Golden Hour
Michelle Asarch is an artist hailing from Long Beach, New York, residing in New York City. Michelle currently teaches Visual Art at the Department of Education in New York City. She has had several gallery shows, been featured by the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, received Honorable Mention Award from Blue Door Art Center gallery, and was rated one of the top 50 art instructors in NYC by Coursehorse.com.
At the age of 12, doctors discovered that Michelle had a gap in her spine that formed between C2 and C3. Nerve damage had already progressed down her entire left side, rendering her left arm limp and unusable, and had a teacher not caught her limping by subtly dragging her foot behind her, doctors would not have been able to catch it in time. Can you imagine being 12 and a world-renowned neurosurgeon telling your parents, “If she is in a car and the car is jostled, she is going to die? Bring her in for surgery immediately.” Two surgeries took place to fuse C2 and C3, as well as the base of the skull to C4. After 3 months with a medical halo, a Frankenstein-like creation that holds the neck still by drilling into your skull and supporting the weight of your head, 12 months with a neck brace during her last year of middle school, and over 10 years of physical and occupational therapy (though her left arm is still essentially function-less), years of chronic pain and PTSD, Michelle is grateful to be able to still be here and express that joy at still being alive in a Kintsugi-like manner with gold leaf symbolizing both hope and dread.
Golden Hour
I’m Faith Kauhn and I’m a Studio Arts Major at the University of Alabama. I’ve been studying for 4+ years and found a love for mixed media. I’m constantly wanting to challenge myself and reinvent my work so I work with multiple mediums. As I’ve continued to study and work on bigger projects, I’ve found a love for installation art. I’m working on my next project to involve desks, tables, and other furniture as my next installation passion project. For now, my focus will be graduating in Spring 2025 and developing more of my artistic skills.
The day a child loses their first tooth, to a teenager experiencing their first heartbreak, to celebrating graduation after years of grueling academic struggles, these are all important life milestones. Although everyone experiences life differently, many have relatable stories that connect them. Through my work, I use mixed media to manipulate my emotions into a visual piece, great a sense of community and belonging, and provide new experiences. In a way, as I share these stories, I’m learning more about myself and learning about others in return. By using a variety of materials, it brings out different emotions and topics. So materials can range from acrylic, oil paint, gouache, watercolor, wire, plasticine, wood, pastels, cardboard, and more. Writing and conceptualizing ideas helps to jumpstart my work. Having a story guides the tone and material of choice, and is essential to its development. Each color palette is set to the tone that I want the project to reflect. Bright and saturated paintings spark joy, peace, and energy, while dark and muted palettes bring gloom, melancholy, and reflection. Despite working in mostly 2D format, my interest has broadened to bigger 3D projects. By making 3D installments and projects, it allows viewers to step into the art piece and be a part of it. With one of my projects, a student desk with notes scrawled across it, guests were invited to sit there. Many shared how it reminded them of nights they would crunch away at assignments or how stressed they felt. Each person had a different viewpoint to share but together all have become a part of this piece as each person sat down. That’s the most enjoyable part of making art; seeing people partake, experience, and share it.
Golden Hour
Lori Lankford is a garden and flower photographer whose work explores the lyrical and transformative qualities of the botanical world. Centered on flowers, garden forms, and intimate details found in nature, her images move between representation and abstraction, revealing a quiet tension between observation and interpretation.
Working primarily with close focus and a painterly sensibility, Lori creates expressive floral portraits and atmospheric studies that emphasize gesture, texture, light, and impermanence. Her practice is rooted in a sensitivity to mood and visual nuance, inviting viewers to encounter familiar natural subjects in ways that feel immersive, contemplative, and emotionally resonant.
In addition to her studio practice, Lori has taught photography and led workshops for the past ten years, sharing her approach to creative vision and image-making through both in-person and online instruction. Her work has been published in a variety of media and featured in gallery exhibitions.
She draws ongoing inspiration from gardening, where close attention to seasonal change, structure, and fleeting beauty continues to inform her artistic practice.
My work examines the fleeting beauty of the natural world through photography and digital artistry, with an emphasis on flowers and botanical forms. Moving between representation and abstraction, I use light, color, texture, and selective focus to create images that are less about description and more about evocation.
Rooted in a deep engagement with gardening and seasonal change, my practice is shaped by an awareness of impermanence, fragility, and transformation. I am interested in how natural forms can communicate emotion and atmosphere, inviting viewers to pause, look closely, and experience the botanical world in a more intimate and reflective way.
