Looking Down
Hana Aviv, a watercolor artist based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, has always had an innate talent for art. Her artistic journey began with classes at the Montclair Arts Museum (MAM), where she experimented with various media and painting styles. However, it was under the guidance of Sharon Pitts, a skilled watercolor instructor at MAM, that Hana discovered her true passion for the captivating medium of watercolors.
In addition to her watercolor pursuits, Hana studied drawing at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick and continues to actively participate in workshops and art classes to further refine her skills.
Hana is an active member of both the New Jersey Watercolor Society and the Garden State Watercolor Society, contributing to the thriving art community in the region. Her art has gained recognition, and she proudly showcases her paintings at the prestigious Alfa Art Gallery in New Brunswick as part of the annual New Brunswick Salon of Watercolor and Mixed Media.
Originally from Prague, Czech Republic, Hana’s creative roots can be traced back to her great-grandmother, who taught her the art of crochet. The intricate patterns and designs from her childhood have left a lasting impression, influencing her artistic style and expression.
Despite her passion for art, Hana pursued a career in Medical Sciences while nurturing her artistic talents simultaneously. The seamless balance of her scientific pursuits and artistic endeavors has enriched her life and granted her a unique perspective on creativity.
Today, Hana Aviv continues to capture the essence of beauty and emotion through her watercolor artworks. Her paintings reflect a harmonious blend of her diverse influences, academic background, and the vibrant spirit of New Jersey. With each brushstroke, she brings to life a world of color and imagination that resonates with art enthusiasts and collectors alike.
I love viewing natural objects as potential paintings. Nature soothes me, and my watercolor art aims to create a peaceful vibe using vibrant colors and intricate patterns. I find childlike wonder in watching water create beautiful shapes. Though I enjoy painting outside, my best work happens in the studio, allowing me to focus on evoking the emotions I want my art to convey. My goal is to create soothing and captivating watercolor paintings that offer viewers a serene escape into the beauty of nature.
Looking For Fun
Yuriy Zadorozhnyy is originally from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, was graduated in architecture from Kiev Art School.
Besides architectural and engineering disciplines he took art classes, got academic training in drawing, painting, sculpture, composition, photography.
Yuriy moved to the USA and worked in Maryland, Virginia, and DC as an architectural designer for more than 20 years.
For all these years and especially for the last ten years he found himself spending more and more time painting and making collages and lately, I was very productive in creating a series of pieces in mixed media collage style, of found objects, different painting media, upcycled materials.
He is a member of the Maryland Federation of Art and my works were exhibited in Annapolis, Bethesda, and Rockville. Being a member of MFA Yuriy was selected for multiple exhibitions, and rewarded, and my work was sold to some private collections.
A couple of years ago Yuriy’s work “NY, Big Happenings” was shown in HMVC Gallery New York. Mostly his work a mixed media collages with paintings on canvas, and some sculptures. Also some of the art pieces in the collections of my architectural clients.
My artist’s statement is about improvising with interesting textures, colors, written messages, or random texts in found objects all around in everyday routine.
I can see really bright side of life in bringing abandoned found objects onto mostly acrylic painted backgrounds on canvas with creating vibrantalive compositions. Some old weathered pieces of material may help even choose a subject for my new art piece, as it often comes spontaneously.
Sometimes making a preliminary painted layout without even knowing close to the final result but color selections and composition dictating further collage elements added and stating the total bright mood of the artwork started.
My best works came all out of improvisation, while suddenly some set of different patterns, paintings, and backgrounds blend perfectly together and people can find some familiarity and only their personal qualities and meanings in the same composition.
Looking Glass Lincoln
Sue Grimm is currently from Wooster, Ohio. She started drawing at a very young age as a hobby using charcoal, pen, and ink. In 2003, Susan took up colored pencil classes locally to learn how to draw portraits of her young children and pets. She honed her skills over the years by taking workshops about colored pencils, portraits, and color theory. Her style gravitates towards realism, where she enjoys drawing classic cars, portraits, and all things colorful. She has exhibited locally and nationally and was accepted into the juried Colored Pencil Society of America Competitions in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. She has now received her Signature Status in this CPSA organization.
