A Gathering Of Beauties
Karen Safer, a native Angelino, is an internationally exhibited, award-winning photographic artist and poet with a musical bent. Her passion for art began when she was given a camera and crayons at age three and was immersed in California’s visual language. A lifelong traveler, she has explored over 230+ countries & territories, embracing both the exotic and the unexpected. Influenced by her father’s black-and-white photography and her mother’s insatiable curiosity for knowledge and travel, her inspirations range from ancient Assyria to the conceptual works of Cindy Sherman. She began as a painter before discovering photography in college, earning a master’s degree in art (UCLA & CSULB) and building a career in design and architecture.
With 14 solo exhibitions and participation in over 710 shows, she has received more than 610 awards, including the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, PISPA, TIFA, reFocus, and Exposure One. Her work has been featured in 180+ publications, such as LENS, Dodho, ArtTalk, ArtTour, One Eyeland, and Spotlight. She has exhibited in major cities worldwide, including London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Venice, Florence, Barcelona, Budapest, Dubai, São Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo, Zurich, New York, and Los Angeles. Her work is held in numerous collections, and she is a member of many organizations, including LAAA (825 Gallery), LACP, etc. A self-described “romantic old soul” with intellectual cravings, she navigates the digital world while remaining deeply connected to art’s timeless essence. She embraces color but venerates black and white, realistic and abstract.
“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
A Girlhood Of One’s Own
Caitlin Rantala is a Finnish-American painter who studied Digital Art and Professional Writing Rhetoric at Elon University. She and her family live in Nashville, TN, where she works out of her home studio. A graphic designer by day, Rantala picked up oil painting to escape the glow of modern-day screens.
As a neurodivergent woman, I’ve always felt akin to horses –– their vigilance, resilience, and honesty resonate with me in ways that permeate my own ego. I paint them as I’ve experienced them, both in the real world and in my imagination. In my work, I hope to capture them as bright ethereal beings, capable of intense emotional depth and intrinsic curiosity.
Being a horse girl and an artist, I can tell you, if you want to meet the most authentic version of yourself, talk to a horse. They mirror the people around them; they’ll honor your brilliance and call your bluff. They know how to humble and instill bravely instantaneously. Because if you listen closely, these creatures always ask: “What are you feeling and are you brave enough to sit with it?” And that is a question I hope my work asks its viewers as well.
A Great Summer Day Outside
Charles is a graduate of the Baylor University fine arts program. After college, he opened a graphic design studio, beginning his career as a professional artist. His paintings reflect mastery of his craft and versatility in a variety of styles and media.
I create luminary nature and motion—paintings where landscapes, wildflowers, horses, birds, still lives, and abstract color fields all carry the same living energy. Often working in a realistic, open impressionist, or abstract and expressive style, I use luminous skies, vibrant color, and rhythmic brushwork to capture the feeling of being fully alive in the natural world. Whether it’s a herd of horses thundering through dust, a quiet bayou sanctuary, a vase of flowers, or a canvas of swirling color, my work invites you into moments of calm, joy, and motion all at once. This use of luminary nature and motion turns the landscapes, florals, animals, or abstracts into living energy on the canvas. This gives my work a very recognizable emotional fingerprint: tranquil yet not sleepy, serene but still pulsing with life. Whether I am painting representational, impressionistic, or abstract, my art shares a joyful, life-forward chroma. This mix of structured subject and liberated mark-making is a big part of my art.
A Greater Awakening
Michael Doering (b. 1966) is an American painter and printmaker. He was born in Mason City, Iowa, and currently has his studio in Reno, Nevada.
Coming from a small-town Midwestern family, Michael did not have much access to formal art instruction, materials, or exhibits growing up, but this did not deter him from drawing constantly, even if it was on notebook paper with a ballpoint pen. Although he was not exposed to much art as a child, he developed grit, character, and an unstoppable work ethic during his youth.
Michael earned his BFA from the University of Iowa, where he was fortunate to have studied painting and drawing with Ben Frank Moss and printmaking with Virginia Myers. He then relocated to Las Vegas but ended up taking a detour on his art journey by working in Education as a teacher, counselor, principal, and district administrator. Unfortunately, he didn’t pick his brushes up again until 2017, but he soon developed an international following for his work, and his art has been exhibited in shows throughout the United States, Dijon, France, and virtually through Santiago, Chile.
Throughout his life, Michael has had a love of storytelling and characters, and much of his work is based on this, but he has also been influenced by countless artists, including the Expressionists, Post-Impressionists, street artists, and various contemporary portrait painters.
Education:
• BFA, Studio Art, University of Iowa (1989).
