Member Spotlight: February 2026

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:

• Dave Seeley
• Brian Bailey
• Selene Mauri Cochrane
• Stasia Schmidt
• Vini Naso

Dave Seeley

Painting | United States

Dave Seeley is a figure painter living in Boston, MA.  Making things has been essential to his satisfaction for as long as he can remember.  After earning dual degrees in architecture and fine art from Rice University, he embraced an architecture internship in Los Angeles, reveling in the city’s vibrant arts culture. Dave has showcased his artwork in solo and group exhibitions culminating in the publication of his art monograph, “The Art of Dave Seeley.”  While maintaining a presence in the juried IX Imaginative Realism art show since its inception over a decade ago, his focus has shifted from commercial to personal figure works.

Dave’s work celebrates the human form and its vast potential for beauty, nuance, and emotional expression. Fleeting, almost obscured glimpses of perfection inspire his choice of subjects and the deliberate, intuitive marks he places on canvas. As he puts it, “God — and the devil — is in the details,” a philosophy that underscores his deep attention to subtlety and craftsmanship.

Through his paintings, Dave frequently examines humanity’s relationship with the world around us not only in a physical sense, but also in a spiritual one. His work invites viewers to reflect on the delicate interplay between body, environment, and the unseen forces that shape our inner lives.

Brian Bailey

Drawing | United States

Brian E. Bailey was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Formerly a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he now paints and teaches privately at his atelier in New Jersey. Following a successful career that spanned several decades as a noteworthy illustrator, which includes covers for TIME Magazine, as well as other noteworthy publications. His portraits for TIME are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. After this time he began to focus his energies on more personal artistic pursuits.

As an artist working in a realist tradition, Brian E. Bailey try to create singular contemporary images that speak to the fragility of both the human condition and the natural world. The stillness of his painting offers the viewer a moment of both contemplation and reflection.

In his figurative work, he have tried to speak quietly to the audience and seek contemplation of thought provoking imagery. Whether it is in a veiled historical context or towards a more modern suppression of the human spirit.

Selene Mauri Cochrane

Sculpture | Australia

Selene Mauri Cochrane is a textile and mixed media artist living and working from her home-based studio in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She is working full-time as an artist, she draws on her extensive skills in pattern making, dyeing, fabric manipulation, and embellishment, weaving these foundations seamlessly into her evolving passion for ceramics.

Her creative work is profoundly shaped by her personal experiences living with chronic pain caused by scoliosis and other health challenges. These ongoing realities fuel her drive to create pieces that rise above both emotional and physical suffering, transforming hardship into tactile, expressive forms. 

See also

SPOTLIGHT

Member Spotlight: December 2025

Her art explores the creative and destructive forces that coexist within us, offering glimpses into parts of the self we don’t always acknowledge. Drawn to what is both strange and beautiful, she transforms thread and fabric into textures reminiscent of fur, feathers, flesh, and antlers, creating tactile surfaces that carry an air of mystery. These forms blur the boundaries between earthly and mystical realms, merging human and animal, dream and reality, innocence and darkness. In doing so, her work reflects the duality between the persona we show the world and the more complex truths beneath it—inviting viewers to consider where one ends and the other begins.

Stasia Schmidt

Digital Photography | Canada

Stasia Schmidt is an award-winning fine art photographer based in Calgary, Alberta. Her landscapes and portraits show attention to simplicity and form. She is drawn to unexpected surrealism within the natural environment, and throughout the photographic process Stasia works to layer subversive femininity with stark reality. She created Ephemerality as a way to explore her own femininity while out adventuring in environments that have traditionally been considered the domain of men. 

Harsh, bleak landscapes call to Stasia in a way that makes her feel vividly alive. There are many images of places like this, usually featuring a man in outdoor gear, staring off into the distance. 

Self-portraits deep in the Canadian Rocky glaciers or along slick Greenlandic oceanside cliffs were an opportunity for her to tap into her own feminine connection with the environment. The experience wasn’t about conquering a peak or bagging a specific hike; it was to be fully present with all of her senses and feel truly engaged with her surroundings.

Vini Naso

Digital Art | Canada

Vini Naso, born in 1981, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and currently resides and works in Toronto, Canada. Known for his hyper realistic digital portraits, Vini’s work stands at the intersection of tradition and innovation both in content and form. Working purely in the digital medium, Vini’s approach harmoniously incorporates bespoke procedural materials resulting in artworks rich in detail, including folk-inspired motifs, crafted textiles, jewelry and natural elements. 

Vini Naso delves into the human collective unconscious through his masked portraits, critically examining the role of contemporary media in shaping notions of identity and beauty. His artworks offer a unique representation of modern archetypes, portraying the evolving identities within the human psyche.