I am newly retired from a career in dentistry. With my new free time, I try to draw every day to explore new compositions and other mediums, and most of all to improve my techniques. I really enjoy the texture of the .005 double-sided Grafix drafting film and its ability to erase easily and to apply fewer layers of colored pencil to achieve amazing results. Lately, I am inspired by subject matter that is reflective, such as old classic cars with their chrome bumpers and mirrored objects, such as a gold watch. I attend many car shows looking for great colors and reflective surfaces. I take as many photos as I can from all angles to use for my portraits. I am most proud of the smallest of details I can find in my photos to include in my pieces.
Looking Within
Heather Eck is an American born abroad in Germany. After nearly 17 years in HR, she left to pursue art-making in 2019. Her paintings have been featured in over 20 exhibitions in the U.S. Within her body of work; there is a rich assortment of spiritual topics and issues explored with soul-stirring vulnerability. Each piece studies an underlying interest in the mysteries of the universe, the great unseen and mystical. She examines universal questions of purpose, belonging, and healing. Almost autobiographical, Heather seeks to understand the grander questions and influences that shape and direct her life. Still, her paintings attempt to come to terms with energies we cannot see but are somehow making themselves known in our day-to-day existence.
Heather engages with clients and viewers in deep and meaningful color connecting to the 7 Chakras of the body which are created from messages that she intuits from her spirit guides about the person or space for whom she creates.
I am an artist whose paintings are intended to heal people’s spiritual and emotional wounds. My spiritual gift is to intuit emotion and messages through communion with God. Messages appear as colors, symbols, and shapes. Each painting I create is intended for a specific person, whether I get to know them through the commission process or I create a painting that will eventually find them serendipitously. As I paint, I receive and interpret the person and their needs through feelings that become visual messages on the canvas.
My life’s journey has been about recognizing the need to preserve my individuality and is centered around the desire to be joyful and feel spiritually whole. I deeply desire to love people and connect to them through my artwork. My paintings represent the moods and emotions of their unique stories and circumstances. They are meant to divinely heal them through love and remind them of their unique personal strength and the power of transformational healing.
Lookinglass Garden
Native Miami-born Mindy Tillery, a contemporary mixed media artist grew up with a love and deep appreciation of being surrounded by beautiful spaces, both in her childhood home as well as in the natural world. She studied art and architecture, with a passion for creating living spaces that reflect a balance of elegance with practicality. Her creative journey has led her to many opportunities including jewelry design and interior design. After her successful career as a professional interior designer, she felt called back to her first passion and returned to her artistic roots as a full-time practice in 2020.
She has participated in numerous juried exhibits and has been the recipient of various awards.
Her curious fascination with beauty, flora, fauna, fashion, sacred geometry, and astronomy as well as profound truths discovered in poetry including music, dance, meditation, philosophy, and prayer, are what influences her creative practice.
The universe is alive with relationships between color and form, movement and sound, texture and scent, and the graceful play of this and that.
Beauty is very important to me as an indication of divine order in the universe, I’m constantly influenced and inspired by the microcosms of the natural world and the macrocosms of the vast galaxies.
My current series, titled The Truth In Beauty is inspired by my lifelong fascination with the female figure and fashion as an awareness of the feminine and how beauty is viewed in modern culture.
My creative process with the exploration and experimentation of layering mixed mediums has led me on a journey into the dreamy and mysterious. My objective is to take the viewer into a beautiful dreamy fantasy of fertile imagination where the inner worlds melt with the outer world.
I have discovered that the exploration of deep personal inner reflections and emotions is useful in my personal art practice as a healing balm for fostering harmony and well-being in an oftentimes chaotic world. A sense of humor is also very essential to keep a good healthy balance in my life. My intention is that my art brings joyful feelings of well-being to my collectors.
Lost In Moab Thinkin About Maria
G.M. Owen is from the middle Tennessee area; he is a self-taught painter with no formal training other than art classes in middle school. He started painting around the age of twelve years old, placing art in the annual juried art competition at the State Fair Art Show, and later joining a local art guild in his late teens. After high school, he was hired as a staff sign artist for the Coca-Cola Bottling company in Nashville, Tennessee, and later worked as a sign artist for trade show/expo companies working in the southeastern states. By the mid-eighties, the art of free-hand lettering was replaced by computers and wide-format printing. He re-entered tech school to study desktop publishing, and he has worked for the last 30 years as a graphic designer in the wine & spirits industry. He has always painted and placed art in venues, restaurants, and juried art shows along the way. His style of art ranges from portraits to still life fruit. He uses non-traditional oil paint which is an oil-based enamel and reflects back to paint he used as a sign artist painting billboards and walls for Coca-Cola company when he was younger.
