★ Floral Reflections ★
I was born in Poughkeepsie, NY. I went to The Poughkeepsie Day School, The Millbrook School, Brandeis University, The School of Dental Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania, and NY University School of Orthodontics. I Practiced on The Upper West Side of NY. Upon moving to California, I became a writer on award shows, a writer, a producer of events, and a home flipper. I come from an artistic family. My mother was a member of the Barrett House in Poughkeepsie, NY, and a member of The Summer Group in the Hudson Valley. My Dad was an Orthodontist and a Viola player. In the late 1990s, I began my adult art journey at The Beverly Hills Adult Education Center, where I studied figure sculpting. My background in Dentistry led me to 3-dimensional art form. From there, I moved on to The Brentwood Art Center in Santa Monica. Upon moving to the Coachella Valley, I studied at Jayne Behman’s Art Center. This is where I expanded from figure sculpting to watercolor. My watercolors were mostly inspired by high-fashion photographs of celebrities and models. This is where my love of bold, bright, joyous colors was born. I moved to NYC for 4 years and studied at The 92nd Street Y. When I returned to the Coachella Valley, I took one class with celebrated mosaic artist Jennifer Johnson. There, I created a unique style in just my first piece. I added a relief style dimension to my mosaics, which is rarely seen in the medium. My pieces are raised with dimension and movement created by adding depth and contrast. During the pandemic, I switched from glass to paper art. I have excelled in the paper and mixed media. The Paper art is done either in 2 dimensions or 3. Some of the works are raised off the surface and are then box-framed. I have been awarded ribbons for my work at The Off Track Gallery in Encinitas and the Carlsbad Oceanside Art League in Carlsbad Village. My work has also been featured at The Escondido Arts Partnership, Art on 30th Street, and currently I have a piece at The Visions Museum of Textile Art at Liberty Station. But then I evolved into yet another medium. I do Decoupage and Acrylic on canvas pieces now. This combines the use of Acrylic paints with collage, creating a mixed media with dimension. My works in this medium have been shown at the San Diego County Fair Fine Arts Show, Off Track Gallery, Art on 30th Street, The Vi at La Jolla Village Art Gallery, and have been featured in art publications. In addition to my love of creating for myself, I teach many crafting and art classes. They include: Holiday Craft projects, Paper Collage Classes, Gourd Painting, Handbag Design, Hand Painted Glass, Stenciling, Paper Flower Classes, Stained glass on glass design, Decoupage on glass and papier mache, and Acrylic and Decoupage classes.
I have always had an interest and joy in creating. I went full in later in life, starting with figure sculpture. I enjoyed the process of working in three dimensions. There was much frustration with the firing process. I decided to join a coop studio where all kinds of mediums were available. To my surprise, watercolor became my next passion. I became most comfortable with color blocking and segmental approaches, where one section dried before proceeding to the next. I then went full force into stained glass mosaics. Often use a relief style to give dimension and depth to my pieces. When the pandemic hit, I was unable to go to the glass studio, so I transitioned into paper collage, mosaic, and paper/fiber art. All during this time, I was also teaching various paper and collage classes at senior residences, along with crafting projects. I moved on to acrylic and mixed media. Using acrylic and my interests in collage and paper/fiber work, by mix them together in decoupage form. I expanded my crafting skills and now teach a dozen crafting and art classes throughout the year at various locations and exhibit my work in multiple galleries in San Diego, Los Angeles, Rancho Mirage, and Encinitas.
Now I work in paper/fiber, acrylic, and decoupage and acrylic on canvas. I love creating and teaching, and sharing creativity.
