Pulled
Isabella Covert is an acrylic painter focusing on paintings of the female form. She is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a BFA with a focus on painting. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, her works have been shown in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, along with galleries in Chicago, Illinois. Her works have also been seen in online exhibitions through galleries located as far as California. Her paintings question society’s view of the female form in day-to-day life by capturing moments of emotion and vulnerability. Exploring the capabilities of paint, she plays with the movement of brushstrokes in creating these forms.
Like many artists, painting has become a visual outlet as a way to expand the limits of one’s thoughts. I paint with the intent of expressing a feeling from within, letting go and getting lost in the process, allowing the brushstrokes to happen serendipitously. Authentic brushstrokes bring a sense of movement to a two-dimensional work along with depth within the figure, something that I allow to occur naturally. The ability to release energy into a piece is a beautiful concept in art. Personal experiences and the events that occur around us heavily influence perspectives and topics in art. Intimacy between the viewer and the person in the painting is a powerful connection that I convey in my work as if the audience is personally witnessing an exposing, emotional, or impactful moment. Through personal and vulnerable works that bring one into a moment, I paint to make one question their immediate thoughts when viewing a woman painted.
Pumpkin Farm
Art is a gift to yourself, it’s there to lift your spirit, stimulate your senses, and elevate your mood.” – Diane Mowery
Austin Texas based painter Diane Mowery is a native-born Texan. She has been interested in drawing and creating from a very young age. Throughout her teenage years, she attended a special Commercial Art block class program that was a major part of the high school curriculum. She majored in Commercial Art at Texas State University in San Marcos and then switched to the Fine Arts program. After a very long absence from art, she found inspiration again. She currently enjoys creating and teaching art out of her home studio. Diane is looking forward to participating in her first art festival later this year. She also enjoys attending various plein air painting outings with other artists as a member of the Austin and Round Rock Plein Air painters who often enjoy painting outings in the beautiful Texas hill country in surrounding areas.
Her lifelong passion keeps her inspired and busy especially since she is proficient in various mediums which she equally enjoys. Never satisfied with her abilities she continues educating herself by taking workshops from other artists around the country to further sharpen and improve her skills. She believes that making art is a journey and there will always be new and exciting techniques to learn and explore that make discovering these challenging and fun! This is how she recently described herself and her work: “I am an Austin-based artist and I want to create art that not only looks amazing in your home but also grabs your heart.”
The subject matter of her art is very fundamental and relatable. She often paints food, people, animals, and nature in a way that entices your senses and keeps you engaged.
It’s been a long journey but I’m starting to feel like I’m finally arriving. Although I have always felt a connection to art and the beauty in the ordinary things that have inspired my artwork since I was young, I have also struggled to find my place as an artist since I didn’t grow up among artists or mentors. I also believe that my quest for excellence in various mediums rather than focusing on one has impeded my professional progress. Although I have always had confidence in my abilities to make reasonably good artwork, I now feel as if I’m beginning to find my artistic voice and real meaning in my work.
My current path has been one of self-discovery which has been achieved more recently through the mere process of making a great deal of art and looking inward rather than outward. After looking objectively at my art and also at what connects with collectors, I’ve discovered that I wasn’t putting enough of myself into my art. Looking inward, I realized that I prefer to paint with bright, clean, and colorful pigments along with prioritizing showing more expression in my brushwork than I have shown in the past. I also noticed that I am drawn to subject matter that is usually peaceful and calming such as nature and water. Now, as I continue my process of self-discovery and evolution through my artwork, my process is beginning to change as well. While I am still a work in progress, I don’t want to fall into a trap of just documenting exactly what I see but focus more on originality and inspiration. I hope that you come along with me on my road to self-discovery through my art.
Purple Beach
Natalya is originally from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. She adored lessons in fine arts at an art school, so she decided to continue her studies at the Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical Institute to become a teacher of drawing and drafting.
While studying at the institute, Natalya also worked in a design art workshop. The studio brought together artists of different levels. There, she learned how to design tablets, signboards, wall paintings, and Petrikivka folk paintings. After graduation, she wanted to go to work in a school. But life worked itself out in its own way, and she moved to America.
In America, she worked in enterprises not related to art. But painting has always been important and she worked on it in parallel. She attended exhibitions, museums, and galleries. She met other artists and was introduced to different artistic expressions. In 2006 she went to work at a Russian-speaking school. She taught painting classes for children and adults. She also organized master classes using different materials. But only in 2021, she decided to completely go into painting and art. And since then, she has made it her career as an independent artist.
My artistic experimentation is driven by my love of nature and the beauty found within its rhythmic flow, vivid colors, dynamic forms, and essential essence. I’m a self-taught fluid acrylic artist who draws inspiration from the sky, water, and earth’s minerals, using their natural color palette to create paintings that are both calming and inspiring. Each piece begins with the abstraction of everyday life and imagination, which is then shaped by my emotional responses and evolving interests. My intuitive style reflects my feelings and views of the world, making my art an intensely satisfying and freeing experience. I find inspiration in all styles and genres of art, and my creative process involves multiple layers of paint, swiping, scratching, and gestural brushwork. Creating is integral to my life, and I frequently favorite places to observe, sense, and draw from nature’s beauty. My work is about capturing a moment in time with vibrant colors and details that resonate with the viewer. Through my art, I celebrate life and our participation in it, allowing viewers to appreciate the beauty of light, form, and color, and make new and unexpected insights.
