ARTISTS

My childhood was closely related to art, my first approach was in a small workshop in the town where I lived in the southeast of Spain. I have always been immersed in art, in it I saw a form of expression that made me be a creative person who wishes to produce new dream worlds.

    During my adolescence I realized that photography was one of my passions and that through it and the post-production of these images there were no borders to make possible each and every one of the spaces that continually occurred to me. I am currently studying Fine Arts at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where I intend to specialize in the audiovisual field.

    I define myself as an emerging artist passionate about photography and audiovisual media, that is why my work is mainly linked to the self-portrait as a personal symbol and the photomontage of imaginary spaces. I could say that this last year I have worked a lot about the concept of space in which we live, the concept of the room as an interior refuge, the passage of time in those rooms that make those walls become our maximum confidants and how the atmosphere in which we live envelops and projects us that anguish that sometimes we usually hide.

    In each photograph I try to make the viewer see the loneliness and sincerity that lives within us, in a world in which we necessarily need our moments of peace and solitude. Moments that surround the environment in a continuous feeling of nostalgia for a painful past that inhabits and flourishes in our memory capacity.

Armenian visual artist, abstract painter.

I was born in Yerevan, in a family of an artist.

Growing up in art environment and inspired by my father’s work, I started painting at a very young age and haven’t ceased ever since.

Having accomplished my art formation at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts where I studied academic painting and drawing, I began working as an independent artist.

 I’ve been experimenting with different techniques and seeking my own ways of expression in recent  years and finally came to abstraction that reflects my nature the best.

In my artworks I combine soft, pastel shades with glowing spots which make an interesting contrast and enrich the piece with unique vibration.

Technically I prefer liquid , transparent   brushstrokes applied over already existing layers. They create an effect of half-hidden, veiled details.

 Apart from my  pieces realized with oil on canvas I use as well other mediums such as oil pastels, gouache, watercolor, chinese   ink   and acrylic paints on paper. I believe that a frequent change of materials and artwork dimensions brings with itself new challenges and helps to develop artist’s technical skills.

Normally , I commence A new piece by intuitive, spontaneous brushstrokes which are similar to the first breath of the painting. After that, it seems like the art piece lives it’s own life and suggests the future process of creation. 

By the means of abstract, ambiguous forms, lines and color I try to transmit my emotions to the canvas, and thus enter into a specific dialogue with a viewer. 

In my opinion, a true piece of art is  born when the artist frees himself from every boundary at the moment of creation and stays loyal to his own understanding and perception of art.

Simon Bacon (b. 1969) trained in sculpture at the London Atelier of Representational Art in 2011 and earned his MA in Sculptural Practice from Colchester School of Art in 2013. Bacon’s work explores existential themes through figurative expressionism, informed by an early career in Osteopathy and Transpersonal Psychology. The artist expresses a deep interest in the body, philosophy of consciousness, and identity through the medium of sculpture, deliberately limiting each bronze figure to one unique edition. The singularity and complexity of Bacon’s work parallels the individual nature of human existence; which, as the artist puts it, ‘includes much more than what is currently existing’.

Bacon has made a career of pushing the boundaries of figuration within his respective medium. He engages with spirals of construction and deconstruction to create one-off figures posing questions of the human body, its capabilities for movement, and comparison of material versus immaterial existence. Through the work we see Bacon’s sculptural pursuit of the ‘beyond the body’ .

Born in Wichita, Kansas, USA Deborah Barr holds a Masters of Fine Art Degree from San Jose State University and a BA from Mills College where she studied with Hung Liu. She has held exhibitions of her work in the USA; Colombia, South America; Nairobi, Africa and Moscow, Russia. She won a scholarship to study at The National Academy of Art and Design to study mural making.

Saskia Bera, born in Munich in 1974, is a German visual artist. She creates abstract paintings and portraits for contemporary interiors.

The artist is inspired by the urge to explore unconscious and repressed emotions. During the painting process she deals with suppressed feelings that come from her subconscious. The concept that she creates on the canvas are these emotions that arise from the current situation or that come to the surface.

She is particularly interested in the contrast between the hardness and delicacy of the different emotions and the challenge of combining these contrasts, but not distorting them in itself.

The work is rooted in forms with fluid layers and spots. With a contemporary palette and methodical overlay techniques, Bera creates process-controlled works of art. The compositions are created freely and intuitively and learned through years of practice and formal art training.

Studies and experiments encounter unexpectedness and spontaneity during the creative act. In all of her work there is a deliberate experimentation with the element of unpredictability due to the unplanned chemical and physical impact of the material.

Mixing acrylics, spray paint, and alcohol-based inks, Bera uses a number of methods, from spraying, dripping, and flowing paint directly onto canvas, to using traditional brushes and unconventional tools like pipettes, straws, and vacuum cleaners to achieve the appropriate shapes.

The Abstraction of Perspective, Structure and Movement

What Eyes Don't See

I am unveiling an unseen through digital photography and state-of-the-art processing. I invite a viewer into the tale of abstraction governed by supreme laws of nature's order and harmony.

"True Real", world as we perceive it, seems to be chaotic, lawless and unpredictable. Ever since being a student of mathematics, I was attracted by the elegance and harmony of mathematical formulae apprehending the underlying order and structures of nature. That is why I love sand dunes - their perfect harmonious lines demonstrate the order of physical laws shaping them. 