★ Guests Gaze ★
Arlet Gomez, a contemporary painter from Cuba, knew from a very young age that art was her path, so with the support of her family she focused on studying art at all levels that her country offered. She first graduated from a painting academy, and then received a Degree in Fine Arts, [2009] from ISA, University of Arts in Cuba. Now a professional artist in Palm Beach, Florida, she is compelled by the need to express her desires for coexistence, freedom, longing for roots, and enlightenment of the human essence. With eight solo exhibitions and several group shows around the world, her artistic career began with large canvases of vibrant colors that mostly included the Braille system in their compositions. She seeks to transport painting as a technique to another dimension and turn it into an inclusive experience. Each piece is a direct reflection of her childhood memories, personal stories from her homeland, and her migration to Europe and America, thus translating feelings and longings into visual experiences. Gomez’s work explores the connection between human beings and nature and their spiritual threads, linking destiny with origins, apprehension with enlightenment. As she continues to evolve, she hopes that each stage of her art will be a contemplative invitation visualized in light of the freedom of contemporary art.
My artistic work is a search that attempts to investigate the diverse connections that interact in the human being, both physically and spiritually. My objective is to create a visible parallel of these connections recognizing that we are a reflection of the invisible, emotions, feelings, and what we have learned. It is precisely the sum of all this that is our essence as human beings. Throughout my life, the scenes I experienced in my childhood are recurrent in my unconscious, and sometimes I have wanted to go back and resume conversations, looks, and behaviors. This is why in my artwork, childhood is a platform to reveal these ideas of continuous exploration that involve our essence and our link with nature. My work is an ode to those moments of connection with beings and snapshots of time. In my work, the meaning of inclusion is celebrated, and each of my figurations strives to reflect this desire. My art aims to bring light and reflection to those who observe it, to function as a mirror of past experiences and lived emotions; and art that transcends from a contemplative to a reflective experience. Through each of my strokes, I aim to visually translate ideas of identity, freedom, and belonging without social and cultural veils, inviting viewers to delve into the intimacy of universal emotions and feelings that illuminate our being from the deepest depths.
★ Hi Ho Silver ★
Suzie Seerey-Lester is an International Award-Winning Wildlife Artist. She has painted all over the world, including Europe, Africa, South America, and of course in the US. She is known for her depiction of old structures and birds. Recently she has been painting large animals like snow leopards, cougars, and wolves. Her unique style has things like petroglyphs hidden in rocks, baby cougars in the shadows, or unique items hidden for the viewer to discover. Suzie will only paint subjects that she has seen in the wild. Her paintings are in major museums all over the world, including The James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in Florida, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum, in Wisconsin, and the National Wildlife Museum in Jackson Hole, WY. Every painting has her and her husband’s initials (J+S) hidden somewhere.
Suzie was the first woman scuba diving Instructor Trainer in the US, during the early 1970s. She trained President Ford’s Secret Service Agents, FBI, and other law enforcement agents to perform “certain skills”, and later joined the CIA to train their operatives. She later worked for several large corporations like Xerox, Marriott, and DHL, before moving to Florida. She is licensed by the state of Florida to handle the endangered and threatened sea turtles that nest on local beaches. Suzie has been on turtle patrol since 2000. Some believe she is a real mermaid.
Suzie Seerey-Lester is an international award-winning wildlife artist. She is known for her remarkable barns and birds, and of course large animals.
Find a barn and you will see Suzie crawling all around it. She loves the light that filters through the slats in the barns, a perfect location for a barn owl, or a child’s dream.
Hi Ho Silver is one of Suzie’s favorite paintings. A light-filled barn draws your attention to the hay-filled stable, with a child’s hobby horse, tied to the wall. Growing up Suzie loved her hobby horse, riding with Roy Rogers and Dale Evens while watching them on black and white TV.
This is every cowboy’s dream. The perfect ride, the flawless barn, and the impeccable friend. Six shooters are optional.
In creating the light-streaked hay on the floor, and the sunlit wood, Suzie will use as many as 25 layers of transparent colors to create depth and glow. With all her paintings she has hidden her husband and her initials (J+S) somewhere on the image. Can you find them?
Suzie has traveled all over the world to paint amazing subjects. She will only paint animals she has seen in the wild. Her sensational paintings inspire a second look, then another. Discover her fabulous paintings now.
