Indigenous
Kevin Bartlett left the United States’ East Coast and moved West in 1996. This is where Kevin’s interest in photography blossomed. Attending classes at a local junior college provided the basics and, with his first “real” camera – a Nikon D90 – Kevin was off and running, constantly learning and exploring his art.
Kevin’s work straddles both contemporary realism and a fascination with capturing and displaying movement.
Twice received the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council’s Choice Award
Multiple works purchased by Farmington Museum for their permanent collection, Farmington, NM.
Best Color Photography, Durango Art Center, Durango, CO.
Best in Show, Aurora Artist Guild, Aurora, CO.
Bronze Award, 1839 Awards Color Photography Contest
Honorable Mention, 1839 Awards Photographer of the Year, Event Category
Photographic artworks displayed in:
Farmington, NM
Durango, CO
Aurora, CO
Billings, MT
Brooklyn, NY
New Orleans, LA
New York City, NY
Cheyenne, WY
Be it Grass, Jingle, Traditional, or Buffalo, the Pow Wow dance tells Indigenous stories. Subtle dance movements can describe healing, a hunt, or vanquishing a foe. The vibrant storytelling embedded in every step, every beat, and every gesture speaks to the deep history, resilience, and spirit of Indigenous peoples. In my art, I seek to amplify this storytelling through combining multiple photograph exposures. Single photographs take on an added dimension and dynamic appeal, representative of the traditional Indigenous spirit generated at these events. A spirit that binds communities and swells hearts with pride.
Industrial Sunrise
Anastasiia Hrobova is a Ukrainian-born artist currently based in the United States. Working mostly in painting and mixed media, she explores memory, grief, and the emotional weight of ordinary things. Her work often begins with a quiet feeling or image that won’t leave her alone—something small that asks to be noticed. She creates slowly and intuitively, allowing each piece to unfold rather than forcing it toward a fixed idea.
Much of Anastasiia’s perspective has been shaped by personal experiences of war, migration, and the process of learning to live between places. Painting became a way to process what didn’t fit into language, and over time, it turned into a space where she could hold both the beautiful and the painful without needing to resolve either.
Her work often blends elements of abstraction and symbolism, using texture, contrast, and softness to invite reflection. Rather than offering clear answers, her pieces try to hold space—for pause, for presence, for feeling something quietly but fully.
She recently earned her Associate’s degree in Psychology and is continuing her studies in Creative and Applied Arts, drawn to the ways emotion and expression intertwine through visual storytelling. Anastasiia has exhibited her art in Ukraine, the United States, and Canada, and continues to develop her practice with care and curiosity, believing that even small, honest gestures can carry meaning.
This piece came from a place I didn’t know I missed until I tried to paint it. Back in my hometown in Ukraine, I’d take the train to university during winter mornings—barely awake, crammed between strangers, watching the outskirts of the city roll by. It was always grey. Factories. Railroads. Smokestacks. The kind of landscape no one really looks at—but I did. I always noticed the light trying to break through, even when everything felt heavy. “Industrial Sunrise” isn’t a scene—it’s a feeling.
I painted it from memory, not to recreate what I saw, but to translate what it felt like to exist in that stillness. I worked in layered textures and muted colors to capture that sense of numb routine, with a hint of warmth trying to push through. It’s about motion and stillness. About being part of something you don’t fully understand, but still carry with you. This piece is for a version of me who was just surviving. Who kept noticing the world, even when no one else did. It’s a quiet thank-you to the unnoticed sunrises that kept showing up anyway.
Infalling
When I began to take myself seriously means arrived – at an empty apartment my landlords didn’t have time to renovate. Given, accepted. To have space and time. Aren’t these so often the working-class creatives’ obstacles? Half of success is survival.
I was born in Queens, New York, and raised in upstate New York before moving to South Florida. I studied humanities at the University of Michigan, graduating summa cum laude with two Hopwood Awards (for a novel and a poetry collection). While pursuing my writing I worked as a college adjunct, once teaching five courses at three colleges in two states. I’ve also worked as a nanny, carpenter’s helper, softball umpire, sports page editor, secretarial temp, and speed reading instructor. I lived and worked in North Philadelphia during the late 1990s as part of a Quaker ministry of service and peace.