In mathematics, the common thread is the search for order via abstraction. Along this way I am transforming my pictures.

Today's hi-tech camera's sensors enable recording details and colors which human eyes do not see - the "New Real". Sophisticated softwares provide all kinds of tools for uncovering, boosting and presenting the unseen. Through a lot of experimentation using creative manipulations I pursue a path from the seen entropy towards the abstract unseen.

The final work offers a narrative space of allegories, freedom of interpretation, new associations, space built on the underlying principal laws of nature's order and harmony.

BIO

Photographer Marek Boguszak was born in Prague, Czech Republic, where he still lives. Photography has been his great passion since his late teens. He received his first camera at the age of twelve when he started to experiment with photography. As a child, he was more interested in post-processing darkrooms and exploring exposures and contracts in photography than playing with his schoolmates. He started with black and white photography focusing on his country’s landscapes. His inspirations came from nature and other photographers like Josef Sudek, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz.

After graduating in mathematics Marek Boguszak worked as a sociologist and in 1990 he became an entrepreneur in the area of market research. Alongside, photography was his vocation, his passion and Marek Boguszak major method was to explore the unknown, the unseen in photography, making his photos a natural abstraction. Marek is not alone in his atelier; his wife Magda plays an essential role in creating their abstract works.

The artist has received several awards and honorable mentions with TIFA, APA, IPA, Prix de le Photographie, Paris, FAPA and several solo and group exhibitions in London, Prague, Monaco, Zurich and Milan.

I was born in Spain in a family of artists. Since I was very little and attended classes in the workshop of the painter Francisco Soto Mesa, I knew that painting was going to be a fundamental part of my life.

My plastic message is mainly inspired by nature and sustained in the search for the transcendent meaning of lifetime.

I love to paint landscapes and I have a poetic vision of nature, which I look at with an "spiritual eye".

I am currently working on a set of works titled "The Forest of Silence." In these works, the trees are the protagonists. I represent them alone, always leafless, stripped of all vanity. Sometimes my trees float in the void.

As a summary, I can say that my work seeks simplicity, both in themes and in color. I fly away from the strident and the artificial; I want to go against the tide; I want to run away from noise, I want to create a work that speaks to us in silence.

Vicky Herreros, also an artist, wrote this review about me:

"Since she began her artistic journey, many years ago, her painting seems to us a song to nature. Luz Cano finds in the landscape almost all her motivations and uses it to create a speech full of poetry and delicacy, where, thanks to calm and meditation, the spirit of the figurative agrees with the essence of what it embodies by the way in which she does: meditative and calm. Her trees, which sometimes emerge from the void, seem to hide immaterial thoughts, as if they were symbols. Sometimes some branches, in the middle of the silence, remind us - by contrastthe need to find this silence in a society immersed in noise.

With hardly any presence of the figure - because it can be represented in each element- and with a palette characterized by its harmony - as delicate as it is subtle - she offers themes that make us think about the desire to reconnect with what makes us sensitive, and ultimately, with the poetry that lives in her painting”

Mirjam Collor , born 1978 in Schleswig, Germany, is an independent artist currently living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The inspiration for my paintings has its roots in my love for people and nature. Going through life with an open heart and hungry eye, my creativity is driven by nature, faces, street scenes, different cultures and their interactions.

My compositions of shapes, colors and lines leave ample room for interpretation by the viewer. The psychology of colour fascinates me, particularly how it can influence our mood and feelings. Colour is a driver of emotion.

Painting is important for me as it enables me to connect with myself – it is the conduit for expressing and translating my thoughts and feelings without the use of words.

When I paint, the creation process is loud, messy and unpredictable with paint flying in all directions. Without a fixed starting point, I often let the experiences carry me forward and am often surprised where I end up.

I use acrylics, oil, spray paint and love to glue different materials onto the canvas—experimental and fearless, declares Mirjam Collor.

Painting for me is a way of expressing myself, of speaking, of crying, of shouting that I am happy or that I am not at that moment. I like to capture all my feelings on the canvas without thinking about what I am going to paint until the moment I have the canvas in front of me. I never know what will follow since I let myself be carried away by what I am feeling and I am leaving the best of me on the fabric.

My favorite painters are Vicente Rojo, Francisco Toledo, William Turner, Cy Twombly, Zio Ziegler and I could name many more, I actually admire all artists whether they are impressionists, renaissance, modern, contemporary there is always something to admire from each and everyone from them. I love abstract painting because it allows me to imagine, dream and fly to incredible and imaginary worlds that have no limits, with all this and a touch of madness, unimaginable and wonderful things can be achieved,declares Lotti Cojab .

Inspiration

Technics

Manu De Mey was born in Antwerp in 1965, his mother a British artist and his father a Flemish accountant. He grew up as the eldest of four boys in Kalmthout, a beautiful heathland in the North of Belgium. In his twenties he moved to the city of Antwerp where he started his own business as web designer.

He started making digital graphic art as a hobby in 2008. In September 2017 he had a creative epiphany at the Burning Man festival in the desert of Nevada, USA and enrolled himself only days after returning at the Art Academy of Mortsel, Antwerp and started sketching and painting, something he had not done for 30 years. He taught himself to draw in 6 months and hasn’t stopped drawing and painting since.