Acquiring a Seerey-Lester is like collecting a piece of Magic.
★ Home ★
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.
★ In The Sun ★
Kimberly Overton grew up along the Malibu coast. Coastal scenes emerge as a strong voice in her artistic expression. As a child, Kimberly won first prize in the Save the Santa Monica Bay art contest creating a collage of a girl fishing for a bottle from a boat, using scraps of painted paper, real sand, and a doll bottle. Kimberly still likes to combine art forms.
Kimberly studied psychology and civil engineering in college and was lucky enough to take an oil painting class from San Francisco Bay Area artist Frank Lobdell. It was through his teaching style, that she found freedom of expression. With the simple words, “keep painting”, and very little critique, Lobdell’s influence has kept her painting and creating art for many years. Kimberly loves colors, light, texture, layers, and impressions. She uses acrylic paint, oil pastels, natural objects, and photography. When Kimberly expresses herself through art, it usually evolves into multiple layers.
Kimberly has participated in a variety of art shows and exhibits over the years from California to New York.
My eclectic style uses vibrant colors, light contrast, texture variations, and layers, often sometimes natural or reused objects as collage elements. I also use photography to capture multiple large paintings and inclusion of shadows and other features. My art captures a feeling at a moment in time, usually in a natural environment, often including elements such as the sky and ocean. I generally paint with acrylic on large canvas or boards in an outside environment.
My most recent theme “Dreams of a Girl” captures the dreams of any girl, any age, anywhere in the world, and of any background. I hope to inspire others to always dream and never give up as I have taught myself to do.
★ Looks Like It Sounds Good ★
Andrew Chalfen is a visual artist and musician living and working in Philadelphia. He just completed a two-person show entitled “Synesthesia” at the National Building in Philadelphia. A 2021 solo show of recent work was featured at the Abington Art Center. 2020 was full of awards and his first showing at a museum, the Delaware Contemporary. In 2019 many of his pieces were featured at Inliquid’s “Hatch” group show and at the Magic Garden’s two-person show “Patterns of Obsession, both in Philadelphia.” He is the winner of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Mid-Atlantic Regional for 2018 and his piece “Vibration Lands” was displayed at SCOPE Miami during the Art Basel/Art Miami fair.
I am a visual artist living and working in Philadelphia. I work mainly in acrylics but increasingly incorporate mixed media and three-dimensional elements into my pieces. I am fascinated by patterns, and how they ripple, radiate, refract, bloom, interact, and cluster. My works allude to aerial views, cartography, architectural renderings, musical notation, urban-like densities, and other natural and man-made patterns.
My process mirrors that of my songwriting and music arranging, involving the repetition of a small selection of formal elements, subtle variation, the timbre of the color palate, rhythm, and randomization strategies.
More recent abstract geometric pieces, including painted sculptures, explore themes of nostalgia, anxiety, climate change, play, musicality, fragility, physical and psychic fragmentation, and allusions to impenetrable data, all reflective of, and perhaps counter to, accelerating planetary chaos.
★ New York Times Square Summer ★
Michael Hartstein was born in 1946, in Los Angeles, California. His early interest in art began in grade school. While studying drawing and painting, art became a vehicle in class for learning about the life and culture of Mexico and South America. From that moment on, he was excited to use art as a medium to express the inexpressible beauty in life.
Michael has been painting for the last 50 years and is working out of his studio in Westlake Village, California. He has always enjoyed creating paintings about nature. From his early childhood, he studied every art book that was out there, learning art techniques from famous artists. His education in art has been in classes at The Art Center, Long Beach University, and Santa Monica College. His paintings have evolved over the years to an impressionistic style. In his love for nature, he likes to use bold colors, and textures and create a feeling of movement. Many paintings have water elements. Also, there is a lot of excitement and passion that he brings to his work. As he explores the subject that he wants to paint, he peels away the different layers to get to the essence of the subject.