I think about paintings and I see pictures of different images and I try to convey that or what I see in a magazine or online into a painting. A lot of times I will first make a mockup of what I want to create using Photoshop and then I will paint that image on canvas. At times the painting takes a different path from what I started out thinking about painting.
Lost In My World
Vee Abreu discovered a love for art in an unexpected place: a 6th-grade Artes Plásticas class. Watching a teacher shade the base of a simple flower vase ignited a curiosity that would later evolve into a deep artistic passion. Although art faded into the background for a time, it resurfaced during workplace meetings, where sketching became a spontaneous creative outlet, often drawing smiles from colleagues.
Inspired by that early teacher’s dedication, Vee developed a deep appreciation for vibrant colors and the emotions they evoke. Art became a personal language, a space for expression where brushstrokes blend into stories. Today, Vee creates with the hope of inspiring future generations to feel the same connection to creativity. Through art, she has not only found her passion but also her voice—a means of identity, connection, and meaningful communication.
Art, for me, is a language that speaks when words fall short. I create to capture emotion—joy, wonder, nostalgia—and to explore identity through vibrant color and expressive form. My journey began with a single, shaded flower vase in a 6th-grade art class. That simple act of creativity opened a door I hadn’t known existed. Years later, what began as playful doodles during meetings rekindled the passion I now embrace fully.
Color is central to my work. I’m drawn to bold, energetic palettes that reflect the intensity of feeling and memory. Each brushstroke is a conversation with the canvas—a movement of emotion made visible. My work is not only an exploration of self, but also an invitation for others to pause, reflect, and feel.
Through my art, I aim to inspire future generations to find beauty in the details, to express freely, and to see the world through a lens of color and emotion. Creating is not just a practice—it is how I connect, heal, and communicate.
Lotus
Caryn Coville holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rochester Institute of Technology.
She is a featured artist in several art publications and is a contributing artist in the book Masterful Color: Vibrant Colored Pencil Paintings Layer by Layer by Arlene Steinberg.
Caryn is a ‘CPSA’ and a five-year merit ‘CPX’ Signature Member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, a UKCPSO Signature Member of the UK Colour Pencil Society, an Elected Member of the American Artists Professional League, a Juried Member of the International Guild of Realism, the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club and the National Art League.
Her award-winning work has been shown in solo gallery exhibits and she has participated in numerous national and international juried shows and group exhibitions including the Salmagundi Club’s Annual Painting, Sculpture & Graphics Exhibitions; The Colored Pencil Society of America’s International Exhibitions; Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club Open Exhibitions; AAPL Grand National Exhibits; and the Sumi-e Society of America’s Annual Juried Exhibitions. Her work is in corporate and private collections throughout the United States and Canada.
My work is inspired by my love of nature, travel, and the beauty I find in everyday objects. Primarily a colored pencil artist, I have enjoyed extending my artistry into other mediums. For the past several years I have explored East Asian brush painting. I like the contrast between the very slow process of creating a colored pencil painting layer upon layer and the spontaneity of brush painting where I try to convey the essence of a subject by using minimal strokes of ink and watercolor. My latest journey has been into the world of alcohol ink painting.
Lotus Position
Born in Belgium, Inez Sieben is a visual artist whose work is vibrant and colorful. Her work tells a story, makes a point, captures a feeling, and is often infused with humor. It is deeply influenced by the multiple cultures in which she was raised, including in South America, Europe, and the Far East.
She mostly works in acrylic and gouache, but her work frequently incorporates mixed media, scraps of wood, images from catalogs, fabric fragments, and other found items.
She studied art as a young adult in Strasbourg, France, but life pushed her on a path that culminated in a rewarding career in Public Health. Able to renew her artistic pursuits at last, she currently studies under Eleanor Grace Miller. She has had solo and group exhibits in France, New York City, and Westchester County.
What I see, hear, feel and experience makes its way into my art. Growing up in multiple cultures influences my work, and my love of fairy tales, fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi seeps through as well.
I paint mostly in acrylics and gouache and love to experiment with a variety of techniques and materials. As I work, I am often inspired by new images, so I find myself working on several paintings at the same time, or creating a series, as in the “Lotus” series. At times my work is autobiographical as I aim to tell a story, convey a feeling, or share memories.
Through the use of vibrant colors, a sense of movement, and unexpected imagery, I hope the viewer is drawn into my work in a way that provides space for their own interpretation and lived experience, but always with a twist.