Member Spotlight

We are excited to shine a light on some of the incredibly talented members of the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory.

In this month’s Member Spotlight we are focusing on the following artists and photographers:

• Jeremy Mann
• Adrienne Stein
• Forest Rogers
• Alex Garant
• Hiroshi Hayakawa
• Lillian Liu
• Sara Lee

Jeremy Mann

Painting, Drawing, Analogue Photography | Spain

Jeremy Mann (b. 1979) graduated from Ohio University with a Cum Laude degree in Fine Art-Painting. Afterward, he ventured out to California where he earned his Master’s Degree in 2008 with Valedictorian honors at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Since then, Mann has garnered substantial attention in the art world. Praised by critics and collectors alike, his work has graced five covers of American Art Collector magazine as well as Beautiful Bizarre Magazine and International Artist Magazine.

Executed on medium to large-scale panels, each exciting work demonstrates the artist’s unmistakable style. Working on wood panels provides a strong support, where Mann can utilize a number of inventive techniques with an ever-expanding array of nontraditional mark making tools achieving everything from broad gritty marks to the finest of sensual strokes. Mann paints with confidence and flair. He addresses complex compositions with a mature eye and his colors are both vivid and atmospheric. He remains unlimited in his creative approach involving a myriad of materials and mediums including analogue photography from homemade cameras, film making and the written word.

This idea of balance shows up in Jeremy’s work, even if not always in obvious ways. You might see bold, aggressive brushstrokes next to soft, gentle ones—expressing big emotions like anger and tenderness in the same piece. He often uses landscapes to study color and form, which they then bring into their figure work. The female form is especially meaningful to him—it represents both strength and delicacy, beauty and sadness, all at once. Capturing that complexity is part of what drives their creative process.

Alex Garant

Painting | Canada

Internationally renowned as the Queen of Double Eyes, Alex Garant studied visual arts at Notre-Dame–De-Foy College just outside Quebec City. After graduating in 2001, she moved in Toronto, Canada. She decided to truly commit to her passion for Arts after suffering from a heart attack in 2012, changing forever how she would see the world.

Represented by galleries in Canada, United States and Australia, Alex’s works have also been shown in several museums including the Museum of Art and History (MOAH) in California, the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii and the Fullerton Museum Center in California. Collaboration clients include MARVEL x Sideshow Collectibles, KAPPA, Universal Music x Billy Talent, Universal UK, Budweiser Events, Penguin Random House, Mr Men X Little Miss.

Alex established herself as the pioneer of Contemporary Figurative Op Art. She is known as the inventor of “Analogue Glitch Art”  or “Optic Pop” , a style she masters by using double image patterns, duplication of elements, optical illusions and image superposition as key components of her imagery.  She employs patterns, duplication, symmetry, and image superposition to craft her mesmerizing visuals. Her works delve into human duality, exploring the conflict between inner identity and outward persona. 

Adrienne Stein

Painting | United States

Adrienne Stein is an award winning American artist living and working in Pennsylvania and Colorado. She holds an MFA from Boston University and a BFA Magna Cum Laude, from Laguna College of Art & Design. Adrienne studied under many gifted and influential instructors throughout the United States, France, and Italy. She has received numerous awards from organizations such as The Windows to the Divine Foundation, The Portrait Society of America, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The California Art Club, and The Art Renewal Center. Her work is collected in the U.S. and abroad.

Adrienne’s paintings celebrate the natural world through bold, vibrant color. The lush magical environments and figures she depicts blend reality and fantasy, expressed through a world of symbolic imagery. Direct observation of nature coalesces with memory, imagination, art history, folklore, archetypes, and natural elements that are fueled by a sense of personal as well as universal myth. Adrienne is inspired by her travel experiences as well as the beauty of her garden surrounding her home.

Forest Rogers

Sculpture | United States

Forest Rogers, daughter of two painters, received an MFA in Costume Design from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Forest has an eclectic history. She has painted nine-foot angels in a cathedral dome, and sculpted creatures that may dwell in your toybox. Creating education toys, she collaborated with palaeontologists on dinosaur prototypes, and with aquariums on sea life and poison dart frog models. In recent years she has focused entirely on her own art, exploring mythology, fairy and folktale, and the surreal.

Forest Rogers would like to be a toymaker for Psyche. She approaches myths, tales and magical beings with the intuitive, heart-on-sleeve sincerity of a dreamer or a fool. She aims to be a storyteller in the dark, a fishing-line in the Styx. A peephole rubbed through frost-flowers when the Snow Queen breaths on your window. Forest wants to remember how to play.

She hopes to offer you tokens from a realm beyond reach of the claws and teeth of this moment in the world.

Hiroshi Hayakawa

Drawing | United States

Hiroshi Hayakawa expresses his vision in various artistic mediums including drawings, alternative photography, and sculptures. Recently his focus has been graphite and mixed media drawings.

“Hiroshi’s drawing of female nudes attempts to express an original admiration: the non-instinctive, nonvisceral sexual admiration for a plastically and totally satisfying female body, presented in its most natural sensuality. the artist’s nudes attempt to express and validate his admiration for the most significant part of feminine beauty. However, beyond the practical aspects of using real-life women as artistic models, there is also a concern for the artist to explore the female nude in ways that make reference to the existential gap between human beings. Hiroshi explains that people can never completely understand and become united with each other, and from this abyss of true unity, emerges a form of reductiveness and rigidity that seems one-dimensional.” ~ written by Aurore Phipps for Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Issue 39.

“Vanitas” has been the main theme of Hiroshi’s work for the past few years. This theme is expressed through realistic figurative mixed media drawings combined with objects and environments.

Lillian Liu

Photography | Canada

Lillian Liu is a self taught, award-winning and published creative photographer who utilizes digital techniques to create unique atmospheres in her work.  She is a part of the humanitarian artistic collective Free Spirit, headquartered in Paris, as of 2016.  

Features, clients, and publications as a photographer include:  Marie Claire Taiwan, Vogue Taiwan, HarperCollins, Adobe, Penguin Random House, Atlantic Records, My Modern Met, CTV News Canada, Art.Ifeng, Enchanted Living Magazine/Faerie Magazine, Blanche Macdonald, Domestika, 54th Annual Taiwan Golden Horse Awards, Craftopia on HBO Max, Kat Von D Beauty 10 Years of Beauty (Muse #5), and many more. 

Fairytales, folklore, costuming and design, divine feminine, historical elements, character studies, religious symbolism, fantasy.

Sara Lee

Digital Painting | United States

Sara Lee is an artist and graphic designer based in New York City. Her style combines her professional graphic design background with her classical fine art training. Following graduation and working over a decade in commercial art, Sara found herself drawing less and less. Her motivation to draw was reignited after discovering Procreate. Sara presently works in television as a motion graphics designer while pursuing her art independently.

Sara often paints portraits to explore the multifaceted nature of human emotion. Her experience with complex and sometimes conflicting ranges of feelings inspires her work. She captures her subject’s mood with signature colors and shapes. She paints her subjects as mirrors of her own emotions. Bright geometric patterns alongside soft, natural forms reflect the nuances of emotional contrast. The result is a striking representation of the subject’s emotional state.