3 And A Possible

New Jersey based artist, April Cooper also known as Art by April, loves to create art. Cooper depicts images of black culture in art because representation in this world is a necessity. Currently, she working hard on an art series named “Ghetto to Trendy” where she shines a light on inequality issues. Items or specific parts of black culture that black people have been put down for or even called ghetto for, have been mainstreamed and have been deemed trendy when white counterparts have taken them on.

As an artist, I try to inspire others about the beauty of black women, black hair, and black culture. As a teenager my mother did hair and I was in contact with many of the black women in our community. I got to witness the transformations of hair and the pride of the black woman daily. They leave my mother’s chair holding their heads high, wearing the new hairstyle like a crown. I am truly enjoying the process, I connect to my art and I see myself in every piece I create. In my community, I see the culture of the hustle every day and I portray this in my art.

3 Mana Turquoise Dream

Commitment and keen interest and openness not only to painting but also to the unknown within me, which inspires constant renewal. I can’t wait to see what creative expression comes through me. I like perfect details, but I can’t resist sloppy, unpredictable movements either. With these interesting abstract motifs, I dissolve the regular lines of oil paint. I bring change to my work with different structures. I break the rule of giving way to something new. My goal with my abstract paintings is to show the door behind which the invisible, the always and omnipresent, becomes visible.

With my published paintings, I provide visual nourishment for the viewer. That’s why I think it’s important to convey beauty and harmony with my creations and to keep my expression simple and obvious. I am fascinated by the miracle of creation, the invisible, volatile matter of a man who is able to feel, think and create.

30-Ding

Since starting oil painting in 2018, she has combined abstract backgrounds and figurative figures to represent stories and emotions. Her Asian cultural background and experience in multiple fields of art practice give her works a different kind of charm.

This series of oil paintings is an analysis, a summary, a diary, and a confession. For me, creating art is a process of self-knowledge and excavation. Through art, I refocus on feelings and emotions to create a connection to the world around me. Time passes, and many factors influence who we are. Over our lifetimes, people experience similar struggles, regrets, and moments of relief. With every choice, there is loss and gain. Sunlight always comes with shadows, and every cloud has a silver lining. Art provides me with an opportunity for non-verbal expression and communication about these ideas. Each person is a unique part of this world. I want to cherish this uniqueness in myself and others. The graduate program has enabled me to explore my inner mental activity more than ever before. Although I paint specific individuals, I am also recording the impressions, feelings, and abstract stories that swirl around them.

4th Of July

Early art education at Chicago’s Art Institute on a high school scholarship began Katy Bishop’s pathway to use the arts to enhance others’ lives and her own. At the Art Institute, she worked in oil, pastels, watercolor, and charcoal.

After college graduation, she became part of creative teams, producing films for many years. She produced some independent feature films, directed a TV series, and produced hundreds of national TV commercials. She found these years to be quite rewarding creatively and received some major TV commercial awards.

She also explored other creative outlets – directing theater, acting, ceramics, jewelry design, photography, and script writing. She won the Houston Festival award for a children’s feature film script. But none totally satisfied her creative needs.

She had been working with acrylics and had ventured into encaustics. When a friend introduced her to alcohol inks, Katy found her expressive medium.
In 2021, Katy finally began showing her artworks publ

I create my artwork to communicate feelings and ideas that cannot easily be expressed well in words. Dreams, emotions, and memories are often considered abstract and lacking in comprehension. Abstract painting gives me the opportunity to create emotional and physical artwork that someone else can repeatedly enjoy.

As I explore the use of light and shade through color and movement, I recognize that the control we all want to exert in our lives is often paired with uncontrollable growth and change.

57Th Street

Vera Gierke is an artist who grew up in New Jersey, has lived in Michigan, Indiana, and Rhode Island, and seasonally on Nantucket. Living in Rhode Island, she engaged in a range of Continuing Education classes at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked with a few local artists. From having taken a variety of classes, Vera expanded her vision and found that the various areas of art interrelate, support, and broaden each other. She joined the Providence Art Club where she explored a variety of art classes: acrylic, oil, watercolor, drawing, printmaking, photography, photoshop, and collage. Through these classes, Vera discovered a fascination with paper collages and has made them her favorite form of art. Her work is not abstract, rather she looks for a way to make an image or object different than what is expected, to add interest through the material used for the collage.