After dreaming of painting and painting for a time I listened to a wise friend and began to paint, starting with self-portraits in watercolor and acrylic and landscapes on found wood. More recently I’ve studied and practiced abstract painting. I’ve taken workshops and tutorials with Ellen McKay. In the last few years, I’ve submitted pieces to group shows, placing one at Emerge Gallery in Kingston and more recently at Van Der Plas Gallery in New York City. I learn by looking at and co-critiquing with artists I admire, like J. Shibamura. I currently live in Cohoes, teach college English classes, and staff the front desk at The Arts Center of the Capital Region. I’m a proud founding member of the capital district’s first slam team, Nitty Gritty Slam. I’ve toured as a slam poet and represented NYC’s Urbana Slam at The Women of the World Poetry slam. I’ve published two books, Elizabeth K Gordon: Walk with Us (non-fiction) & Love Cohoes (poetry).
They began to paint after dreams of painting, rarely realizing what had been glimpsed. But reaching for it. Seeing shadows and fleeting beings. Making connections that allowed new power into old wires. They didn’t know all they’d been seeing all along. Surprises in the forms; messages in the colors; peace in the process. The binary asserting itself as to be seen clearly, moved aside for the troves of others, the othered others, to come through. Painting to find her/himself. To fly and to be grounded. To heal and to have something to give. And artifact of their journey.
As a writer, they strove to publish in multiple genres. Coming later to painting a tighter focus seemed wise. And through that narrower aperture, more sky. Tensions, questions, figures a creep, presence wrestling habit to the mat. They began to dream after paintings of dreaming.
Inferno Drift
Jiaxin Chen is a visual artist whose photographic practice explores the ethereal beauty of the natural world, with a particular focus on marine life. Her work captures fleeting moments of stillness, motion, and transformation—translating subtle visual phenomena into poetic imagery. Through her lens, ordinary elements such as light, water, and organic forms become metaphors for emotion, memory, and the transient nature of being.
Rather than presenting nature as static subject matter, Jiaxin treats it as a living presence—shifting, breathing, and quietly expressive. Her recent series, Drifting Luminescence, centres on jellyfish, using their delicate forms and fluid motion to explore ideas of emotional depth, impermanence, and quiet resilience. The works are not scientific representations, but meditative visual experiences—allowing viewers to slow down, reflect, and feel.
Jiaxin’s artistic approach combines technical precision with a deeply intuitive sense of rhythm and atmosphere. She works primarily with digital photography, often enhancing the dreamlike quality of her images through careful composition, lighting, and post-production. Each photograph becomes a still moment of reflection—inviting audiences to look beyond surface beauty and into a space of silence, sensation, and subtle transformation.
Her work has been featured in various exhibitions, both physical and digital, and continues to evolve with her ongoing exploration of nature, abstraction, and the emotional landscape of image-making.
In Drifting Luminescence, I use photography to explore the quiet, contemplative presence of jellyfish. I’ve always been fascinated by their silent movements—how they drift without resistance, glowing softly in the dark, both fragile and powerful. These creatures feel suspended between worlds, between visibility and disappearance, control and surrender.
Through this series, I’m not trying to document marine life. Instead, I treat jellyfish as visual metaphors—for emotion, memory, and the fluid nature of human experience. Their forms dissolve and reappear, just like our inner thoughts: sometimes sharp, sometimes blurred, always shifting. The darkness around them is not emptiness, but space—space to feel, to breathe, to pause.
Working with light, colour, and composition, I aim to create a visual rhythm that mirrors introspection. The glowing tentacles become gestures of longing or connection, and the slow movements remind me to embrace uncertainty—not everything needs to be defined or fixed.
This series reflects my belief that creativity can emerge from stillness. Not all expression is loud or immediate—some forms take time, flowing gently like underwater currents. Drifting Luminescence is my attempt to make those quiet moments visible.