Over the years, Michael has sold many paintings and has exhibited his art all over the United States.
The theme of my artwork is: Bring Nature into your Home. My paintings reflect some aspects of nature. I paint in an impressionistic style. I like to use bold colors that sometimes become more important than the subject matter. I like to create work that has fewer details.
I would like viewers to use their imagination to draw their own conclusions about what the painting means to them. My goal when someone views my paintings, is to simulate awareness of how nature enriches our lives.
★ Oh How Fiercely Has Passed This Simple Stream Of Life Will I One Day Tear Open My Throat My Thoughts Are Like The Sticky Strands Of A Spiders Sorrowful Web Thus Enveloping Me Thus Consuming Me Thus Swaying Upon My Fetters I Am In Shackles I Am A Slave To The Shackles ★
Hadiseh Bahrami Shahbegandi is an Iranian-born artist currently based in Dallas, Texas. Her work is deeply influenced by her cultural heritage and the vibrant creative energy she encountered after immigrating to the United States. A graduate of East Texas A&M University with a Master of Arts in Visual Communication, Hadiseh also works as a graphic designer and UI/UX designer, blending these disciplines into her artistic practice.
Her art delves into themes of identity, resilience, and the complexity of the human experience. With plans to publish a book and expand her work for future gallery exhibitions, Hadiseh continues to evolve her practice by creating larger, immersive pieces that invite viewers to engage with the emotional depth of life’s narratives.
When I paint, I feel as though I’m unraveling the threads of emotions that words cannot reach. The canvas becomes a space where memory, vulnerability, and resilience come to life. I don’t strive to control the work; instead, I let the textures and colors guide me, allowing the painting to take on its own voice.
Each brushstroke feels like a dialogue—a quiet conversation with the cracks and crevices of human experience. I layer paint to echo the layers of our stories: fragmented, raw, and imperfectly beautiful. The act of painting is not just a process but a meditation, a way to confront and celebrate the moments that define us.
The narratives in my work are deeply personal yet universal. They invite viewers to step closer, to see themselves in the fractures and textures. Art, for me, is a way of repairing and connecting—a reminder that even in our most fragile moments, there is strength and beauty to be found.
★ Patterns ★
The beauty of nature surrounding Los Angeles was the impetus for her entrance into the field of photography. Joanne began vigorously studying photography and other art arenas to hone her skills as a visual artist. In 2000, she graduated from California State University, Los Angeles with a Master of Fine Art (MFA). She is now a full-time artist.
In addition to color and black and white film, Joanne shoots digitally employs the techniques of infrared imaging, and enjoys creating 3D anaglyphs to be viewed with red/blue lenses. As an extension of photography, she has branched out to do videos and has a YouTube Channel, THE VIDEO ART OF JOANNE CHASE-MATTILLO. Along with nature, Joanne frequently photographs female and male subjects in fun-themed studio shoots.
Joanne has exhibited throughout California, nationally, in Korea, France and England, Switzerland, Scotland, Greece, Spain, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Holland, Brazil, Dubai, and Italy. Her work has also been selected for Lunar Codex, a very special project partnered with SpaceX to deliver the images of art in a time capsule to be permanently affixed to the surface of the moon, selected by Era Contemporary Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as part of “Legends Of The Moon”.
As a photographer, I am constantly in search of iconic imagery. The craftsmanship and perfection of classic Hollywood cinema have always been an inspiration and goal I seek to achieve in my photography. While enjoying the technology of the present and how that has enhanced photography, I am very drawn to recreate photographs that reference the best of the past. It is my intent that the viewer of the images I create will be taken out of the everyday present to a magical place where at anytime they would dream of going. Whether photographing people or nature, I strive to honor the best and beauty of all that I have an opportunity to capture with my camera.
Summer days are the dream moments of the year that are looked forward to in dreary seasons. The beach, pool, lakes, and oceans draw all to embrace the sun and beat the heat. When we think of summer, we embrace all that the warmth of the sun brings.