• M.Ed. Counseling and Educational Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1995).
• M.Ed. Educational Leadership, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1997).
As a contemporary painter and printmaker, I combine contrasting techniques into my pieces with a slight nudge for viewers to look at things differently. Much of my work is autobiographical with hints of humor, history, and time, and I frequently explore duality, class, and characters in an expressive style. When in doubt, I go with my gut, and it is not unusual for me to bring pieces to the brink of disaster before rescuing them. I thrive on experimentation and pushing the boundaries of mediums, and I believe this creates tension and energy in my work, which is vital to me as an artist.
A Hope In Hell
I hold a Doctorate in Philosophy from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, a Masters Degree in Philosophy from SIU-C, and English from Eastern Illinois University. I am a 61-year-old survivor of oral cancer living in Danville, Illinois, who suffers significant complications from surgeries and radiation. As I cannot generally attend festivals, I rely on online submissions to showcase my work. I also was once a reporter for the Danville Commercial News, but my PTSD made it very difficult to write. I took up painting and digital photography to express what I can no longer write about. I taught philosophy for 28 years, 18 years of which were full-time before my inability to swallow or speak for any length of time forced me to retire. In the last few years, I have taught art and film as well.
I believe in full-blooded color in my works and love to work text into my pieces, influenced as I was by early Pop Art (Ruscha esp.). I’ve found Ruscha in particular an artistic soul-mate, possibly deriving from my three decades in teaching philosophy and loving the written word. I also believe that global warming deserves as much response as an invading army would receive, and most of my digital manipulations of photos involve the beauty of odd or archaic words, but I also alter images of nature to illustrate the degeneration of the world by our hands. I also love mirror images of my digital designs, flipping the image to show the tension in some diptychs “reaching for one another” both inside and outside the frame. Such images show an otherness with a desire for itself. My work also calls into question the artistic object and reference, since I drain the referential content of photographs. My influences include Pop Artists, Rothko, and Gerhard Richter.
A Jewel Box
From way back in grade school my favorite part of the school day was art class. I was in my element when we were given the opportunity to paint on big sheets of paper with water-based paints and wear my father’s old shirt as a smock. Always drawing pictures for my friends and cousins for them to enjoy gave me great satisfaction. An extremely supportive sixth-grade art teacher was very encouraging and got some of my work entered into local art talent contests in suburban Chicago, which bolstered my good feelings about creating visual imagery. The love of strong colors beginning in this period has stayed with me my entire life.
College presented the life challenge of deciding what would provide ongoing satisfaction as an adult. Dabbling in languages and literature, religion, and philosophy broadened my horizons, but it was always an artistic expression that helped me feel my humanity and contact with the world. Painting, drawing, printmaking, and art history became my major. Graduate work in Art Education proved valuable in exposing me to other mediums such as pottery and jewelry making, but it is always painting that I go back to. Teaching did not ring the bell for me, and I spent time in the healthcare field and communications industry until I was able to go happily back to painting full time, where I am happiest creating highly colorful abstract spaces evoking fantasies, dreams, and emotions that hopefully bring engagement and some pleasure to the viewer, who always come to my work with their own life experience to overlay upon mine and hopefully find some communion.
Oil painting with strong primary color has always been of primary importance to me as a way to stay in touch with my inner child, who developed as part of a frequently moving family in the Chicago suburbs and Midwest farmlands. College presented the opportunity to focus on artistic expression, and I graduated with a B.A. in studio arts from Northwestern University with a minor in Art History. Pursuing life in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest as home, I then studied Art Education at the University of Oregon and was certified to teach in public education. I quickly realized I preferred making my own art to trying to inspire distracted youngsters to see the value of art.
I owned and operated a visual arts gallery in Portland, Oregon for two years in the early part of the century. The best part of this adventure was connecting with the 15 other artists who showed up at my gallery, but again it became apparent that I preferred focusing on my own work and closed that business. Currently, I am a member of the Clackamas County Arts Association in Oregon. This juried group exhibits in public spaces such as government buildings, libraries, hospitals, and schools.
I have also been accepted to exhibit online since 2021 with the Las Laguna Gallery in California, as well as Exhibizone through Biafrin.
My studio is my refuge and sustenance.
A Killer Housewife
Heini Mika is a Finnish artist living and working in New York City. Heini holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Worcester (UK) and she also has a degree in Fine Art and Visual Communications from Finland’s prestigious Pekka Halonen Academy of Art. Heini’s paintings have received global recognition, being showcased on four continents in prominent locations such as NYC, Paris, the UK, the UAE, and Indonesia. Her artworks have been featured in many notable publications, including the British Vogue, and several of her pieces are cherished within private collections.
