My work begins with memory fragments of childhood, spiritual encounters, recurring dreams, and everyday experiences that continue to shape how I understand myself and the world around me. Through painting and mixed media, I construct images that move between naturalism and surrealism, allowing personal and collective histories to exist within the same space.

I am interested in how fear, vulnerability, aspiration, and inherited narratives shape identity, particularly within Black life. My work examines the tension between what is passed down, what is imposed, and what is discovered through lived experience. Figures, objects, and symbolic materials become vessels for stories about resilience, self-examination, and transformation.

Working with oil paint, charcoal, wood, metal, and found materials, I build each piece as both an image and an investigation, a process that asks what becomes possible when we confront memory, question inherited beliefs, and move toward a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Over the past 20 years, everyone knows that the world has undergone historic changes, which our generation has experienced and witnessed, and which have also made me learn so much more than I have learned in my life. The so-called art comes from life. As an artist, I use my method to present this feeling with a modern and unique expression technique. It is also my feeling and reaction to this reality. I think art is based on the times. Works are the trajectory of an era, and they are worthy of us leaving a mark on this reality……the temperament of splash, impact, coldness, and lushness, accompanied by chaos and flying, creates another Zen image.

I am a multimedia artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, inspired by artists like Fay Jones, Romare Bearden, and Matisse. My work explores transformation, spirituality, and the every day, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary. I hand-cut and glue all my pieces, usually onto a wooden pallet, often incorporating acrylic paints, mediums, and sometimes found objects. My eye is always on the details, ensuring that each element resonates within the piece. Metaphor, symbolism, and allegory are central to my practice, offering portals to deeper meanings beneath daily life. I weave together images and ideas, often juxtaposing unrelated elements to create layered works that evoke emotions and prompt reflection. Through this process, I invite viewers to uncover subconscious connections and explore the interconnectedness of life. My goal is to create a space where the personal meets the universal, offering a journey into the symbolic world that shapes our shared human experience.

I’m a contemporary portrait artist who works with oil paint in the classical tradition. My main goal is to capture the true essence of my subjects by revealing their vulnerable selves, free from any masks. My style focuses on precise technique, craftsmanship, careful observation, and creating beauty. I want my art to make people think about the deeper meanings and connections in everyday human interactions, encouraging empathy and reflection in the midst of life’s chaos.

Portraits are at the heart of what I do, as they allow me to explore the depths of the human soul. I aim to present these portraits in a way that combines beauty, intelligence, and emotional depth. I believe that art has the power to connect people and evoke strong emotions, inspiring action, and devotion.

In my artistic journey, I’m guided by a respect for the human body, a love for nature, and a belief in the emotional impact of visual art.

I ponder a journalist of the 1930’s, excitedly clicking the words away on their new typewriter, the very one that is now in pieces and parts, sprawled out before me like a piñata of metal that I just burst open. I feel myself trying to grasp new visions flickering in my brain as if an old movie reel is beginning.

I am drawn to dissecting the equipment, processes, materials, and uses of what once was. I feel the potential of beauty from the grit of intense labor. I am fascinated with the history of old machines, mechanical movement, and the evolution of industry that relied on innovation.

Whether machining new materials or dismantling salvaged ones, the challenge excites me. My inner warrior comes alive with the physicality of working with machines, tools, and materials to create something that tells a meaningful new story. I want to humanize unlikely objects and create an emotional connection with surprisingly unemotional elements. In the tension of my work, I aim to reflect that our brokenness can become the catalyst of hope for what will be.

Lydia’s immersive painting process, incorporating elements from her surroundings and allowing her mind’s emotions to guide her compositions, transcends traditional boundaries, capturing not just images but the very essence of her Californian environment. She creates vibrant explosions and dislodges of color infused with great inner passion, inviting viewers to explore the intricate tapestry of modern culture reflected in her works. Lydia’s distinctive artistic approach involves painting her larger-scale pieces from a ladder, directly onto canvas, a defining feature of her practice. Deeply inspired by the pop art movement and mid-century abstraction, her methods blur the lines between figuration and abstraction seamlessly integrating color, texture, and other characteristics into her pieces. This style and technique add depth and vitality to the art, making every creation visually engaging and emotionally resonant with inner authenticity, relevance, and always joy.