In speaking about her collages, Vera calls them A Fanciful View of a Realistic Subject. She describes them as more than what initially meets the eye.

“Something catches my eye, a scene, an image, a photo, and I begin to transform it in my mind into a collage, imagining how I would design the new work, what I would want to incorporate into it, and what I want the new art to express. The collage is made of pieces of paper, chosen not only for color and interest but also for the relevance and comment that it brings to the collage subject itself. I love taking one form of printed material and converting it into an entirely new image.”

I want my art to be appreciated up close just as much as from a distance. From a distance, the collages create a charming or interesting picture, but there’s more to it when fully appreciated up close. I invite the viewer in for a closer look, whereupon he sees how the pieces of paper relate to the collage and the subject of the art.

“I want the viewer to continue to explore, to discover more in the collage.
The art is intended to be viewed and appreciated up close as much as from a distance.”

79 Pompeii

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 the 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 own account.

7th Avenue Takeout

Mark is an artist based in Las Vegas known for his impressionist paintings that capture people, places, and all the events in his life. Timeless and tasteful, or modern and messy, images in his life demand to be examined. Mark mainly uses acrylic paint to create highly textured, three-dimensional works on canvas. A graduate of San Jose State’s art program, Mark’s first influence was his great uncle Alfred Pizzarelli, an artist from New York City in the 1950’s-60’s. He used to look at all Alfred’s wonderful paintings and wonder, “Who are these people?” and think they were trying to speak just to him by way of expressions and surrounding colors. Mark’s paintings are meant to burst with energy, life, and texture, hoping that they might speak to the viewer in some way. You can catch Mark’s artwork around Las Vegas in casinos, restaurants, wineries, and local/regional galleries. When Mark’s not working, he’s spending time with his wife, Alicia, and their English bulldog, Belma, hoping to catch the next expression to put on canvas.

In my paintings, I find connecting threads throughout the world and infuse humor into everyday scenarios. Sparked by personal experiences and the observation of my surroundings, I seek resonance in our shared thoughts, dreams, and idiosyncrasies, weaving them into the tapestry of my artwork. I use a bright, luminous palette to inject humor and color into the dull or show a different side of the expected. My paintings blend humor, rich color, and texture, encouraging viewers to find beauty in the unexpected. With a focus on human experiences, I use color as a universal language to evoke emotion and reflection. If a viewer stops for a moment to reflect on my work—feeling something, whether it’s emotion, curiosity, or a memory—then I’ve succeeded.

A 3R97F

Through experimentation and innovative techniques, Nitin Kakkar creates wondrous abstract paintings that address the transformative qualities of music. After years of listening to music and developing his sense of taste, he studied art at Sarah Lawrence College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art where he began drawing and painting.

His work is inspired by the classic sounds and visual appeal of vintage electric musical instruments and sound equipment.

I am an innovative abstract artist who draws inspiration from the rich history of popular music and its connection to the natural, contemporary, and post-contemporary world. My work focuses on the emergence of electric musical instruments, rock ‘n’ roll, and avant-garde music, placing emphasis on their influence and evolution. By manipulating and layering acrylic paint, I strive to develop a visual language that mirrors the artistry and complexity of musical expression and instrumentation.

A Bird May Love A Fish But Where Will They Make A Home?

Melanie Kline is a Colorado native and an internationally recognized, award-winning silversmith whose work is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States and abroad. After a distinguished career in metalwork, she turned her creative focus to painting, bringing the same attention to craftsmanship, texture, and surface embellishment that characterized her work in silver and gold.

Working primarily in oil, Kline creates luminous paintings enriched with gold and copper leaf and other mixed-media elements. Her work often evokes a mystical quality, exploring the interplay of landscape, light, and memory. Inspired by the mountains, canyons, and extraordinary night skies of the American West, her paintings invite reflection and a sense of wonder.

Kline lives and works in Western Colorado, where the beauty of the surrounding landscape continues to inspire her artistic vision.

Surface texture with embedded gemstones, pearls, shells, feathers, and gold leaf excites me and inspires my paintings. As a former jeweler, these little details speak to the artistic disciplines I treasure in my life.