks Fifth Avenue, Donna Karan, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Salvatore Ferragamo, Hugo Boss and private collectors.

Darren Cranmer is an artist based in Zalaszanto, Hungary.

Darren explains his work by saying, “My conceptual work is commonly concerned with scientific, psychological and socio-cultural issues which I explore through surreal and symbolic execution. Through conveying inter-connectivity juxtaposed with fragmentation or partially revealed detail, I aim to aptly create atmospheric scenes that signify how humankind must constantly navigate through our evolving biology, psychology and environment.”

Nick Peña is a visual artist living and working in Memphis TN. He received his BFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. After studying abroad at the Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, Angus, Scotland and taking a year off to work in adaptive technology, he returned to school to earn his MFA at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO, where he was awarded the Dorothy L. Rollins Excellence Scholarship Award in Painting. Since graduating his work has been exhibited throughout the United States and featured in New American Paintings.

Peña’s work is centered in the American Dream, the history of landscape painting, and the effects that “cultural ideals” have on both our environment and our national psyche. Persistently researching these topics has led him to create landscapes built on dichotomies: past and present, representation and abstraction, analog and digital, and stability and instability. In Pena’s most recent series (The Way of the Worlds & Crosscut), he began exploring the tradition of decoration and painting, specifically the tradition of using a mat to “frame” artwork. A mat is a cut-out piece of paper-based material that separates the artwork from the glass of the frame and serves as an additional visual element. Peña activates this commonly overlooked material by using a nontraditional material, Sintra (a rigid sheet of PVC), and digitally drawing, using vector graphics, a “negative landscape” that is then excised. Though this cut-out might, at first glance, look hand-made, the astute viewer will realize that its precision is mechanically produced. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil, adding meaning on multiple levels.

Mako Miyamoto is a photographer and Creative Director at Roundhouse, currently residing in the Portland, Oregon.

Mako explains his work by saying, “Reframing the idea of imperialism in American history, Further West explores a revisionist’s vision of manifest destiny. Refugees and pioneers on the brink of the unknown step onto foreign soil, engulfed by the sprawl of the landscape before them they begin to shape the world. The known and unknown collide, as natural and constructed spaces become augmented, and mid-century Americana culture adapts, shifts, and changes it’s trajectory toward a new and uncertain future. Using model making, portraiture, and landscape photography, these images become a collage of real and imagined possibilities, posing questions about who we are and how we coexist in this world.”

Young Lim Lee is an artist based in Athens, GA. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, and she is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia. Her current body of work explores the idea that my inner sensations and the aura generated by them can be captured and expressed through the visual elements, and the outwardly expressed inner state on the canvas can be visible to audience.

Young explains the work by saying, “I attempt to bring out the incorporeal feelings physically by the use of expressive color, the tactile qualities of the painted surface, and mark making without much mediation, then I accentuate the feelings with the human figure through the delicate facial expressions and the subtle bodily gestures trying to reconcile realism with abstraction and premeditation with improvisation. Additionally, I use patterns or shapes that weave through the composition in an effort to enhance the atmosphere of the painting.”

Erika Parfenova is a freelance photographer from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Erika explains this series of work by saying, “This is a collection of portraits with red hair and freckles, all of them shot in St. Petersburg. This project introduced me to a whole army of red people, different ages, sex, professions. Thank you fate, that introduced me to them, thanks to people and models that one day wrote to me. If you miss the sun, you know where to look for it”.

Beau Bernier Frank is French American emerging artist and surrealist painter specializing in oil on wood panel portraits and landscapes.

Beau explain’s his work by saying, “The cohesive assembly of portraits are carefully designed with a strong attention to detail, composed with a lookbook appeal and executed in a tactical, graphic designer kind of way. Their gazes offer insight into their personalities and reveal an air of disconnectedness with an undercurrent of nostalgia––in other words, they seek to escape their reality, and to travel to those distant places painted across their faces. The various landscapes and dream-like destinations introduce bold colors and intertwine with the model’s identity.”

Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy is an artist who lives and works in Lyon, France. He is a graduate of the école de Condé in Lyon. In his work, he locates himself as a spectator of a distant world, questioning individual place within his environment. His eye brings a confusion between reality and fiction, facing appearance to question the unknown and the void. He uses this contradiction to reflect a derealization feeling, an alteration in the perception of the external world, like living as a stranger in a fake scenery, or being included in it, like a shape amidst other shapes.