Flowers On The Hillside
I was born in Poughkeepsie, NY. I am a retired Orthodontist. I became a writer on award shows, a writer, a producer of events, and a home flipper. I began my adult art journey at The Beverly Hills Adult Education Center, where I studied figure sculpting. From there, I moved on to The Brentwood Art Center in Santa Monica. Then The Jayne Behman’s Art Center.. My watercolors were mostly inspired by high-fashion photographs of celebrities and models. This is where my love of bold, bright, joyous colors was born. I moved to NYC for 4 years and studied at The 92nd Street Y. I then studied glass mosaic art. There, I created a unique style in just my first piece. I added a relief style dimension to my mosaics, which is rarely seen in the medium. I switched from glass to paper art. The Paper art is done either in 2 dimensions or 3. Some of the works are raised off the surface and are then box-framed. I have been awarded ribbons for my work at The Off Track Gallery in Encinitas and the Carlsbad Oceanside Art League in Carlsbad Village. My work has also been featured at The Escondido Arts Partnership, Art on 30th Street, and currently, I have a piece at The Visions Museum of Textile Art at Liberty Station. I added Decoupage and Acrylic to my list of mediums. My works in this medium have been shown at the San Diego County Fair Fine Arts Show, Off Track Gallery, Art on 30th Street, The Vi at La Jolla Village Art Gallery, and have been featured in art publications. In addition to my love of creating for myself, I teach many crafting and art classes. They include: Holiday Craft projects, Paper Collage Classes, Gourd Painting, Handbag Design, Hand Painted Glass, Stenciling, Paper Flower Classes, Stained glass on glass design, Decoupage on glass and papier mache, and Acrylic and Decoupage classes.
I have worked with clay, watercolor, stained glass mosaics, collage, acrylic, and decoupage and acrylic on canvas. I teach many types of classes at Vi La Jolla Village. My works have appeared in gallery shows in Palm Springs, NYC, Palm Desert, CA, Escondido, Encinitas, North Park, Liberty Station, and other galleries in San Diego.
I have participated in many art shows and have appeared in many juried shows, including the San Diego County Fair Fine Arts shows.
I also teach crafting classes. My passion is to inspire others and to create joyful and beautiful things.
Flowers On The Wall Fauzan France
Richard Murrin has been a contemporary realist artist & photographer specialising in figurative and astronomical artwork for more than fifty years, principally interested visually in all that is perceived as magic. Originally an abstract painter, he considered he lacked the self-discipline and skill required for photo-realist paintings, but he proved otherwise remarkably quickly, producing work which is unique, imaginative, witty, and highly finished.
Born in Bromley, Kent, England, in 1948, he originally lived in Bickley, then London and Wales. He now currently resides in Eynsford, Kent, where he has lived since 1987. He attended Hammersmith & Camberwell Colleges of Art, London, in the 1960s, has a Fine Art degree, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Widely travelled, he has a very extensive view of the world, as well as providing him with some remarkable sources of inspiration for his paintings & photographs. He has produced illustrations for newspapers, books & magazines, storyboards & made digital illustrations for various media, been a guest lecturer in Art and Astronomy, and exhibited paintings and prints internationally. He regularly exhibited at the Blackheath Gallery, Queens Gallery, Gt Queen St, London, & the Window Gallery at Brighton 1985-1990, commenced online sales in 1998 & participated in group shows from 2014 -2019 at the Strand & Menier Galleries in London. Since 2022, he has shown artwork & photographs regularly at the Decagon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, Art Square Gallery, New York, the Aurea Photo Gallery, London & in international shows worldwide.
My aim is to speak volumes without saying a word. If one picture is worth a million words, I think it should be the task of the contemporary artist to expose the magic that nature & humanity can perpetuate, using representations of form & colour to produce images reflecting the agonies & ecstasies of the process of making & the appreciation of the visual experience.
My work is the product of a combination of direct observation, memory, and imagination. Most interesting to me is the effect of light. As my work tends toward a high degree of realism, it’s only the product of trying to ‘shine light on something’, producing the illusion of high-fidelity realism, which, one hopes, has the ability to positively sway the viewer’s perception, imagination & consciousness.
Flying Jewel 2
Born in Vienna, Austria, studying veterinary medicine, working as a virologist and expert in laboratory diagnosis at the Federal Institute for the Control of Viral Diseases in Animals, retired in 2012. She has been drawing and painting since childhood but interrupted this passion during her professional life. After her retirement, she started self-taught again, first with pastels, and later also with watercolor, coal, and acrylic. Her main topic is animals, besides plants, and landscapes, paintings of humans are the exception. Since 2013 she participated in numerous exhibitions in Austria and other countries, physically and digitally. Meanwhile, she received some awards for her artwork.
