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.

This piece is made up of all of my own source material, meaning even the photographic elements are my own.

“And her heart was in her throat…” honors all those who courageously carry on despite personal struggles, bullying, domestic violence, and threats to their lives, their livelihoods, their emotional well-being, and their way of life. So often we have absolutely no idea what individuals have gone through, yet they keep showing up and often give no external hint of their internal challenges.

The contrast between our internal state or experience and the external situation surrounding us can be intense – and can often make for a surprising juxtaposition if we imagine it in visual terms. I am trying to figure out new ways to visually depict internal states. We’ll see where it takes me.

Walking into my studio you will notice multiple canvases in progress. I get restless and move from one to another, sometimes setting one aside for months or years, until I feel or find a direction to go in. Occasionally going back to one I thought was quite finished and noticing something missing or amiss, a way to add content that makes sense.

Metaphors are fun and I enjoy playing with them but just as entertaining is developing a bit of mystery that clings, not wanting to reveal itself. I want to give the viewer and myself something to wonder about, muse about, something more than just an image. It’s a struggle to find the ideas buried deep in the canvas, deep in my brain.

I’m also a self-taught English Geordie artist born on the banks of the River Tyne. My view of any kind of art is that it should leave an impression; whether it is good or bad is up to the individual. I think my style of painting, drawing, and photography is about colours and shapes, and how they interact. I mainly paint with aerosol spray paint or acrylics and sometimes oils, inks, watercolours, mixed media, plus glass paint on sheet glass. I also create Digital and AI-assisted art prints, plus draw using oil and chalk pastels and watercolour pencils.

My artistic influences are Salvador Dali, Huntertwasser, Van Gogh, the Fauvists such as Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck, French and Nordic Impressionists, namely Monet, Cezanne, Munch, Osslund, and Erichsen, plus Nolde, Kalella, Klimt, Hokusai, and Wu Guangzong have also had an influence on my work.

“I am originally from Valencia, Venezuela. I started my artistic journey back in 1990 when I was just 5 years old; always learning beautiful techniques from my mother and my aunts who are also artists.

When I grew up I decided to pursue my career in arts when I was just 8 years old and I studied Art at the School of Fine Arts in Valencia. Growing up my passion for arts grew more and more, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Art Education and a Master’s in Management in my hometown, Valencia.

One day I decided to pursue my American Dream and arrived in the City of Orlando in 2017 where I am currently developing an art project in which I teach different art techniques and origami to adults and children of all ages to promote their talents and help them discover their artist within.”

I love taking photographs of landscapes and nature, especially birds. Most of my photographs are taken of birds in my backyard or at Delta Ponds in Eugene, Oregon. Capturing moments that others may not have an opportunity to see and to be able to share that with them is a blessing. Being able to go out into my backyard and capture photographs of these beautiful creatures truly brings me great joy and happiness.

I see my work as continuing the struggle between abstraction and figuration, and between spontaneity and meticulous planning. Based on my artistic training and scholarly pursuit in liberal arts, my works have been a continuation but also a subversion of the Western Canon. I am also interested in the fragility and potency of the human body, and ultimately create works that are accessible, yet uncompromising in their conceptual complexity.

Central recurring themes in my work are trauma, incompleteness, negativity, void, and alterity. As a transgender person of color, who grew up to be a third-culture individual, I find myself in certain liminal positions, hence experiencing alienation in a multitude of ways. I aspire to do work that could accommodate such density of meaning, while also being aesthetically inviting and enticing to the general public.

For the longest time, women have always been the subject of great art, but rarely were we allowed to create great art. Being a female artist in the 21st Century, I look to my female heroes for guidance and inspiration. From Marie Antoinette to Miley Cyrus I paint my subjects the way I see them, inspiring, beautiful, and most importantly, complex. There is so much more to these women than meets the eye, yet all of them were or are dismissed at face value.

In my acrylic paintings I explore the dichotomy between my female subjects and their stories. While my almost cartoonish art style may play into the notion that these women are ditzy and childish, my intention is to tell their true stories.
These women have inspired me, and while I wish to emulate the image pop culture has given them, I am aware of the darkness that lurks behind the fun. To convey this darkness I like to paint moments from their lives that don’t play into the notion of fun and positivity. My signature style of kaleidoscopic colors and white outlines may seem like they do not go well with my dark sense of humour, however with this combination I am able to create eye-catching artworks that cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s.

Since forever have women been the subject of great art, but rarely were we allowed to create great art. As I am a female artist in the 21st Century, I look to my female idols for guidance and inspiration even though the current society we live in is trying to convince me that the women I admire, do not matter because they are/were beautiful and successful. My goal as a female artist is to explore this dichotomy between my female heroines’ pop culture images and their true stories. Why do we love to turn women into legends just to tear them down either publicly or privately?

From Marie Antoinette to Miley Cyrus, the women I paint have inspired me either stylistically or spiritually, and while I wish to highlight the candy-colored image pop culture has given them, I am aware of the darkness that lurks behind the fun.

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 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.