He now lives in Antwerp with his girlfriend and 2 young adult boys. At home he has his atelier where he draws and paints figurative art, mainly portraits. With his art, Manu tries to create something visually striking and convey some sort of strong emotion. His portraits often are  ambiguous and this is mostly intentional. The viewer is never sure if they are looking at a victim or an offender, a leader or a follower, a master or a slave. Manu's world is populated with sad, melancholic people with suppressed emotion, often beautiful but damaged women.

Manu has only started to come out with his work two years ago but has had several expositions, including ACAF in the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels (BOZAR) and EuropArt in Amsterdam.

Thanks to digital platforms Manu has sold a lot of his work internationally, including the USA, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Taiwan and all over Europe.

The abstract graphic works of Maarten De Naeyer (born 1992 in Leuven, lives and works in Leuven) are the result of a constant experimentation with shapes and textures. After obtaining his masters degree in Graphic Design in 2015, Maarten developed his own unique way of working by experimenting in his studio.

Purified form tension through geometric and organic shapes that interact in an environment of varying textures are the common thread throughout the work. Another very characteristic fact is the almost exclusive use of black and white, this in turn preserving the purity of shapes and allowing the negative white space to enter into a dialogue with the composition. The viewer is made to think through the use of suggestive titles.

Inspired by linocuts, he cuts abstract compositions from texture-rich material and then transfers them to different materials using printer's ink. Interesting and  accidental textures are created by manually pressing these stencils. Coincidence and experiment play a major role in creating these works, which makes the process always interesting. He developed this technique out of the need to escape the digital world in which he finds himself daily as a graphic designer.

London-based analog collage and mixed media artist with a Portuguese soul.

I drew and painted since ever, inspired by my very artistic family. I spent my early infancy in Africa, and when I moved to Portugal at the age of five, my mother, my very first art mentor, coloured my early memories with a vibrant colour palette. The deep orange African sunsets, the vibrant pink flamingos and the magenta of the bougainvillaea were burnt into my imagination.

Later in life, I embraced London’s cosmopolitan life, which became another daily inspiration for my art.

As an artist, I relish exploring various mediums and methods. I particularly enjoy using oil-sticks and acrylics on paper in an abstract style, combining them with analog collage.

A seminal masterclass with Royal Academician David Mach opened manual collage and mixed media to me in a completely unexpected way, and I have never stopped creating since.

I consider my art an invitation to reconnect to nature and ourselves. In such troubled times, it is comforting to think that every day small miracles still happen naturally. Throughout the world, animals and plants comfortably reclaim their natural habitats and peacefully interact with the surrounding urban setting.

My pieces evoke contemplation, and ultimately, a return to memories of more serene times, as the start of a self-healing journey.

The enigmatic feminine figures akin to the relaxed presence of the wild suggest that nature can offer us the ability to restore tranquillity in a chaotic world. This is my inspiration: a message of hope and beauty, life and rebirth.

BBC art correspondent and curator Maeve Doyle described my work as “very, very transcendent pieces that mix realism with spirituality and surrealism”.

My work has recently been shown on a digital installation in Oxford Street, London, and I have participated in exhibitions in the UK and across Europe. I am currently a resident artist in art galleries in Lisbon and Milan.

For the next couple of months, I will have several pieces exhibited on the set of the Portuguese highly rated TVI show Cristina Comvida aired on prime time, and I was invited to be on this programme to talk about my work. It will also be featured on the TV lifestyle programme Viva Vida.

My pieces have also been featured in iconic British magazines such as House & Garden, The World of Interiors, Tatler, Vanity Fair and Vogue. The art magazines Artist Talk Magazine and Contemporary Art Magazine are also featuring my work, and the latter has awarded me the Collector’s Vision International Art Award for outstanding achievements and potential.

My paintings are to me a way (maybe the only way) to reach truth, light and fulfillment. Each painting has its own integrity and intensity. They tell stories.

I was born in Timișoara, a “green” city, full of parks, flowers and colors (which will prove an everlasting influence in my work). There, I attended the High School of Fine Arts followed by the Faculty of Fine Arts. Life, in its mysterious and wonderful ways, brought me to foreign lands and now I live with my family on the sunny island of Lesbos in Greece, where I continued my studies.

As far as my artistic orientation is concerned, I consider myself to be a colorist. My major interest in painting is the color in all its intensity and light. From my point of view, the color exists around us, inside us and especially between us, it defines the space between us. I consider myself an abstract expressionist artist, the beauty of abstract art being that you can invite the viewer inside your own world, a world based on one’s experience but where everybody can find her or his own self (and personal experience).

I use color, light and shape in order to bring back memories, to remember feelings, to feel or recreate lost places, to give life to emotions and specific experiences. Through this way of expression, I have the opportunity to travel in time, to transform memories, to bring back loving people and to put on the canvas everything they gave me and left in me. Since, as I said, I am convinced that people have color in them, my paintings are characterized by vibrant colors representing experiences and emotions. I am also constantly inspired by the emotional relationship I have always had with nature. This being said, it is always difficult for an artist to tell how her or his works are born. In my case all I can say is that I always begin with an idea, which throughout the process may evolve in very unexpected ways, which I then follow in order to discover new paths.

From a technical point of view, my preferred technique is mixing the media: acrylic, charcoal, pastel, collage on canvas. The watercolor, and the transparencies you can get through it, also fascinates me.

My atelier is a magic world, where I always can create or be “recreated” through art, and all my paintings are the result of this constant emotional journey, declares Amelia Doloanga.

