Anna Sparks is a mixed media artist, designer, photographer, and all-around ‘arranger’ of things. She combines her love for traveling, visual storytelling, and collecting things with her desire to spread a message and document the changing environment.

From a young age, she was drawn to graffiti and street art, copying famous women graffiti writers in her sketchbook such as Lady Pink, Swoon, and Claw Money—now that style has evolved into her mixed media works, incorporating more stencils and layers of paint on canvas.

In these mixed media pieces, she tries to use found materials as much as possible, often picking up trash off the ground or from junk piles. Intuitively approaching the canvas, her compositions include recycled elements, vintage National Geographic magazines, newspapers, and other found items into abstract compositions or designs. She likes to combine aspects of her own photographs, collages, oil pastel crayons, textured paint, and pens into her acrylic works on canvas, panels, or paper. Additionally, she uses layers as means to create texture and depth, lines to evocate emotion, and finds the relation to society always present. She is also a music aficionado and is inspired by jazz artists like Brandee Younger, Miles Davis, and Kassa Overall.

As a street and culture photo documentarian, she approaches her subjects with respect, grace, and understanding. She finds her eye drawn to lines and colors that create balanced and asymmetrical compositions in the frame. Rarely she does post-edit her photographs as she loves experimenting with analog methods and relishes finding tiny surprises in the film, including light leaks and double exposures.

In my art, personal narratives intertwine with universal themes, forming a visual language that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the wonder of the world around us. Growing up in the lush landscapes of West Virginia, my work is infused with organic forms, vibrant colors, and a sense of wonder that stems from my childhood exploration of nature.

I primarily use acrylic paints and mixed media elements to add depth and texture, creating bold, expressive pieces that blur the line between representation and abstraction. Techniques like mark-making for textural richness and glazing for luminosity help me convey a sense of history and awe.

My artistic process is intuitive, often starting with colors or emotional themes that guide my creative decisions. Each layer informs the next, allowing for unexpected turns that lead to authentic expressions. This approach reflects the importance of process over product, a belief I cultivated during nearly three decades as an art educator.

The themes in my work are profoundly influenced by life experiences. A series inspired by the loss of a dear friend explored concepts of ascension, resulting in over 50 works centered on angels and spiritual guardianship. My journey with chronic illness has further shaped my vision, infusing my pieces with themes of perseverance, transformation, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Through my art, I create a space for emotional resonance and reflection, inviting viewers to connect with their narratives. Influenced by Impressionists and contemporary abstract artists, my work is a celebration of the creative spirit within all of us, fostering a dialogue about shared experiences, resilience, and the transformative power of creativity in our lives.

“I am a ‘romantic old soul’ with intellectual cravings now living in a Digital World.”kjs

I’ve always been an artist. My passion for art and photography began early in my teens. I embrace the natural world and man-made as well. I am influenced by everything from the ancients to Cindy Sherman, and while I embrace color, I revere black and white, realistic and abstract. I am a student of the universe, history, art, architecture, music, literature, and all the arts.

I got a camera and some crayons as a kid,
journeyed along a path in life – far from what I’d expected,
moved from youth to middle age,
did some work, had some fun, got high, got low,
and just continue doing it – never tiring of the next visual surprise.
– Life is still a mystery, after all. – kjs

My Motos: “A photographer has the whole world, big or small, to capture.” kjs
“And, wherever I am in the world, it is my favorite place!!” kjs

As an artist, my journey is a continuous exploration of movement, intention, and the transformative power of creativity. Grounded in the philosophy that art should evoke emotion and connection, my work embodies a deep desire to communicate through movement—both in the craft of painting and the experience of the viewer.

In 2025, I live by the guiding statement:
Prolific Shameless Love….Prolific Shameless Art

Prolific — May you be present and recognize abundance every day.
Shameless — May you let people see you, and what you care about.
Love — May you do what you love, say what you love, and share what you love. May you love others as they shamelessly share with you.

I make art as an act of presence, courage, and connection.

Prolific means I show up—again and again—to notice, to create, to trust that there is always more. More color, more truth, more beauty. The abundance isn’t in perfection; it’s in the practice.

Shameless means I let myself be seen. I reveal what matters to me, even when it’s messy, raw, or unresolved. I believe that when we create from what we love and share it honestly, we invite others to do the same.

Love is both the source and the offering. I make art to love the world better—to express joy, grief, wonder, and truth. To say: “This is what I care about. Do you feel it too?”

My work is an invitation:
Be prolific. Be shameless. Love out loud.

The two pieces I’ve submitted exhibit these influences. “Liberation Transformation” was painted with the words ‘liberation’ throughout…and I did not like the end result, so I painted over parts and added new layers-I transformed it. Now I LOVE it! “Perspective” is inspired by nature and movement. When you look at it from different angles, it changes based on how the light hits it.

Arlette Stella is an abstract painter with occasional work that expresses 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. She is self-taught, late-blooming, and unstoppable.

Arlette Stella works predominantly in acrylic paint. Because of the open nature, she 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 incite, 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 the Artist Guild of Palm Springs/Palm Desert, among other groups.

In this photo I took in a Provincetown, Massachusetts garden, I thought about how many different life occasions this kind of flower might be used for. Much like humans, the flower has a cycle of life and death, though its existence is far more delicate and fleeting. We use bouquets to carry on the tradition and convey a sense of meaning throughout our lifetimes for various milestones and even for illness and mourning. By creating this mixed media piece, my intention is to show that despite the beauty of flowers and the excitement we feel when receiving them, there is sort of an underlying bleakness with each celebration. In the end, no matter what achievements we may have, or how many flowers we receive over our lifetime, we all still face the same fate and mortality as the flower.

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.

My work is a practice and meditation in the exploration of the realms of Spirit. In much of my work, there is a theme of illuminated objects in darkness, a sense of centeredness and balance that I seek throughout life. As my modes of creative expression have increased, I’ve gone from oil/acrylic painting to carpentry and woodburning; from playing classical French horn to finding my own sound and voice. At the root of it all is the desire to understand the soul and the highest State of Love. The Holy books of ancient cultures, modern theories on quantum mechanics, and the pattern of music and numbers play on my canvases in new conception. My work is very symbolistic and every form and color that I use is to convey a specific emotional intensity. Originally my paintings were a kind of thought form or image that I would use to draw energy from or help me to focus in a certain state of mind. Sometimes the completed image will just pop into my head, other times I’ll have a dream that influences a particular scene or mood, or spend an enormous time thinking about a concept before I ever put pencil to paper, but the process of trying to bring the creation into being with the force that it hits me is where the magic really happens and reaching the final form is often more than I imagined.

My work is a left-hand path practice of personal growth and development based on hermetic philosophy and Jungian alchemy and shadow work. My aesthetic serves as self-expression, but also as a mockery of traditional art motifs of natural landscapes, feminine subjects, “good technique”, and the notions of beauty and divinity. I use whatever materials are available to me, especially trash and found items.