Heini’s ultra-contemporary paintings serve the viewer with a palette of vibrant colors and dynamic shapes while she gives you her unique perspective on women, fairytales, and history. They have been an important source of inspiration for Heini throughout her career as an artist and this can be observed in her rich and intriguing original artworks.
Since forever have women been the subject of great art, but rarely were we allowed to create great art. As a female artist living in the 21st Century, I find great inspiration in the female icons of the past, despite the societal pressures that tell me their beauty and success renders them irrelevant. Famous women from Marie Antoinette to Miley Cyrus, have served as profound sources of inspiration for me, whether it be their distinctive style or spirit. My work is driven by a profound curiosity to understand the reasons behind our tendency to elevate women to legendary status, where their images become eternal, only to later tear them down. Through my creative process, I aim to explore how the images of these influential women, given by pop culture, impact and shape my own artistic depictions of them.
Ultimately, my work serves as a reflection and exploration of this complex dynamic. While my intention is to showcase the vibrant and visually captivating image that pop culture has crafted around the women I idolize, I also remain very conscious of the underlying darkness that hides beneath the surface of their seemingly lighthearted images.
As a Finn, I grew up on satire, dark humor, and happy endings and that is well reflected in my work. At first glance, my cartoonish mixed media paintings may depict my subject’s pop culture image perfectly, which is usually colorful, ditzy, and lacking in substance, but I am actually satirizing our perceptions of my female heroines. We are all guilty of prioritizing a person’s image over the narrative.
I choose to work with acrylics, rhinestones, and glitters because their vibrant hues and textures are well suited for creating eye-catching artworks that are unique to me, and perfect for the subject matter. Just like the women I paint, I am an unconventional woman in the eyes of my society and with my art practice I want to invite viewers to look past the glittering images and see the depth and complexity of the women I paint, myself included.
A Medley Of Flowers
Lynne Mizera, a Canadian, self-taught, mixed media artist realized early on in her life that she saw the world around her differently than most and since 2012 she has been sharing her vision on canvas working full-time from her studio in the beautiful Kootenay mountains in British Columbia, Canada. Her work is known for its rich and layered textures, bold and bright color palettes, and simple abstract shapes. She is constantly striving to capture the emotion of the moment behind the image she is painting. A member of the Federation of Canadian Artists her work has been accepted into many juried shows and has received awards from coast to coast.
I have spent years developing a technique that will capture the way I see the world around me. I am always trying to paint the emotion behind my subject, using simple shapes and vibrant colours to capture a mood. I want to create pieces of art filled with so much colour and texture that they not only draw people in but make them want to reach out and touch the painting. The layering technique I use gives so much depth to my pieces that you get lost trying to see through its many layers. Starting with a base of hand-printed collage papers and using acrylic paints to pull out the details, I end up with a richly textured and vibrantly coloured painting.
A Mess Of Fish
Michelle Vezina Peterlin is an American Artist. She was born in Gardner, Massachusetts. She is the second generation to be born in America on her maternal side. Her artistic ability expressed itself around the age of 5. Her parents had the foresight to enroll her in private art lessons. She spent her youth receiving training from the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts. She received her bachelor’s degree in painting from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. At UMASS, she was fortunate to study under the renowned master painters John Grillo and Leonel Gongora.
She spent the first 10 years of her career as an art curator at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Historic New Harmony (Indiana), and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. In 1993, she and her husband relocated to Southern Indiana. In 1996, she made the decision to leave the curatorial field to raise her children with her husband and paint full-time.
She is currently an adjunct painting professor at the University of Evansville. She is an elected member of the Rhode Island Art League. She is a member of the National Acrylic & Oil Painters Society. She is the Art director and board member of the New Harmony Artists’ Guild.
Her most recent work has evolved around being Jewish and a woman in a world of conflict. Many of the models are her daughters, and she records their dreams and aspirations. Her compositions have to do with peace, war, conflict, folklore, and universal symbols for peace, conflict, good, and evil.
Painting is pure emotion. As you work, it pours out from your heart and runs down your fingers and onto the canvas. Every composition, whether abstract or photo-real, is an illustration of the artist’s emotional internal world.
When I paint, I reflect on what is most important and how I feel the world. The painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote a book on basic color theory, assigning colors to emotions. I am a bit of a synesthete, and when I hear music, I see colors and photos. Everything in my life has a color assigned to it, which creates a system of memory. In my work, I use symbols and colors that do not require language to understand. I want my art to be impactful and able to be understood by all, regardless of language, age, or culture.