Peace Hero
Born overseas, Jean-Paul Aboudib moved to the United States with his parents at the age of eight due to economic and political strife in his home country. Upon his arrival, he realized that this new world would ignite his creativity for years to come. After graduating high school, he received a scholarship to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit Michigan where he pursued a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and painting and drawing. He later turned his attention to the figure when he pursued his MFA from Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. It was here that his subject matter became inundated with expression and psychological motifs that would challenge the viewer into a space where they could explore his subjects in earnest and with Fidelity. He has completed a multitude of commissions and Has exhibited his work in various galleries throughout the United States, including the Alfred Berkowitz Gallery at the University of Michigan, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Lost Laguna Gallery, the Scare of Club, the Northville art house, and the Cherry Hill village art gallery just to name a few. His work has won numerous awards in competitive exhibitions including best of shows and merits as well as honorable mentions. He currently resides and works out of his Studio in Canton Michigan.
For as long as I can remember, I have always had a gravitational attraction to the human figure. Its seductive curvature and expressive sensibilities have been one of the oldest forms of communication between human beings. My work examines the interplay between what the figure conceals and reveals. I am influenced by such artists as Francoise Neely, Victor Wang, Jason Sean Alexander, and Janice Seville just to name a few. Through the falling of light fragments upon the flesh and the haunting sense of melancholy, I hope to bring the viewer to a closer connection with my subjects.
Peace In The Eye Of The Storm
Sylvia Bandyke, Royal Oak, MI, USA, is largely a self-taught photographer, having taken studio and art history classes in college. She began her art career by displaying photo collages in ArtPrize, an independent international art competition in Grand Rapids, MI, from 2014 to 2018. Subsequently, she has been juried into more than 100 group exhibitions in 24 states and accepted into numerous online international exhibitions. An awarded artist, she keeps an eye open for interesting views of a subject while looking for hidden beauty every day. Most recently, she was a caregiver to her elderly mother and was able to create some memorable, unique art as a result of this experience.
I prefer using the collage format to integrate associated images into a cohesive unit that is even more compelling because of the embedded story. Having been a playwright and technical writer, I am accustomed to delivering content with a message. So now, as a visual communicator, I continue to provide meaning via the structure of the collage format, wherein the four photos confirm, augment, or even contradict each other if warranted. I enjoy offering the richness that the multiplicity of images provides, along with the impact gained through thoughtful positioning of them. Ultimately, I intend to have my work act as a doorway to the viewer’s own mental and emotional framework regarding the collection of images, perhaps finding their own very personal meaning in them.
Peaceful Hope
Kat DiBenedetto is an eclectic artist who enjoys exploring different styles, mediums, and processes. Her work engages her audience in a variety of ways, such as utilizing bright colors and strong line work. While she dabbles in both 3D and 2D work, she considers herself a painter most of all. She loves using acrylic paint but isn’t afraid to play with oils.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I draw inspiration from the unique blend of environments around me—Maryland’s textures, changing seasons, and the way light transforms ordinary subjects. My work ranges from natural scenes to imaginative character development, always rooted in storytelling. I use art as a way to understand emotion, connection, and the subtleties of human experience.
Peaceful Monochrome
Sumin Joo is a visual artist whose work explores the environment as a vessel of feeling and narrative. Through digital painting and visual development practices, she constructs spaces that feel both familiar and otherworldly, reflecting on memory, belonging, and the emotional weight of place. Educated at ArtCenter College of Design, she works intuitively with color, texture, and composition to evoke quiet tension and contemplation. Her images function as fragments of larger stories, inviting viewers to inhabit unseen moments and imagine what exists beyond the frame.
I am a visual development and background artist who creates imaginative worlds rooted in story and emotion. My work explores the intersection of fantasy and everyday life, building environments and characters that invite viewers into richly layered narratives. I am inspired by color, culture, and the way visual storytelling can evoke mood, place, and memory. Through digital painting and thoughtful composition, I strive to bring scenes to life with depth and personality, whether in environments, props, or character moments. My artistic goal is to craft distinctive visual worlds that resonate emotionally, spark curiosity, and communicate meaningful stories that connect with diverse audiences.
Peacenik: Portrait Of Allen Ginsberg
The fact that I studied art under Andy Warhol’s instructor notwithstanding, I was dissuaded from continuing my studies by my wise elders, who were experts in career counseling, so I met them halfway and studies Industrial Design at the University of Cincinnati. I plied that trade in the rust belt for a few decades, and with success, but the Call of the Wild eventually lured me back to making art, in the form of large, satirical cartoon portraits. Since then I have shown my work 180 times. I now reside in Rochester NY.
My paintings start with things I’ve read, heard, or seen, followed by a flash of insight occurring at a mundane moment (“solvitur ambulando”, which means “it is solved by walking”), in turn, followed by a positive feeling that trips the “yes painting/no painting” switch enough for me to power up. I deliberately leave loose ends, unresolved details, and unanswered questions that only the paintbrush can work out. At some time during a painting the funnel flips, then the concept becomes synthesis, synthesis becomes execution, and the painting takes on a life of its own with me t its service. Then I learn what the painting is really about, with its colors, lines, forms, and even subjects frequently playing several roles and sending multiple messages, and the painting begins to move.
Peacock In Bloom
Kylie’s work has been published as part of The Brooklyn Art Library. She has also studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and exhibited in Chicago, Los Angeles, and most recently, Montclair Art Museum, The Manufacturers Village for the Garden State Art Weekend, and Art in the Atrium’s “Another Slice of Sweet Potato Pie.”
Spurred by dreams and the idea that many things can be true all at once, Kylie’s art is a fluid retelling of what she sees out in the world. Sometimes obvious, but often speaking to elements more hidden and underneath culture, Kylie is always working to create a visual space that is language, both conscious and subconscious, that speaks to something everyone can experience as shared and universal.