Inferno Flame Along Fire Island
Skyler Solondz, raised in New Jersey, was inspired early on by their grandmother Bernice, an abstract landscape painter whose work sparked Skyler’s interest in color and form. Influenced also by artists like van Gogh, Picasso, and Monet, Skyler completed their first painting at age seven, beginning a lifelong journey of artistic exploration.
Identifying as non-binary, Skyler’s art focuses on identity, self-discovery, and belonging, using layered compositions, textured surfaces, and symbolic imagery to explore human connection and emotional vulnerability. Their creative process balances spontaneous mark-making with deliberate structure, creating dynamic and authentic works.
Skyler earned a fine arts degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, blending studio practice with conceptual inquiry. After graduation, a mentorship with Bernice deepened Skyler’s approach to abstraction and mixed media, emphasizing vulnerability and layered meaning. Recurring themes include light as a symbol of memory, transformation, and hope.
Notable solo exhibitions include 1) The Incredible Lightness of Art II (Philadelphia/Tri-State Artists Equity Association), focusing on light and shadow; 2) Paint Your Heart Out 2025 (KBM Art Gallery, California), highlighting emotional vulnerability; and 3) Freestyle 3.0 (HMVC Gallery, New York), featuring experimental abstraction with multimedia techniques. Skyler has earned honors at the Fusion Art competitions (2025, 2026) and awards at Los Angeles’ Tera Varna competition.
Beyond their art practice, Skyler leads workshops and talks that encourage self-expression, identity exploration, and creative experimentation in supportive spaces. Their multidisciplinary work incorporates painting, collage, printmaking, and digital media, reflecting a commitment to art’s transformative power.
Skyler Solondz continues to evolve as an artist, creating work that illuminates vulnerability and change while fostering empathy and dialogue across communities.
Skyler Solondz is an acrylic painter based in Morris County, New Jersey, whose work serves as a visual autobiography—mapping the interior landscape of identity, solitude, and the quiet struggle to belong.
The artistic journey began at age seven with Foamed by the Sea, an early work that revealed painting as more than a pastime. It was a means of expression, a way to acknowledge difference at a time when difference was difficult to name. That experience became a pivotal moment in embracing a non-binary identity, a perspective that has profoundly shaped Skyler’s relationship to art and to the world.
The themes of solitude and navigating societal expectations run throughout the work, creating a deeply personal yet relatable dialogue. Skyler combines meticulous control over light and color with raw emotional resonance, transforming individual experience into universal examinations of loneliness, endurance, and self-awareness. Each painting holds space for the quiet, the overlooked, and the unresolved—inviting audiences to find connection and meaning in the margins of experience.
At the core of Skyler’s practice is a belief that personal truth, rendered honestly, becomes something larger than itself. That the particular can illuminate the universal. And that art, at its most essential, is an act of reaching across the distance between one interior world and another.
Skyler’s most recent work, The Burning of the Books, marks a shift in the lens—away from interior autobiography and toward collective memory. The painting freezes a moment suspended between chaos and catharsis, where destruction generates mourning and demands reflection on the fragility of knowledge and intellectual freedom. Through dynamic brushwork, a deliberate color palette, and evocative imagery, the flames do not simply destroy—they illuminate what is lost, throwing into relief the weight of books, ideas, and the human impulse to silence what threatens power. In the crucible of fire and ash, The Burning of the Books stands as both a memorial and a warning, a meditation on the perpetual fragility of expression and the cost of silence.
Influence
Sumin Joo is a visual artist whose work explores the environment as a vessel of feeling and narrative. Through digital painting and visual development practices, she constructs spaces that feel both familiar and otherworldly, reflecting on memory, belonging, and the emotional weight of place. Educated at ArtCenter College of Design, she works intuitively with color, texture, and composition to evoke quiet tension and contemplation. Her images function as fragments of larger stories, inviting viewers to inhabit unseen moments and imagine what exists beyond the frame.