Where one person might see an imperfection, a fault, another sees beauty. Yet for nature, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It is a mysterious and pervasive quality that expresses its own internal striving for survival and betterment, whether observed by humans or not. A piece of bark, a fractal pattern in the rusting of iron. It doesn't need us. It already has a purpose. But when we find its beauty we can also find and pull on that thread in ourselves to see where it leads. We can be observers, critical and in judgement, or we can remember our connection to the forms and articulations of the natural world. We can feel our connection to nature, because it gives us life every day. Plants, animals, trees, bark, exacting functions refined to a point of extreme elegance by millions of years of attrition and evolution. We can participate. We can rejoin.

In much of my work I bring together wondrous natural woods and metals. They appear to contrast starkly: the metal: brutally hard, melted and molded by powerful man-made machines. But metal is still natural. Its tendency to rust, an expression of its own vulnerability but also the way it blooms into color as rich as a flower. The ever-present forces of entropy. Always giving. Always taking. Always singing the eternal song of Change. Once these colors show themselves, either through time or a gentle nudge, I often apply gold as a symbol of enduring permanence in all this entropic chaos. A constant, to radiate and illuminate. 

I create this art so you might see yourself reflected in the beauty, the change and the permanence that are the essence of nature. To remind us that we are part of it, playing with it, destroying it then nurturing it back to life. As many contradictions as a species can bear. Where our role as people is acutely undefined, even as we tell our story.  

Born in 1948, lives and works in SEIGNOSSE,  FRANCE 

Training engineer;  painter for 20 years 

Lauréat 2011 de la Fondation COLAS 

Salon d’automne 2020  Contempory Art show Paris Novembre 2019 

Réalités nouvelles, Octobre 2016  Accessible Art Fair, Bruxelles, Septembre 2016 

Art Osaka, Japon, juillet 2015  Seoul, Galerie BDMC, juin, 2015  Select Art Fair, New York, Mai 2015 

Salon d’automne, Paris, Octobre 2014  Art 3G, Bordeaux, Septembre 2014 

Carrousel du Louvre, Septembre 2009 Art en Capital, Grand Palais, Septembre 2008 

Author and Presentation of the conference on abstract art on YouTube

ARTISTIC APPROACH 

I agree with Gilles Deleuze's reflection, who explains the three phases of creation.  

The first is the pre-pictorial phase. It is maturation, design, formalization, research of supports, tools. This is a phase that can be long because it conditions everything else.  

The second phase is what he calls "the disaster germinates." It is necessary to go through this phase of "catastrophe" to break reflexes, banish clichés and find the strength and energy that constitute pictorial emotion  

The third phase is the pictorial fact: aesthetic emotion, transmitted, perceived and felt.  

Technically I use antagonistic materials by bringing together very aggressive products (epoxy resins permanent inks) with more flexible and conventional materials (coatings, acrylic and Indian ink and color)  

I favor strong contrasts, in terms of materials, tones, transparencies and saturation, luminosities, between matt and shiny aspects….  

I observe the codes of abstract expressionism:  

• All over: the study goes beyond the canvas  
• Action painting: the intention is dictated by the gesture  
• Minimalism: “less is more” Ludwig mies von Rohe, architect of the Bauhaus  

I translate my emotions, my irrepressible taste for freedom, the confrontation of my Apollonian and Dionysiac feelings  

I paint to escape a sad world, to leave the valley and to overcome the clouds.  

I paint not to be alone, to increase the power of life, the power of being  

I build the web and the web builds me  

Art makes us see the world differently, and leads me to inner peace. 

Petra Forman is an Austrian abstract emerging artist, living and working in Croatia, on the Dalmatian Adriatic south coast in Korcula.

Finding inspiration in nature and the beauty of the Adriatic sea, her work translates her emotions into shapes, textures and colors.

Striving for depth and intensity Petra uses multiple layers of paint, grainy or rough textures, embracing the beauty of decay by including rust or cracked structures in her paintings. She also likes to incorporate into her work natural materials from the sea, like corals or lake grass and experimenting with rust, wood and self-made marble powder.

Her biggest inspiration comes from the beauty of life, but especially so in her art studio in the beautiful Adriatic coast of Korcula with the most beautiful view.

Art was a passion she felt since childhood, ever since then she has been creative and enjoyed expressing herself artistically in various different forms, but from the last year she has rediscovered and developed further her passion for painting.

"When I create my artwork, I let myself be inspired by my personal perception of the world, full of emotions" she explains. "I dive deep into my inner consciousness. My creative process gives rise to expressive compositions of colours and structures."

Her art is all about pursuing harmony and balance found in nature. A blend of Croatian minimalism with a hint of ancient mysticism, her art keeps us fascinated by the layers and textures, giving a defined sense dimension to the paintings.

Nature and the course of time are this artist's sources of inspiration.

Her paintings are created through intuitive responses while engaged in her work.

She explains to us:

"The process of creation is completely organic and spontaneous."

When it emerges on the canvas, I convey a thought that is highly emotional and personal yet at the same time universal; It speaks of places unseen, but at the same time comforting and familiar. Like memories of a place we feel we've been before, but can't quite recall all the details of the experience."

"My paintings are often influenced by music and I relate them to lyrics that try to capture and convey my thoughts in the artwork."