Purple Coneflowers Found – Study 4
Renee Hopson is an artist, designer, and educator. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries nationally, most recently at the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum. She is currently a print and pattern designer and illustrator, published in the 2021 edition of The Travel & Draw, Where We Walk. Renee received an MFA in painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design.
This painting is part of a body of work that is an expression of how I see and experience native wildflowers and plants of Ohio. I spend hours outside hiking, painting, studying wildflowers, and gathering details about the plants that I love, to inform my studio work.
This work on paper starts with washes of watercolor, pencil markers, and textures from found objects. As I start each painting, I know what plant/flower will be represented, but the composition is unknown. I allow myself to create abstract compositions and react to the materials as they create patterns and texture. Once the underlayers have dried, I start sketching with acrylics, utilizing the textures and colors of the underlayers to help reveal the foliage. A process I call Finding Flowers.
Purple Crocus
Tapping color into water is truly its own kind of magic; simply called watercolor
Belinda Balaski, a native of Southern California, creates colorful watercolor and pastel paintings of people, landscapes, seascapes, flowers, and animals. She is especially fond of painting horses, influenced by her childhood on the racetrack with her father, the well-known jockey, Lester Balaski. Her work focuses on capturing the spirit and unique beauty of living creatures and the natural world. She is motivated by the desire to share a spiritual sense of serenity and peace.
Belinda’s creativity expressed itself at a young age in acting, photography, and art. When not performing in theatre, she was shooting pictures and drawing incessantly. At fourteen she won a four-year scholarship to the Minnesota Corresponding Art School, where she nurtured her affinity for representational art and learned many techniques that served her well.
Belinda’s gift for acting took her on a different path. She won many awards and excelled in a 50-year career in Hollywood. She created BB’s Kids Acting School, where she taught, filmed, and nurtured thousands of children, all the while writing and producing original plays. These experiences developed her artistic eye for framing, beauty, and editing a myriad of choices.
Recently she retired from the film industry and closed her school, to return to her original pursuit of visual art. She enrolled in courses at Emeritus College, discovering a passion for watercolor and pastels. Drawing from a well of diverse talents and life experiences, Belinda uses her gift of capturing a feeling with an instinctual ease of composition.
Belinda lives and works in Southern California but spends several months a year on Kauai, her spiritual home, where many of her inspirational paintings are born.
I have always chosen the path of the artist; whether it be acting, painting, photography, writing, beading, pottery or working on the wood lathe. Some of those I have been paid for; and well. Now I spend my time working on the others…
I am an LA/Kauai-based artist who specializes in watercolor and pastels. I am forever seeking peace and spiritual tranquility in my work, drawn from a myriad of life experiences that have etched; people, landscapes, seascapes, animals, faces, children, and a zillion more images inspired from these cellular memories, into my very soul.
Working in water is like magic ~ when you finally tap a color into the invisible watermarks you lay, the magic begins. Or you can wet the whole paper, saturate it in water, and sweep colors across to let them blend and mix at will. Let the water lead you, the colors, the mixes, the forms. You can try to control them, but wet on wet has its own life.
There is so much diversity in watercolors, that one can only be limited by one’s own imagination. But if you are open to listening to the muse, tuning into the moment, the flow of the water can lead you where your imagination is endlessly open, allowing the kind of awesome creativity that real “Art” is truly made of. The kind of Art that takes you out of yourself and frees you of all limitations. This is my goal. To allow your eyes to rest on an image that will open and inspire your imagination beyond your physical world, allowing you to relate and yet freely fly…
Purple Flowers
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”.
Flowers express beauty through their fragrances, vibrant hues, and pleasing forms. The female graced surrounded by flowers becomes one herself as she is joined in. perfect synchronicity with the elegance and glow of nature.
Purple Glow
At 65, after decades of not creating art, Lisa Joy Newcomb reinvented herself as an artist.
Ms. Newcomb has been honored with one best of show, five first place awards in photography, a second place in abstract photography award, and a third place award. She has had three one-woman shows. One through HMVC Gallery New York, one through Artel Gallery in Pensacola, FL, and one through the University of Delaware. Her work has been seen from coast to coast, including several times through the HMVC Gallery in New York and the Las LaGuna Gallery in California. Pictorem, based out of Montreal, Canada, has Lisa as a featured artist. Ms. Newcomb’s work has been seen in public arenas including New York’s Times Square electronic billboards, Montgomery International Airport, the Regions Bank Corporate Gallery in Montgomery, Alabama, the Sanger Theater in Pensacola, Florida, and the Hilton Pensacola Beach, Florida. Three books have also presented by Ms. Newcomb. They are: “Nobis II, 2023,” and the “Emerald Coast Review,” 2023, and 2025. “Emerald Coast Review 2025” uses Ms. Newcomb’s photograph as its cover image.
