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.
Iness Rychlik is a renowned self-portrait photographer. Since she suffers from a chronic skin condition, Iness often uses her own body as a canvas for artistic expression. The subtle elegance of Rychlik’s compositions contrasts with an underlying aura of brutality. Her conceptual photographs provoke the viewer’s imagination, rather than satisfy it. Featured by ‘Beautiful Bizarre Magazine’, ‘The British Journal of Photography’, ‘Cultura Inquieta’, ‘L’Officiel Italia’, BBC Scotland.
Stephanie Rew works in Edinburgh, Scotland and has been based in the same studio for over 20 years. Painting in the figurative realist style Stephanie creates oil paintings with gold leaf, combining traditional Early Renaissance gilding techniques with more contemporary ways of painting.
Nicolas Bruno studied at Purchase College of New York, where he received his BFA in Photography in 2015. His studio practice is based in Northport, New York, where he photographs and fabricates props for his compositions. Bruno exhibits his artworks internationally and engages in public speaking events to spread awareness of Sleep Paralysis. He also engages with local and international school districts to inspire young students to use art as a therapy. Bruno has been featured in various video documentaries that offer a behind the scenes look at his creative process. Bruno is an advocate for environmental conservation, art education, and mental health awareness.
Annie Stegg Gerard is an oil painter who lives in Northern Georgia in the United States. Her art career began at 7 years old, when she had first art show at her school. Since then, she has never stopped painting and has worked for clients across the world. She exhibits her work in galleries and has done notable publishing work for clients such as Disney, Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast, Easton Press, Netflix, Harper Collins and more. Her work is found in private collections all over the world.
Ingrid Baars graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.
Her work is characterised by a photographic collage style that she kept developing throughout her career (already won her the Illustration Year Award in 1997) and became very apparent in her solo shows e.g. about Face, Inside/Outside, Artist Lovers, etc. In 2011 Ingrid started her African series ‘Afrique’ drawn to the aesthetics of black women and classical African sculptures. “There was grace, symbolism, mythology and a deeper almost religious sense that fascinated me”.
Saskia Huitema (1975) is a self taught Dutch acrylic painter who lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her passion for painting started at a later stage in life and her art has evolved ever since. Saskia’s work is recognizable by the use of color, crisp details, and narrative content. Saskia has exhibited her paintings at galleries, museums and other venues since 2015. In 2020 she started creating work for @78 Tarot and joined the international Star Dust Art Collective. Her paintings have been adopted by collectors both nationally and internationally.
From an artistic interest spurred through Life Drawing sessions, Liz Gridley's work centers on her emotional experiences of the human body, internal stresses, and how a painted human subject can affect the emotional state of the viewer. In Liz Gridley’s most recent work she has been utilizing female figures accosted by fantastical cloudscapes that envelope and interact with the figure. Influenced by realism with surreal colour, the pieces often analyze traditional themes from history and religion such as Allegories and Memento Mori.
After working in more conventional art mediums for much of her life, Cyndy Salisbury began making masks in 2008, embracing the traditional materials and techniques of the Italian mask makers while wanting to explore beyond those conventional themes. Each mask starts with a plaster of paris cast, the mold used to shape the body of the mask. Cyndy creates the casts by either covering a terra cotta sculpture or a living face in plaster. The mold is layered with Carta Lana, a wool rag paper used particularly in mask making. Once the layers of paper have dried in the cast, the resulting simple blank is removed, painted, and embellished. All additions to the body of the mask are created in the studio, mostly out of a variety of papers and Paper clay. Cyndy Salisbury finds the human face to be an evocative canvas on which to bring to life the compelling images of myth, fable, fairy tale, and theater. Though she wants her masks to be worn for pleasure, they should also conjure up the transforming energy of the Greek theater, the psychic resonance of the Commedia dell’arte, and the provocative enchantment of the Venetian Carnival.
Sandra Yagi was raised in suburban Denver Colorado, (USA) and from an early age she loved science (especially biology) and drawing. Her parents instilled in me an ethic of getting a “useful” education because of their concern for monetary and domestic stability—a result of their internment with other Japanese-Americans during WWII and their desire for their children to assimilate. As a result, Sandra’s studies focused on business, she obtained a Masters in Business Administration, and worked in the corporate world for 27 years at major financial institutions. Sandra left corporate life behind in 2008 and became a full-time artist. With a viewpoint rooted in logic and science, and a curiosity for the macabre, Sandra Yagi explores themes such as mortality, human experience and our impact on the natural world.
Lesley Thiel is an international award winning, figurative artist known for her highly detailed surrealistic and photorealistic paintings. Working in oils, she focuses on highly symbolic narrative pieces designed to tell a story of our relationship with the earth and the future of our species. Lesley Thiel’s work explores our connection to, and dependence upon, Mother Earth and nature. She paints the young women she sees as our future leaders and saviours into organic forms that grow out of trees, rocks, and plants.
Karen Remsen is a Chicago-based artist creating paintings with oil and precious metals such as gold and platinum leaf. Her work centers on exploring the multifaceted nature of female power and identity. Combining paint with reflective materials, her work also explores the beauty and complexity of light as it moves over a surface and changes throughout the day. She has exhibited across the country in galleries that champion imaginative realism and contemporary figurative work.