"Using color as language, my work becomes alive with emotion through the movement of the structure and luscious layers of pigment. Much like memories,each painting is filled with layer upon layer of paint, building a rich history into each piece"

Immersion in creativity for me is a conversation with myself, a revelation, as well as an appeal to society.

Each painting has its own story, but I would like each viewer to see something personal in it, some kind of echo in his soul.
Painting for me is brilliant meditation and expresses my emotions, state of mind and needs of constant change and freedom. My way is knowledge and perception through working out details and observing the process of creating art.

Petra was born in 1968, Austria, and is currently mostly living and working in Croatia, on the Dalmatian Adriatic coast of Korcula, with a fantastic outdoor studio directly on the sea.

After the Master's degree study in Executive Management MBA - General Management in Vienna Petra  was working many years as Country Leader for a BigData &  Data Science company from Berlin and also many years in Web Design & Usability projects

My practice explores the transitional space between reality and imagination. A constant yearning to understand dreams, distant memories, and mutating shapes in the dark informs the progression of each artwork. 

The work is process-led: often using fluid layers of ink as a base, to then find and highlight emerging forms. Considering the fragility of dreams and memories, the work can build from splinters of multiple moments or feelings, into a scene that fits neither into the compartment of a memory, or real life, or complete imagination. 

These liminal spaces mutate and take on new meaning with different perspectives. They become spaces on the boundary of familiar and unknown, acting as an invitation to move away from immediate surroundings and instead, pause to consider the quiet space between knowing. 

Katy Gardner is a painter and printmaker based in the UK. Recently graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins, Katy’s practice explores ideas around memory, dreams and the nocturnal. She is interested in the transitional spaces between reality and imagination, where memories are reconstructed, and dreams influence waking life. For Katy, these themes act as a door to a new mindset, a free space where intangible events can reframe everyday experiences. Katy’s practice combines layers of printing ink, overlapped with delicate pen markings and splashes of oil paint to create mixed media works that reveal a fusion of imagery.

Since graduating, Katy has exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery, London as part of their London Grads Now exhibition showcasing emerging artists, as well as multiple virtual exhibitions and a recent group show in Shakespeare’s hometown highlighting the artists response to the year 2020.

Nuria González Alcaide is a 26 year old self-taught Spanish artist currently living in Barcelona. As a background, she has studied Hotel Management and Tourism and has worked as a chef for the past five years. She has always painted, but only as a hobby. Since the end of 2020, she started to realize and to accept which was her true passion and has begun to develop her artistic work more professionally and independently.

She has been through an introspective journey where she has changed what she was expressing with art. Now she gets inspiration from her own limit of perfection and how society makes use of it without realizing it. She paints the emotions and feelings that are hidden in the society. Also, her professional change is reflected into her artworks, and she wants to send a message to all those people who are not pushing their true dreams.

Nuria has exhibited in "The Holy Art virtual exhibition, Persona" in London, in “Art Show International” virtual exhibition and in the "Asociación Española de Pintores y Escultores" in Madrid, as well as has been published by the magazine "Flamantes". She has done an online residency at “Mango, residencia para artistas” where she developed a video-art about the impact of human garbage on the animal world.

Nuria González Alcaide is a 26-year-old self-taught painter who has gone through an introversion process. Now, she is able to connect with what she wants to capture and transmit with her works.

This process begins with the barrier that she always found when creating. She didn't feel she was free, both mentally and emotionally. The term perfection is part of that limit that she set herself every day, and by being able to go beyond it, her vision of art has totally changed. Instead of having perfection as a weakness, she has decided to use it to create; with the use of acrylics and textures, she expresses on large canvases the emotions that she has had in silence for appearing to be perfect in this “perfect” world.

Society is also part of her inspiration; she considers that today there are not many people who encourage you to follow your emotions and feelings, and to embark on a creative journey to exploit your full potential. What they want is an established guideline to be followed to keep your inner light quiet. When you are a child, they do not instill in you that strength to get what you really want, on the contrary, if you do not enter the mold that they stipulate, they throw you aside and try to change you. Apart from the inspiration that she finds in these concepts, Joan Miró, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet are part of her references.

Nuria has always hidden that desire to create because she considered that it was something that she could not do and even less live from it. Thanks to this creative process mentioned above, she is now able to create freely and transmit the emotions that feels in the society.

When creating, she uses the primary colors that get mixed on the canvas with the help of water. She also adds texture and dynamism in different layers in an abstract way.

She is currently working on a project where creates and explores society's hidden emotions and feelings; the first one is called "Windows", a series of progressive works that speak of the artistic awakening that she has had. In each work there is a window, which represents the opening of the artist's eyes, while the background represents society. And the one that she is currently working on talks about the acceptance towards oneself as towards others, where she explores how the emotions transform during that process and expresses it with paintings.

"Outre temps"

My work is about time, origins and the feeling of eternity.
I call this approach "Outre temps" which can translate into "timelessness".
The objective is to establish a dialogue with time and to reconnect with contemplation.
I favor the silent emotion and the feeling of Mystery.

The basis of my painting is oil, with pigments, often iridescent. I add resin and other media to develop a texture that reacts to light.
I work this with brushes and large spatulas that I make myself.
Above all, I try to make the work "communicate" and interact with light.

For me, a painting is an organic body, almost alive.
It must convey something deep that speaks to us in silence, declares Laurens Heurtebise.

Life motto: "There is a time for everything."