Penang Kids Bicycle Wall
Karen Safer is an international, award-winning photographic artist and poet with a musical bent. A Los Angeles native, born to creative, scholarly-minded parents who encouraged her world travel (230+ countries/territories visited).
Early on, she was greatly influenced by movies, music, books, and plays, and as a student of art and history, inspired by ancients to moderns – Assyria to Cindy Sherman. She has a bachelor’s/master’s degree in Art from UCLA and California State University. She is a member of the Los Angeles Art Association, IAA-USA, Women United, Praxis Gallery, LACMA, MOCA, IAA-USA, in Who’s Who of Professional Women, ArtTour Magazine (NY), AATOLAU interview, Artist Talk Magazine (UK), Lens Magazine, etc. She was given a camera and crayons at 3 and exposed to/inspired by California motifs: light, trees, the ocean, music, and vernacular architecture that defined/influenced her left-handed aesthetic. She began taking pictures of family and friends, progressing from painting to developing black-and-white photos in college. She was fortunate to begin a life of travel as a teen that shaped her love of the exotic paired with an eye for the formal, accidental, and unusual while subliminally seeking the “beautiful” that jiggles the lens/frame of my eye.
She is featured in magazines, catalogs, and books and exhibited internationally in over 80+ galleries/museums with over 400+ exhibitions from London, Rome, Berlin, Glasgow, Budapest, Athens, Prague, Paris, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Sao Paulo, Tokyo -California to New York, winning 360+ First and other awards – most recently: Black & White SPIDER Awards nominee, 21st Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in Abstract and in Architecture categories, Botticelli International Prize in Florence, LA Art Show 2024, 17th Annual Color Awards and soon in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Art Expos in Basel and Armenian Modern Art Museum in Yerevan.
“A photographer has the whole world big or small to capture.” – kjs
Influences: I am a student of art, architecture, history, literature, film, and music. I have been heavily influenced by so many sources but here I’ve chosen to highlight art and photography influences from Hopper to Cartier-Bresson and from Atget to Cindy Sherman. So many influences on life from cities to nature to music and art. I love color and all its vibrance while I venerate black and white. I embrace all the many influences that have touched my art and my life deeply. I am a romantic soul with intellectual cravings now living in a digital world.
Penelope An Old Soul
Lives and works in Montreal and in Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, Canada.
Paul Grégoire’s ongoing research work led him to adopt a head-on approach to several disciplines directly or indirectly linked to visual arts. Although painting is the mode of expression Paul Grégoire has favored since 2015, his sustained practice of sculpture, installation, performance, video, music, literature, and osteology continuously feeds and influences his pictorial universe.
From 1970 to 2005, his artistic cursus thereby mainly translated itself into sculpture and installation work. He presented solo exhibitions in several contemporary art galleries and museums in Québec and took part in sculpture symposiums. He has received many grants from the Canada and Québec Councils for the Arts.
In 1980, he was also engaged in a saxophonist and singer’s career where music, theatre, and artistic performance meet. In the mid-1990s, performance became a recurrent feature of his approach. He was invited to different action art festivals in Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Québec. Moreover, he organized the international performance event «Déranger l’espace» that took place in Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, from 2001 to 2005.
Literature-wise, he has been the author of a column in the art magazine ESSE for 10 years. He has also published four novels, a collection of true anecdotes, and, recently, an autobiographical graphic story.
In the early 2000s, Paul Grégoire developed a more sustained practice of osteology that influenced more precisely his aesthetic preoccupation. Since he reassembled many mammal skeletons, including a sperm whale that can be seen in the entrance hall of the Musée de la Mer in Îles-de-la-Madeleine, it is through painting that this new source of inspiration mostly materialized. He showed his works in solo exhibitions and also in many international online galleries and magazines.
My pictorial practice explores the potential of various narrative forms related to our era and the human condition. Tales, mythology, and symbolism shape my language, and I often use animal representation as a symbol of human feelings. My images are both a source of fascination and anguish. Beyond any form of morality or a priori, I seek to explore the complexity of being and the struggle resulting from an inner duality. Death and injustice are themes of particular interest to me. My work can be qualified as a narrative with a touch of dark humor.
Positioning myself as both a “storytelling artist” and an “artist sabotaging familiar landmarks”, my creative process is guided by the idea that the work must remain subject to a change of direction at any time during its realization. My field of action is therefore voluntarily “open to all possibilities”.
Animals occupy a special place in my paintings. Without being a wildlife painter, I use them as symbols. However, my interest in osteology led me to paint them with a keen sense of anatomy. The structure of beings and things is the cornerstone of my work. As a consequence, we often find skeletons in my work, but I never fall into morbidity.
We also find the aspect of duality in my paintings, as if I was struggling with my double. I graphically illustrate my inner thoughts. I often work with oil on large canvases as if I were painting frescoes.
Pensamientos Sumergidos
The daughter of parents from Madrid and the third of six siblings, from a very young age she learned to negotiate and set limits. Skills that helped her in her professional adult life to make a career in the business world.
After a long career in the communication sector, she decided to return to her creative roots and resume painting as a means of expression, which later led her to the need to write, plots that she develops from a point in the south of Spain.
Currently, she is completely dedicated to giving free rein to her imagination through painting. Transmitting in each painting of her her emotions and her state of mind trying to give a little color and joy to the world around her.
Through the canvases I manage to express my deepest thoughts and emotions, trying to capture everything that would be impossible to express with a few words. That is why cubism, as I like to call the style of my creations, is a freestyle with a wild and indomitable soul, but at the same time a healer where the greatest reward is being able to reach my audience and transmit the accumulation of sensations so special that it contains each frame.