Golden Planet Earth We Are Here
Hege Ullensvang was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1972. In 1996 she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Teacher Education in Design, Arts, and Craft and spent a year after that studying art history before beginning to teach arts and crafts in high school. In 1999, she decided to travel to India for the first of four trips, spending the majority of her time at a meditation and creativity resort in Pune. Here she met people from all over the world and participated in a variety of social and creative activities. Among other things, she learned how to create mandalas and worked as an artist and art teacher there.
Hege has no official art education, but in 2015 she decided to pursue her passion for art and joined a shared art studio with several other artists, which provided a significant boost to my artwork. She gradually began to see herself as an artist, which resulted in increased self-confidence and a desire to create more… Now she has her tiny studio where she enjoys creating her visual art.
I find inspiration in nature, but I am also fascinated by the industrial world and the man-made. Contrast is an important tool in my art, and it’s fun to play with shapes and colors and see how they interact and affect one another. I have a desire to make the chaotic and inaccessible more available – yet, it is always tempting to fracture the known and “restore” chaos. My medium is acrylic paint. I also create collages from newspaper and magazine cuttings, and oftentimes a combination of the two.
My vision, both artistically and in all aspects of life is, to the best of my ability, thriving in my day-to-day life, focusing on what feels lighter and what else is possible. Maybe it’s not the easiest thing to do at times, but there’s great potential for that in creating my art!
Golden Poppy
I have spent over four decades pursuing the ability to place light on a piece of paper. The magic of the moment when the Polaroid image emerged out of the “brown-ness” has never left me. I spent countless hours, maybe even years, in the perpetual darkness of my family’s darkroom trying to recapture and expand on that magic. The holding of my breath as the image emerged out of the developer usually ended in a sigh of disappointment as I didn’t quite capture the light in the way my mind’s eye saw it.
I have always been an early adopter of new technology or rather – an early modifier of technology. When Sony released the first digital camera that captured “light” on a charge-coupled device and then stored it on floppy disks, I bought the camera thinking that my failing as an artist was a limitation of the tools; and now technology has surmounted that obstacle. But the images produced by this new digital technology lacked the vibrancy of even my early attempts in the darkroom. The sigh that escaped my lips on seeing the print coming out of the inkjet printer was not a whole lot different, either.
My search for light didn’t end there. Major advances were made in digital cameras, inkjet printers, photo manipulation software, and even the paper that images were printed on. And with each advance, my sighs of disappointment became a little less pronounced, until I realized that technology was never going to provide the answer, it was only going to provide a wider path toward the light.
There is perfection in every flower blooming. So why does an artist attempt to re-create something that has already attained perfection? Simply put, it is not the artist’s job to find imperfections and replace them. It is the artist’s job to create…and allow the creative process to take them to another place. May be a place in which imperfection is more beautiful than perfection.
Golden Pyramid
My artistic focus is continually shifting, adapting to new technologies to maximize exploring all the creative possibilities, never having enough hours in a day. My creative energy manifests itself day and night; sleep brings fresh new ideas. Visionary art by a Marfanite, a visual language fully dedicated for a half-century of photographic experiences.
RIKXECOM, the ultra-contemporary abstract artist, strives to create meaningful pieces of art that spark joy, imagination, and exploration. My artwork is a reflection of my spiritual journey, and I draw inspiration from the beauty of nature and the power of the human spirit. I strongly believe that the arts process feeds my escape, and I strive to create pieces that will speak to the hearts of my viewers.
As a multi-disciplinary North American-born artist based in Palm Beach, Florida, from a young age, I was inspired by my mother to explore the world of art and expression. My passion for art led me to open my own studio in 1982, where I was able to express myself through a variety of mediums. In 1982, I owned and operated a commercial sign shop using oil paint and designing show cards, and later on, I added aerial photography to do commercial postcards hanging off the side of a doorless helicopter, pre-drone era.
In addition to my artistic pursuits, I was also a youth chess champion by the age of 10. Despite being diagnosed with Marfan’s Syndrome in my pre-teens and having many surgeries, this did not stop me from pursuing my passions.
Golden Summer
Judit Szendrei lives and works in Debrecen, Hungary, and in London.
As a creative philatelist-cum-Pop Collagist, Judit often works collaboratively with other members of her family to create intricate papiers collés mosaics made entirely from repurposed stamps.