Bart Persoons (born in 1967 in Belgium, lives and works in Erps-Kwerps, 16 km from Brussels, the capital of Europe) is a painter who, at first sight, creates abstract, colourful canvases with a simple signature, i.e. hundreds to thousands of small, vertical stripes.

He has found a way to bring peace of mind back into his life by applying small stripes to the canvas in a very ordered, harmonious and structured manner. As such, he only makes works for himself. Many viewers, however, feel the same pressure in their heads and fall into a kind of trance of calm by looking at Bart's works.

The result is a world that he has appropriately named 'The Little People'. Each little stripe represents a human being in full abstraction.

In some of the works, he makes his Little People walk a path to somewhere -- a search for who we are or what we want to become.

The slow process of creation and construction is crucial in the artist's work. He wants to take viewers along into that slow process and give them an insight into the fact that the "instant" society in which we live today creates immense pressure. Accepting slowness constitutes an important part of the work.  Every painting needs time to dry and some buyers have to wait 6 to 10 months before the work can be delivered. That is really smashing, for it goes completely against the grain of today’s "instant."

Produced slowly with oil paint, all the works display a high degree of order, structure and focus. The impasto technique confers depth and emphasizes the purity of the paint.

Specifications of the works of art: 

• The works are made on linen canvas, Universal 661 Professional linen, back side stapled
• Oil paint: in particular Winsor& Newton (Artists’ oil colour), Rembrandt (Artists’ quality), Mussini
• Inspired by Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Sol Lewitt, Yves Klein, Bram Bogaert

The series of oil paintings for the Monat Gallery is about the search of each one of us. Everyone is looking for the highest good (success, love, a warm home, a father, a mother, sex, happiness, etc.). That highest good is symbolized by the golden atmosphere in which the work is bathed, declares Bart Persoons .

I share a little piece of my heart in every painting I create. I rarely know beforehand how the new artwork will shape and develop. Nothing is given or decided; the blank canvas itself provokes inspiration.

It is exciting to stand in front of a white canvas. A thousand thoughts and artworks start to dance in my head. I just get started and once the lines, shapes and colors start coming together, an idea for the motive takes form as well. This high degree of unpredictability and impulse fascinates me and brings energy & dynamics into my art. Spontaneity lives. Monotony does not exist in my world!

When I paint, I am free. In a way, I transport myself to my second universe. My art is fueled by impulse, mood and creativity more than predetermined ideas or genres. I do not consider my paintings complete until the motive, all colors and elements come together as a unity and no single piece bothers my eye. The hours I spend in front of the easel are pure contemplation, happiness and balm for my soul. When I paint, the world outside my studio could end, and I would not notice,declares Sarah Peguero.

Sarah creates her paintings across multiple genres and with a constant desire to try new techniques and approaches. She works with a wide palette of (materials /tools)such as oil- and acrylic paint, pen, cole and crayons on canvas. Sarah has a weakness for Gold color that she uses in different materials and structures, almost becoming a trademark in her paintings. Born, raised and awarded a university degree in Interior Design in the Caribbean. Sarah later moved to Paris in France to learn French and study Fashion Illustration.

Dorette Polnauer works mainly on topics of color-symbolic perception of the outside world. Three motifs are woven into the painterly language of the artist, namely the spiral, the outfit as well as the framing and the red color. On her study trips to Malta, Africa and Australia, Polnauer explores the symbolic meaning of the spiral motif. She uses inherent energy of this symbol, rooted in the life-giving form of the germs in the plant world, to express the primitive life force. The motif "dress and framing" symbolizes the social behavior of the people, i.d., how the cultural people cover themselves and identify themselves.

The red color has been associated with the meaning of life and power, love and eroticism in the collective memory of the Westerners. The artist connects it as an element carrying emotions with the other two morphological motifs. For her paintings, Polnauer prefers the "pure color", which she makes from pigments herself and mixes further with ash and sand.

Polnauer was born in 1955. After studying "Graphic design" at the Merz Akademie and being connected to the artist group "Experiment" in Stuttgart, she took on other academic studies in Salzburg, Remscheid and Trier. Now she works as an artist with teaching activities at home and abroad.

My Name is Ajteni Ramadani, born in North Mazedonia and based in Germany. Through various studies within Germany, i continued my education in seminars, nude painting, paint events and wood sculpting. My Art Directions range from the representation of various objects of abstract works of Art to experimental painting. My productions are mainly based on Canvas with oil, acrylic, ink, chalk and spray painting, through which I express immediate and pure emotions. I Love to let off steam on large Canvas work with colours and different Materials. When i paint , the creation process is impulsive , powerful and unpredictable spacially when paint flies and flows in all directions!

I like design and architecture, which is characteristic of my work, but taken to volumetric and forceful minimalism. Landscapes modelled by sunlight and shadows. 

I look for the viewer to interpret the work and discover the visual games it contains.

Although I feel comfortable with the style and artistic technique used in my "Blocks" series, I am constantly experimenting and trying new things. declares Héctor Romero. 

I was born in Malaga in 1973.

Soon I moved with my family to Madrid, where I currently reside.

With a restless and creative character, it has always been clear to me that my professional

activity would have to be related to design, art and creativity.

I studied interior design and after working as a freelance and in several architecture and

design companies, in 2004 I decided to create the VOLTEO studio where I currently work.

Carrying out a wide variety of projects, I received some awards and mentions:

1stAccesit: Hotel Lobby (Intercidec 2018 Competition).