I am a magical realism painter with a focus on figures, hybrids, whimsical, and the metaphysical. I explore dreams, meditations, and the cosmos. My studio, I have come to understand, is a work in progress, sort of like a provocative daydream. I seek to discover the soul and spirit of what I am engaged with, making visual commentary in the now moment. In my work as a channel/healer, I often experience people in the most intense times of their lives, both in pain and joy. I have learned to draw upon this, creating narratives reflecting personal growth in my paintings. I am interested in the complexity of mysticism, spirituality, healing, and otherworldly explorations. I share stories about my personal life experiences, which can remind me that my work is a visual diary.

Rather than subscribe to a particular icon, subject, ideology, or style, I prefer not to be limited. I start with large brushes, allowing for a free-form “gliding” over the canvas. In that way, it’s easy to feel that my process is like an open-eye meditation. I point my brush in the direction to capture the essence, the soul of my subjects. Perhaps to give the viewer a sense of connection, a sense of timelessness, to enter the art and be part of it. I like to think of what I do as outrageous, spontaneous play with the Unseen, to make the Seen. I am in constant dialogue with the muse to discover what’s next, to listen. In that way, my work feels less controlled.

I am inspired by Guillermo Lorca, Odd Nerdrum, and John William Waterhouse, who seek to tell stories within their art. And finally, I am forever inspired by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot.

In recent years I have joined the illustrations teaching activity, directing my graphic production to Art Licensing (sale of pieces or graphics suitable to be printed on various products).

I have decades of experience in the field and a long career. Alongside the artistic line expertise in the processing of images in digital, file delivery also in vector. Some random situations, including the bursting advent of the Internet at its dawn, initially direct me to perform different types of work for various customers, very often varying fields of application, from publishing to product.

This immediately has a positive impact on the local reality, thanks to some lucky collaborations, with a graphic study in Palermo in particular, and small-medium independent publishers, also Italian. The alternation of collaborations and experiences between the “global” and the “local” for about twelve years, forms my profile currently addressed to Art Licensing.

In our daily lives, we are no longer in contact with nature. I am fascinated by the plant world. Plants, trees, flowers… It seems a world far away from us, but its care and understanding depend on our very survival. Plants give us oxygen, they feed us, and they are the most crucial elements in the bioclimatic balance of our planet. I believe that connecting with nature helps us to be more serene, relaxed and gives us greater well-being. Our body and our brain have not evolved so fast that we think that sitting on the sofa watching a screen is a source of well-being. But plants are also fascinating. Botany (discovering rare species, local plants, so different around the world), is something that fascinates me and inspires my artistic project.

I create photos as peaceful, playful, healing stimuli by drawing upon different objects and melding them into a unified whole. While working I often think about how our country needs to heal and find unity. Part of my process is setting up compositions and visually weaving together beautiful glass, flowing fabric, and sometimes surprise elements with vibrant colors and patterns into integrated fluid formations. I then photograph tightly cropped, in close proximity to my setup. My intent is to transcend and transform objects into images that visually excite while calming the soul.

A lifelong passion for art and artists influenced my work. I nod to feminist artist Miriam Schapiro, a leader in the Pattern and Decoration Movement. She frequently celebrated the invisible women designers of fabrics within her work, in both painting and printing, creating what she called Femages. (feminist collages). Having lived much of my life by the shore, I have always loved the play of light in watery reflections. In turn, I am drawn to artists that capture light. The glass sculptures of Stephen Rolfe Powell delight me by turning solids into liquids and back to flowing forms of solid in a graceful play of movement, pattern, and light. The last of many admired artists I will mention is Color Field artist Mark Rothko, he believed in the visceral effect of color and advised his viewers to stand very close to his large images with an open mind to let the effect move the observer. He wanted people to have an experience with his pictures. I also seek to have my work have a visceral impact on the viewer.

In these unsettling times of polarization, and social, political, and environmental strife, I’m transforming light, pattern, and color into a visual oasis. I seek to make abstract images that embrace the value of joy, rich with fluidity and kindness. As an artist and former therapist, I invite the viewer in.

Each of my images can be ordered in small jewel-like prints or large dynamic pieces. I have been printing on ChromaLuxe, a high-definition aluminum, and on white Dibond aluminum panels framed or unframed.