My parents taught me to open my eyes to the different wonders of creation and from childhood on I try to reflect these impressions in my paintings. Animals in all of their unique and rich beauty and their emotions were my main topic and will ever be. I try to give my painted animals a soal by the look of their eyes and hope it can be seen. Showing my artwork to the public is also an attempt to support the awareness of the voiceless creatures we should protect instead of abusing and destroying them.
Foggy Morning Voyage
Stanislav “Standa” Riha
Visual artist, photographer, and writer
Member of CARFAC
Born in 1952 in Prague, former Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Lesser Town (Malá Strana), surrounded by great medieval and modern art and artists that caused his desire to create. From early childhood, he enjoyed drawing and later painting; as a young man, he focused mainly on surrealism. His artistic attitude was shaped by many art courses in childhood, followed by art training by MgA Milos Saska and work in set production of the Realistic Theatre.
In 1980, he lived for a year in Grinzing, Vienna, Austria, and then moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada. Enchanted with the natural beauty of British Columbia, he dedicated the first few years to realistic nature themes and then switched to Surreal and later Surreal-abstract creative work.
In the last three decades, I have been creating wall-mounted, cast resin, and aluminum sculptures combined with canvas and gold leaf and exploring the computer as an art tool for creating digital artwork.
All my life, I have loved to create art full of emotions and feelings, “soul,” with the satisfaction of fun. I am interested in the balance and composition of colors and objects rather than the reality of the items.
The direction of the last two decades has been aimed at understanding and, through artwork, expressing the human struggle of emotions and adaptations. For the past ten years, I have been polishing my creative work in the Surreal-abstract style.
The main motto of my artwork is: Just as in a good story, the readers have space to create their image; in a good picture, the viewers can form their account.
Foliage Reflection
Erica Joy is a fine art landscape and seascape photographer based in New England. Her work captures the quiet beauty and emotional depth of the natural world, with a focus on coastal light, expansive skies, and fleeting atmospheric moments. Drawn to the rhythms of the seasons and the meditative power of stillness, Erica uses natural light and minimalist composition to create images that invite pause and presence.
Her photography has been featured in regional exhibitions, juried shows, and private collections, and she is the founder of Erica Joy Photography, where she shares her work through fine art prints and visual storytelling. Erica brings a thoughtful, grounded approach to her practice—one rooted in connection, care, and curiosity.
She currently lives and works just outside of Boston, where she continues to explore New England’s coastlines with a camera in hand.
Through the lens of my camera, I seek to capture moments of quiet awe—those fleeting, soul-stirring scenes in nature that invite reflection, stillness, and connection. My work as a landscape and seascape photographer is rooted in a deep reverence for the natural world and a desire to preserve its beauty in a time of increasing environmental fragility.
Based in New England, I am continually inspired by the region’s shifting seasons, moody coastlines, and vast skies. I return often to familiar places—windswept dunes, hidden lighthouses, and forest trails—not just to document their forms, but to explore how light, weather, and time transform them. This repetitive practice is a meditation and a way of seeing more deeply.
My photographic process blends intuition with intention. I use natural light, long exposures, and minimalist composition to distill scenes to their emotional essence. In doing so, I aim to create work that is not only visually compelling but also emotionally resonant—images that invite viewers to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with the world around them.
Photography has always been more than a medium for me—it is a language, a way to express what cannot be said in words. In a world often defined by noise and speed, my work offers a counterpoint: moments of peace, presence, and perspective.
My work invites contemplation and connection, and I look forward to contributing a visual voice that celebrates nature’s poetry and power.
Follicular
Born in Yerevan, Armenia, Shushanik Karapetyan is a New York-based artist. Her work has been showcased at the National Association of Women Artists, Governors Island, BRIC, La Bodega Gallery, LIC Arts Open, Site: Brooklyn Gallery, Art Mums United, and Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition.
Shushanik’s paintings are informed by her work as a gestalt psychotherapist, placing significance on the present moment, and being attuned to both internal processes – feelings, thoughts, and external influences as she works on a piece. While paintings begin with some form of structure (i.e., a seascape or a landscape), this structure is tentative and flexible, guided by moment-to-moment decisions, whether it’s choice of brush, color, texture, or movement in the painting. There is often a repetitive piece to her work such as pointillist strokes with a filbert brush or sweeping long strokes with a flat brush.
She is inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, who often communicates femininity, sensuality, and organic motifs, as well as impressionist artists like Georges Seurat and Claude Monet, tapping into the ability of the human eye to blend points of colors on their own.