2nd Prize: Bathroom (Interior design contest; Versace Style 2017)

1st Prize: Concept Store ( Architecture and Interior Design Competition Porcelanosa 2016)

Accesit: Centerpiece (Italcementti-Alessi International Competition 2016)

Finalist: Yacht (Porcelanosa Architecture and Interior Design Competition 2015)

1st Prize: Commercial premises (Porcelanosa Architecture and Interior Design Competition

2014)

Finalist: Restaurant (Porcelanosa Architecture and Interior Design Contest 2013)

Finalist: Home (Porcelanosa Architecture and Interior Design Competition 2012)

2nd prize: Arab Villa (Interior Design Competition 2012)

Accesit: Akaba Stand (Stands Design Contest organized by COAM 2006)

1st prize: Nemetschek Stand (Stand Design Contest organized by COAM 2004)

I have always liked painting, going through a great variety of styles.

Encouraged by some recognitions and good critics, it is since a few years ago when I

decided to make my work visible and I have the opportunity to start exhibiting.

Familiar with the use of perspective, technical drawing and the creation of spaces, I focus

on a pictorial style mixture of surrealism, architectural minimalism, expressionism,

metaphysical ... desolate landscapes where the common link is in the combination of large

blocks or forceful volumes, creating disturbing spaces. Impossible perspectives, dreamlike

atmospheres where small shadows wander, geometries that betray themselves.

I like to bring something more to the works. A touch of mystery and optical illusion,

creating forced perspectives with characters in different planes to observe the scene from

two different points of view. There are almost always two human figures to give

proportion to the composition. Sometimes, it is the same person, represented at the same

time in the same place, but in a different point of view.

But beyond the pretended game of illusionism that in the end proposes all art, I propose a

three-dimensional plastic reflection on perspective, light and color. An open window to

the world of dreams.

I have participated in Speed Painting contests:

1st Prize Speed Painting Dalí Square (2017).

1st Prize Speed Painting Dalí Square (2015)

1st Prize Fast Painting Dalí Square (2010)

Popular Vote Award Speed Painting Dali Square (2019)

Selection Fast Painting Retiro (2011)

Selection Fast Painting Retiro (2009)

As a professional fine artist, graduated from the college of fine art, also having another degree in art education, also was an art educator and art programs organiser in schools I worked with, I am able to adapt to any art style and work in different materials and medium also I am able to do different styles in my paintings and mixing different art schools in a modern way as contemporary art and modern impressionism.

My inspirations are the Art Masters: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Dégat, Van goch, Picasso, Delacroix and Micheal Angelo.

Following the art schools of: Impressionism, expressionism, Cubism, Kandensky, Abstract and Classic Art.

In my paintings,  I am using now more Acrylic paints also I use oil paints and mixed medium on canvas; Also I am adding texture sometimes with different artworks as composition and landscapes.

I love landscapes , still lives, and abstract themes, also recently I am doing some fluid arts as now there is a lot of new art materials and paints introduced in the art market for artists to try new artistic creations and inventions in the art world.

I like to spread in my artwork positivity and happiness and make sure that my artwork is perfect before displaying it in an exhibition; I try always to use elegant colours and happy colours as I do not like to spread sadness in my artwork.

I want to add also, that I like pastels, charcoals and water colours and  love to work with these art medium. Also I love to do animal portraits as horses and falcons and human portraits. 

I am a Latin abstract visual artist and poet; my work is deeply connected to the rural Iowa landscape where I live.  I am currently creating atmospheric paintings that use natural elements, acrylic paints, and oil pastels on canvas or natural media.  Depending on the mood of the season and how the plants and animals are behaving, I incorporate other materials.

Growing up as a Latin woman in the rural Midwest, I felt most at home in the wilderness, as a wild/other thing myself.  I formed a deep connection to the landscape that has grown into a profound appreciation and desire to seek the grounding and calming effect of nature.  I am drawn to the wild.

My work is informed by natural shapes and forms that are both stark and inviting, haunted, and also, home. My process is to observe and meditate on the contradictions of land and sky, seasonal changes, and the inherent tension between the beauty and violence that exists in nature in its purest form. Each painting is a celebration of the harmony between disparate parts that somehow form a whole, the beauty of belonging and otherness, of wilderness and home.

I allow the materials to find their path on the canvas.  I find patience to be as essential a tool in my palette as any paint can be.  I surrender to the universe; I recognize the art is my other half.  I invite you to share our connection, declares Gabriella Sophia Torres.

I’m a Belgian ceramic artist and sculptor in Dubai for the last 7 years.  After exploring many art forms, from piano over painting to fashion design, I was drawn back to clay, one of the most natural materials to work with. Since 2012 I’ve been exploring this medium in different studios in Belgium and Dubai. Playing with texture, discovering and studying clay and pushing the limits of glazes, my work is playful and real, raw and unpretentious, declares Griet Van Den Auwelant .

My painting is my way to express my feelings. In this journey, I am inspired by the colours themselves, memories of places and nature. I combine colours to find some harmony that follows the philosophy of impermanence of life. I look for subtle depth and light together with overlapping gestural marks in an overall composition. I work on linen with acrylics which help me to play with spontaneous and controlled brush strokes and to explore balance between rhythms and disruption, absence or presence of perspective, colors tension and colors shading. I apply one color at a time to play with the desired level of energy I want to obtain. My paintings are mostly large and aimed at achieving beauty and a visual sensory that is meditative and vibrant. I am an artist engaged to add poetry to my life.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Brussels (Belgium), in 1973, Valerie J.A. Vandermotten is an emerging and awarded artist living and working in the South of Brussels.