The photographs she creates are abstractions in fluidity, rich in joy and filled with color, pattern, curiosity, and a gentle message. The dance of light that for most of her life she sought in the ocean, she is now looking for in the melding of glass and fabric with occasional surprise elements. Lisa’s work is usually printed on aluminum.
Ms. Newcomb’s highest degree is a master’s in social work. Professionally, she worked as a social worker and as a realtor. She was raised in the Mid Atlantic, experienced her young adulthood in New England and the Midwest, and for the last 30 years, the Deep South has been home with her husband. It was in the Deep South that she raised an interesting, dynamic, kind-hearted daughter. Lisa was a docent at the Pensacola Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Art for over 17 years. She is currently a national member of Pen Women.
Ms. Newcomb’s uplifting work can be seen on her website at Pictorem. You may order it there to your specifications.
I create photos as peaceful, playful, healing stimuli while I make observations of humanity and the environment. Drawing upon different objects, I explore melding them into a unified whole. Part of my process is setting up compositions, in the form of an assemblage, visually weaving together beautiful glass, flowing fabric, with vibrant colors and patterns into integrated fluid formations seeking to reshape light, pattern, and color into a visual oasis. I then tightly crop and photograph. My intent is to transcend and transform objects into images that visually excite while calming the soul, often with a gentle message.
A lifelong passion for art and artists influenced my work. I nod to Miriam Schapiro, a leader in the Pattern and Decoration Movement. Having lived much of my life by the shore, I have always loved the play of light in watery reflections. I am drawn to artists who capture light; Stephen Rolfe Powell’s glass delights me. Mark Rothko believed in the visceral effect of color. He wanted people to have an experience within his pictures. I seek to have my work viscerally affect the viewer.
CromaLuxe high definition images printed on aluminum are my preferred substrate. The reflective surface enhances and enriches the dynamics of the glass used in my imagery. Images can be ordered in small jewel-like prints or large dynamic pieces.
Purple Is My Favorite Color
Kat Kleinman is a photo collage artist from the Sacramento, California area. She began her career as an artist in 2016, after she retired as a psychotherapist, working with homeless people for 20 years. Her past work is referenced because it does inform her current work with a focus on positivity and making people feel better with each new work.
Kat began by specializing in floral collages because the individual flowers combine to create a new and cohesive form, reflective of the healing process. She takes her own photographs, which is important to Kat unless a photo is donated by a personal friend. Each image is hand cut, a process she calls meditative, and a single photo collage may require dozens of flowers, succulents, and/or leaves.
Kat is enthusiastic about the potential for color to positively influence emotions, ultimately leading to better relationships between people. Kat’s work has been seen in international exhibitions in Tokyo, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and Madrid, as well as in many prestigious art books with other artists. She has over 22,400 followers on her Facebook page called Kat Kleinman Art.
Art allows me an avenue to express my hope for the world. I am a photographer and collage artist, focusing on unique floral and succulent compositions, because they symbolize my enthusiasm for using color to bring about positive changes, starting from within.
My work intends to make people feel better, even for a moment. I often use dozens of flowers in a single collage, a process that is both meditative and inspirational.
The beauty of a floral collage represents healing because fractions of color combine to create a new cohesive form. I am dedicated to creating art inspired by compassion, meditation, and the right action.
Purple Rage
Like many Photographers, I fell in love with photography with my first camera. For me, that was a Kodak Instamatic. Anyone who knew me then knew I had an eye for a good image. My 14th birthday gift was an SLR, by 16. I had my own darkroom and was processing my images. By 18 I started working with non-representational images, images which did not start with a camera lens. I soon discovered that the technology of the time could not produce what I wanted. Realizing I would only be frustrated, I stopped working with abstract photography.
I earned my living in IT and had photography as a hobby for several decades. When photography began to be digital, I started to learn the new techniques of digital photography and image manipulation. I have been fascinated with how nature creates beauty by fractal processes. Fractal math can be the image of a mountain range or a rose that is indistinguishable from the real thing. Around the year 2008, I started working with the idea of producing photographic images using natural processes. ‘
Since I started working with images based on natural processes, I have realized that the result is closer to abstract art than traditional photography. Over more than 15 years, I have developed various techniques and apparatus to create the images I enjoy. As far as I know, my techniques are completely original. I do not know anyone who is working with anything similar.
I view myself not so much as a photographer but as an abstract artist whose chosen medium is digital photography.
I create abstract images which are not of something, but complete abstractions. I refer to the results as “abstract photography”.
Most images start with a clear liquid or gel then color is added. Creating the images often takes considerable time. Set up might take a couple of hours, but the images are the result of the action of the medium with the environment which moves, mixes, and changes the colors. The complete process may take several days.
The next step in the process is to select a part of the chaos to photograph. The final image often involves macro-photographic techniques. Then post processing, to improve the color and composition the impact of post processing can be extensive or minimal. Each step is influenced by the artist’s emotions and moods.
The photographic images are created without the intent of a specific form. Because they start from the dynamic natural processes, each image is unique and can not be reproduced even knowing all the inputs and techniques.