For many years, Judit worked professionally as an economist in her local town of Debrecen, Hungary, and, having held a fascination for stamps since her childhood, began making stamp mosaics in 2015. She held her first exhibition in 2018, showing 35 works to wide acclaim in her local town and to audiences far and wide.
In 2020, one of Judit Szendrei’s works was presented to Pope Francis and now hangs in Vatican City. This important event was followed in 2021 by the exhibition titled Towards the Light in Palazzo Falconieri in Rome.
Showing her devotion towards art, Judit’s exhibition held in the Hungarian city of Pecs in 2021 was titled Artistic Inspirations.
A number of her pictures have become part of major private collections and museums. Interestingly, the first was her early picture, the Cirque, which can now be found in the Royal Palace in Tirana, Albania. The Hungarian Stamp Museum, which possesses one of the largest stamp collections in the world, organized an exhibition of Judit’s pictures in 2020. This favour of the museum was honoured by Judit by donating her picture, Taormina, as I view it, to the museum, and it became part of the museum’s permanent exhibition.
Judit is also proud of having her picture titled God Save the Queen! made to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s birthday in 2022 hangs on the wall of Wardawn Museum in Luton, United Kingdom.
Last year, she had four exhibitions in China, visited by more than 1.5 million people.
What I create is a truly distinctive form of art, as I believe there are fewer than ten individuals worldwide who utilise stamps to craft their artistic pieces. This technique blends elements of mosaic, collage, and montage, which I have affectionately dubbed MoCoMo Art by Stamps. I take great pride in having developed this style independently. My journey in art has evolved from a simple hobby into a full-fledged passion, as I balance my role as an artist with my career as an economist. At times, the stamps themselves inspire the concept for a painting, while in other instances, I channel my thoughts and emotions through stamp painting. I enjoy reinterpreting the ideas of fellow artists in my work, but I also strive to convey my perspectives on significant themes such as war, peace, and human connection.
Creating art fills me with an extraordinary sense of joy, and I aspire to share that joy with everyone who experiences my pieces.
Golden Teller
My name is Haley Nielsen, I am a young professional artist who works with a variety of different mediums including oil paints, acrylic paints, charcoal, graphite, ballpoint pen, and watercolor paints. I was born on February 17th, 2004, and have resided in Colorado all of my life. Although I am young, I have made several accomplishments over the years in my art career. I have been working for myself full-time selling art since I graduated high school and get more and more commissions as time goes on. I am a proud member of the Gilpin County Arts Association in Central City, Colorado as well as the Independence Gallery in Loveland, Colorado. I have been published in the 46th, 50th, and 54th issues of Artistonish Magazine. I am one hundred percent self-taught in what I do and hope to be a well-recognized artist someday.
I have known from a very young age that I wanted art to be the main focus of my life and have worked very hard to realize that dream. I commission artwork, sell prints and original works, and create artworks in both traditional and contemporary styles with a large focus on hyperrealism. The main inspirations for my work are nature, my own surroundings, and music. I have recently started using charcoal again, which was the medium I first started with and has become my main focus along with oil paints. The animal portraits I create draw attention to the subtle yet complex beauty and elegance they hold. The people and still life I depict in my work show the importance of light and shadows and allow the viewer to see the underappreciated detail in everything and everyone around us. The reason I create art is simply because I love it. It allows me to express my love and appreciation for this world as well as reconnect with myself and the things in life that resonate with me the most.
Gondola For Two
Since 2013 I have been living and creating in the United Kingdom. I was born in Lithuania in 1962, I finished A. Martinaitis Art School and Academy of Art. I have had 22 solo and 72 group exhibitions in Europe: Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, also in England, Canada, Japan, and the United States. My artistic career started in 1989. For more than 20 years I was working as an artist in the Kaunas Musical Theatre, also, I created 12 stage projects for theatrical performances. In the United Kingdom, I am working as a full-time artist.
This year by the World of Art. Magazine, I was selected for the Book “Top 10 Contemporary Artists 2023. Also, I recently received an International Art Award “Collectors Art Prize. This Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in Contemporary Art. My artworks selected for Art Anthologies and other books of the Art.
In the creative process, I use different media; Oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas, collages, and mixed media: Oil pastels, acrylic, and watercolors on paper. Each time my inspirations come from different ways: travels, music, art, literature, nature, and from unified fields of consciousness and unconsciousness.
In order to achieve particular expression and to show the inner spirit of the objects I stylize, and reshape forms from nature in my own unique way. Some of my artworks have elements of impressionism, and others – pointillism or surrealism.