She started a regular art practice in 2009 by attending art classes at Ecole d'Art d'Uccle and Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Wavre. There, she learned drawing, art history, the old masters painting technique and traditional subject matters.

In 2011, she moved to California (Cupertino and San Francisco) where she has been living for 8 years. She continued her art education at the Pacific Art League School (Palo Alto), and Stanford University (Palo Alto). In 2017, she earned a Post-Baccalaureate in Visual Arts with a focus on Painting and Printmaking at UC Berkeley Extension (San Francisco).

A year later, Valerie J.A. has been a finalist of the Bay Area Masters competition organised by the Peninsula Museum of Art.

Since September 2021, she has been an MFA candidate in Painting at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design).

Her work has been exhibited in Belgium, Italy, Germany and California and is part of private collections in Washington, San Francisco Bay Area, the Silicon Valley and Belgium.

MINERAL POETICS.

Nature seeps into art through the materials that make it possible. From this point of view, I am not so much interested in "pictorial matter" as in the strict sense of the word, but rather in the element itself. This is how matter is introduced into my work: firstly,through the addition of pigments, and lastly through their subtraction. My works are generated following a parallel process to that of nature in the conformation of its textures and forms. The four natural elements - water, earth, fire and air - are the components that serve as the basis for the creation of my “pictoesculturas". The mineral pigments and the lands I choose are eroded and transformed into the work through these tools. It is the only way to create something natural and which appears to be unaltered by man. 

Like poetry, my work  is conceived in a world of ideas; but unlike  poetry, it doesn’t use words but rather appeals to natural elements to reproduce a new natural reality. I’m looking to create something that is real in itself; that doesn’t require any type of explanation. It is about bringing to life the invisible forces that govern  Mother Nature —extracting her essence. Nature isn’t abstract, each element is designed to carry out a corresponding purpose. It’s role in our life is hard to predict. Why are certain shapes drawn in the sand and not others? Where is the secret that makes the mud crack, forming clear geometric and proportional figures?

I confess that inspiration rarely strikes me when working. When I am commuting, I only have to concentrate for the images to appear in my head and engrave themselves on my retina. Afterwards, I develop a more appealing idea in my mind and resolve the technical issues that occur when translating them into three dimensions. After jotting these ideas down, I then save them for a future project. 

My favourite base material to use is wood. It allows me to carve it before working on it and it is sufficiently resistant to hold a large amount of material and water. The making of the wooden frames is a very important step for me, since during this stage I can sculpt the “skeleton” that will later carry the “skin” of the artwork: the pictorial layer. A highly elaborated frame of the appropriate size and model will define how the paint and the canvas merge into one. The paint and clay used for painting and modelling are also of my own manufacture, thus certain of their origin and purity. The pure powder pigments are hydrated with water and ground in the mortar to later be mixed with vinyl or acrylic resins. Through this method, I can vary the proportions to get a round crackle, mineral crystallizations or a subtle velvety surface. The modeling of the compositional forms of the work is done with vinyl clay on the wooden frame.

But it´s not all about control and supervision. There is also a notorious space reserved for luck... When the paint is mixed and the frame is ready, all that´s left is to provide the right environment for everything to happen. The music chosen for the execution of the work is a primordial factor in its development, as well as in my conception of artistic work. This is a moment of great excitement for me: the one in which the work creates itself. It´s clear to me that the work is something different from myself, separate from me. I give it the freedom to be what it embryologically already is. The artist is only the medium.

I don't think I would trade this experience for anything. It's the one that encourages me to keep creating and the one I wanted to share with the audience in my occasional live performances. The emotions provoked by attending the birth of a new three-dimensional piece, as alive as reality itself, are the triggers in those moments of the longed-for catharsis. When this happens, we are immersed in a state of mental and spiritual purification. 

If one thing is clear to me in those moments, it is that creation responds to my life, and my life, to creation. After many years of technical preparation, and having briefly passed through most artistic styles, I consider that this is the line that best suits my personality and the one in which I am fully realized. Only by being a perfectionist with certain material and technical aspects of the work, can I allow myself to give free rein to my emotions and throw myself into the void.

Sometimes, some of my pictoesculturas are inhabited by a human presence or by signs, fragments or constructions that the human being has left behind. They are figures at a scale of 1:220 or 1:160. The scale is a crucial part of the content of the work, because, thanks to it, we are shown oversized. Nature then reveals itself in its true dimension. 

This "little observer" contemplates the surroundings in absolute solitude—interacting with Nature. They will be able to feel sublimated or to eventually fight against it, not to let themself be dragged by the force of the elements. Under certain circumstances, they will appear as a passive spectator, while in others, they will become a victim of the surrounding environment. The traces that this little adventurer leaves in the artwork are hardly noticeable, which will lead us to speculate about their avatars and destiny.  However, at other times the intruders appear inhabiting the interior of some polyhedron, like a pharaoh inside its pyramid.

This tiny human presence goes almost unnoticed in the eyes of the real spectator, who sees the work from a certain "respectful" distance. Thus, the observer will resemble a God who contemplates their creation from above; and the "little observer" will, in turn, become an "observed observer".