Shushanik is a color collector and organizer, a visual poet.
“Follicular” is from a collection of paintings titled Cycle which highlights different stages in the Menstrual Cycle. “Follicular” depicts the follicular stage of the cycle when several follicles in the ovary begin to mature. Ultimately, one will become the egg which can be fertilized.
The main elements in this collection used to convey my experience are color texture and form. “Follicular” was painted during early Spring when the trees were just beginning to bloom. The colors in the painting were influenced by the anticipation of cherry blossoms, lilacs, hyacinths, crocuses, and hydrangeas, just as there was an anticipation of a follicle blossoming into an egg in the painting.
As I worked on “Follicular” and the collection at large, I was both aware of the environmental influences and my internal state. In Spring 2022 I was pregnant. I was feeling soft and fluid and that opened up the desire to paint in curves and gradations as a way of depicting the curves and layers of the body, the softness of skin, muscles, and fluids.
I painted “Benign” during the month of June when the lilies were in bloom in New York City. Various shades of these flowers are reflected in this painting. This was the external influence. As for the internal, at the time, I was thinking about benign cysts, how they silently emerge during the menstrual cycle and just as silently disappear, hence the title of this work. My intention with the bulbous shapes of the painting was to mirror the different shapes cysts can take within our bodies. The main contrasting theme of greens and pinks creates an ambivalence about the nature of this piece which is put to rest by the title – Benign.
This painting was inspired by and is a celebration of the capacity of the female body, the constant death and rebirth that our bodies experience, and the potential for new life.
Following The Death Of My Father
Born in Birmingham in the West Midlands, now lives and works in Stourbridge, England.
Started contemporary photography at the University of Wolverhampton, and graduated in 2012 with a string of exhibitions both with the university, but also around the world. Disabled from an industrial accident in 1996, which has been a part of the artist’s communication both with the physical action of the camera and the effect on what is seen by the viewer Nigal good ship moves between a realistic representation of emotion, both from a personal experience and a landscape of subject matter to be determined by the viewer.
His recent works still follow this idea of detachment and over-attachment to imagery.
We all have to deal with loss in some form or another, it’s nature.
After my father died, we had to clear his house of his belongings, both everyday objects, like furniture, crockery, etc, and more personal, pictures, clothes, his reading glasses, and other belongings.
After all the objects were cleared, we found a hidden truth that he hid from us for decades, the state of his own house. Was in. Unkept cold and drafty, no heating, hot water, just a small log burner to stay warm.
Instead of asking for help, he lived like a pauper.
These images are a few I took to remind me of not just a childhood home, but of my dad’s sacrifice to hide this from his family, so they would not worry about him.
Fontanella Sotto Il Monte Giovanni XXIII
I am an Italian-American, multi-cultural and polyglot artist. My paintings are colorful, profound, and uplifting. I am a self-taught artist, and this is my profession. I have learned a long time ago to trust the teacher within and go to my inner world to fetch ideas for painting.
My voice in fine arts has been influenced by the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism painters for my figurative compositions and some Modern artist for my abstract compositions. Sometimes, in my dreams, I am visited by the ghost of Maestro Salvador Dali, and some surreal compositions come to life.
I use my voice in fine arts to bring attention to matters that will generate a conversation with the viewer, as well as to express a personal story. All my paintings have a story, a piece of my soul, a raison d’être.
Light and shadow, foreground and background are four concepts that every painting mentor or professor hammers daily on the student’s head. I wanted to defy that. This is my rebel moment. I wanted to create abstract and figurative landscapes that did not conform to these four tenets of art. In these paintings, I forgot about the shadow and light, and I did not lighten the colors in the background to create a sense of depth. I concentrated on the geometrical shapes for the composition, and the colors.
Food Culture
Sandeep Kumar Mishra is an outsider artist, freelance writer, and teacher. He founded “Kishlaya Outsider Art Academy” in 2016. His first art exhibition was in the National Club Art Gallery, Rajasthan, India, January 1- 3, 1994. His latest art exhibition is ‘Future Stars’ in Barcelona, Spain, July 29-31, 2024.
His works are artistic manifestations of his actual self and show his heart for nature and its beautiful creations including humans, especially women. Watercolor landscapes on paper form the core subject of Sandeep Kumar Mishra’s paintings. With the simplicity of the medium, he uses base colors with a classical technique; his paintings are broad vistas of color and light that interpret the language of nature. The imagery is the quest of the artist for a spiritual place in the unsettling details of modern life. He relies on logical expression through dreams, memory, and self-expression. He shows the need to go back to nature.