I am a visual development and background artist who creates imaginative worlds rooted in story and emotion. My work explores the intersection of fantasy and everyday life, building environments and characters that invite viewers into richly layered narratives. I am inspired by color, culture, and the way visual storytelling can evoke mood, place, and memory. Through digital painting and thoughtful composition, I strive to bring scenes to life with depth and personality, whether in environments, props, or character moments. My artistic goal is to craft distinctive visual worlds that resonate emotionally, spark curiosity, and communicate meaningful stories that connect with diverse audiences.
Inhale Liberation Exhale Limitation
Arlette Stella is an abstract painter with occasional work that reaches surrealism. Her work is characterized by bold colors since she is mainly color-blind and needs bold colors to see the work. Arlette’s philosophical nature is the basis for her work. Every work is the result of a conversation she has had with canvas, paints, and colors.
Arlette Stella works predominately in acrylic paint. Because of open nature is always exploring, she also experiments with gouache, acrylic ink, molding pastes, and water. Painting is, for Arlette, an exploration into the possibilities and depths of thought and feeling.
Each work aims to incur, inspire, and maybe even nudge (kick you in the yeah-butt!) the viewer to experience and act on kindness. Arlette states clearly: Kindness is my brand!
Arlette Stella is an artist member of the San Diego Artist Guild of the San Diego Museum and of the Artist Guild of Palm Springs/Palm Desert, among other groups. She is self-taught, late-blooming, and unstoppable.
For me, the juncture between education, imagination, and experience yearns to illustrate and inspire the action of kindness through art.
My deeply philosophical & innately abstract nature is evident in every stroke & movement. Even a blank canvas does not interfere with the active dialogue I enjoy with color and canvas.
Being partially color blind, my work tends to be bright and colorful. Color expresses the energy of movement. Movement is life. Kindness is life at its best.
I aim to engender and call out the kindness within you that in turn urges you to action.
Inherit Monkey King Meets The Golden Mask
Fanny Wong was born in Hong Kong and obtained a bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration in Australia. She now serves as a member of the Chinese Artists Association and is a founding member of The Hong Kong Artists Association.
In 2007,2009, and 2014, Fanny’s painting was selected for the National Exhibition of Fine Arts (China), and her painting was also selected by many Leading International Watercolor Exhibition.
She is also the Founder and Chairman of the Heart Touch Charity Foundation, Honorable Director of Hong Kong Baptist University Foundation, and Watercolor Painting Course Organizer and Lecturer of SCE, Hong Kong Baptist University.
Inherit: When the Cantonese Opera Monkey King meets the Golden Mask in Hong Kong and discovers the mask of himself was inherited from the Golden Mask was in the Sanxingdui Ruins three thousand years ago. The background is the Bauhinia, which is the city flower of Hong Kong. This represents Hong Kong as the exhibition of the Golden Mask was held in Hong Kong.
Inner Child Craves Custard And Pizza
James Hartel, A.W.S. American Artist. (b1951-)
A career that has spanned over 50 years and includes Artwork for private clients, Hotels, Luxury Apartments, and Galleries. He exhibited at Hansen Gallery in Soho New York in 1976, the following year he was accepted into The American Watercolor Society at the Salmagundi Club, New York. Acceptance and accolades have continued throughout his career.
2018 National Watercolor Society Members Show, 2018 N.W.S, International Show (Award) 2018 Watercolor Wisconsin (Award) 2019 American Watercolor Society International Show 2020 American Watercolor Society Show (acceptance as a Signature Member).
2021 Appears in Spotlight Magazine Circle Fine Arts Europe 2021 appears in The Art of Watercolor Magazine
2021 Racine Art Museum purchases Hartel’s painting Gravity for permanent collection.
2022 Art in the Time of Corona Austin, Texas
2023 Story real or not so much California, 2023 Group show Grimandi Gallery Columbus Avenue New York
2023 Art Boxy Soho New York
2023 Artboxy Miami Wynwood
There are times in our lives when we need to make critical decisions that will alter the way we feel and what happens to us, or most importantly our futures…
We hope that we make the right decisions based on everything we’ve learned. However what ultimately happens is our inner child appears to make these important decisions about, Custard and Pizza instead of salad and protein, a solid sedan vs. a used Ford Mustang or Cadillac Fleetwood! This I know for a fact!!!