Michael D’Aleo is an artist whose work serves as a profound critique of the world, exploring diverse perspectives through various artistic lenses. Born with a natural inclination towards creativity, D’Aleo channels his observations and emotions into evocative pieces that resonate deeply with viewers.

Throughout his career, D’Aleo has developed a distinctive style characterized by its raw emotion and introspective depth. His art is not merely a visual representation but a narrative that delves into the complexities of human experience. Through his paintings, sculptures, and installations, he offers a glimpse into the spectrum of emotions that define his personal journey.

D’Aleo’s critique of the world is multifaceted, addressing social, political, and existential themes with equal fervor. Each artwork serves as a mirror reflecting societal issues or personal struggles, inviting viewers to contemplate and engage with the underlying messages. His ability to intertwine aesthetic beauty with profound commentary distinguishes him as a significant voice in contemporary art.

Inspired by both classical techniques and modern innovations, D’Aleo’s artistic process is marked by experimentation and evolution. He continuously pushes boundaries, exploring new mediums and forms to enrich his expressive repertoire. This dynamic approach not only keeps his work fresh and engaging but also underscores his commitment to artistic growth and exploration.

D’Aleo believes in the transformative power of art to provoke thought, inspire change, and foster empathy. His commitment to using art as a tool for societal critique and personal expression underscores his dedication to making a meaningful impact through his work.

Michael D’Aleo’s journey as an artist is a testament to the enduring power of creativity and its ability to illuminate the human experience. His artworks continue to captivate and provoke, inviting viewers into a dialogue about the world we inhabit and the emotions that define us all.

As an emerging contemporary artist, I thrive on cultivating curiosity and discomfort through abstraction, surrealism, and the allegory of line. I make with intention and forever reflect on meaning. I analyze and construct unconventional paths and creative alternatives, convey conceptual thoughts, and identify underlying connections, through suggestion, manipulation, and transformation. I explore how different materials and mediums can be intertwined for powerful aesthetics, and find the physical form a versatile subject for exploring complex concepts. A physical rendering of form or gesture can be simply viewed, or it can convey the complexity of being human. I seek to work, teach, and live while learning from life’s chaos and injustice by developing skills, adapting strategies, and persevering. I feel compelled to promote dialogue and understanding between different cultures and communities, with art as a powerful communication tool for social change.

For me, art is a way of life.

“I was always the class artist in grade school. In High School, one of my first jobs was assisting Joseph Cornell, who taught me how to see the Sun. I spent many NY years in artist-run giant indie shows like Monumental, Terminal, All Fools, and Coney Island. Many years were spent painting, printmaking, pumping up inflatable installations, broadcasting indie videos, and dabbling in digital media. Times change. I began making scraptures about 15 years ago, after pulling some truck parts out of the Catskill mud during a neighborhood stream cleanup. The scraptures are satirical. Lyric invention and dynamically imbalanced engineering are applied to corroded old metal resulting in the likes of Popeye, Napoleon, Ostrich, Wonder Woman, and Detroitus. Whimsey and humor are spiced with a love of anatomy, with special attention to the gluteus maximus. Recycled, repurposed, generally free “art supplies” are welded into subunits that bolt together to facilitate transport and installation. Scraptures are heavy metal, yet they move in a light breeze. Meanwhile, billions are suffering every conceivable catastrophe all at once all over the world. It is partly the result of our fatal human flaw. We are susceptible to a contagious form of mass delusion. Today, E-media enables fake reality to propagate swiftly worldwide like an epidemic of madness going viral. Entire populations are infected with fictional facts and unrealities. Our delusion immune system is hyperactive and overwhelmed. We can’t tell real from fake! The weight and solid presence of metal scrapture is a comforting grounding force on minds disoriented by flashing Jumbotrons and echoing messages on social media. Unfazed by snow and storm, they withstand the withering forces of time and nature so you can remain perfectly smooth as soon as you buy one.”

Sharon Covert invites viewers to step into the enchanting realms of her imagination, like pages torn from dark fairy tales of distant worlds and times. Sharon shares her deepest thoughts and secrets in her evocative self-portraits, weaving a tapestry of emotions that transcends the ordinary. Anonymously portraying herself, she explores the power of art as a healing force. Fueled by a profound fascination with fairytales, myths, folklore, nature, and the mystical, Sharon’s self-portraiture combines elements of anonymity, symbolism, surrealism, and otherworldly qualities. Her work beckons the viewer to delve into the hidden beauty found within the darkness, provoking a visceral response that lingers long after the gaze has shifted.

Art is both a language and a meditation. Every brushstroke is a dialogue between intuition and emotion — a quiet attempt to translate the invisible into color, texture, and rhythm. My work reflects my search for harmony between movement and stillness, chaos and balance, sound and silence.

I was born and raised in Ukraine, where I first learned to observe the world through nature — the rhythm of trees, the texture of soil, the changing colors of the sky. Later, my artistic training in Germany gave me structure, discipline, and the technical foundation to express those impressions with intention and precision. Now, living in Switzerland, I continue to explore how place, memory, and feeling can coexist within a single canvas.

Since 2005, I have worked primarily with acrylics, fascinated by their immediacy and physicality. I am drawn to large formats that allow me to move freely — to paint not only with my hands but with my whole body. My paintings are not about depicting reality; they are about capturing presence — the sensation of time slowing down, the texture of silence, the depth of color as emotion.

My most recent project, ASMR Art, is a natural continuation of this philosophy. It combines the visual and auditory experience of painting, allowing viewers to see and hear the creative process. The soft sound of brush strokes, the gentle tapping of the canvas, the whispering rhythm of color — all become part of a meditative space where art transforms into sensory calm.

In a world that moves too fast, I want my work to offer stillness. I want people to look, listen, and feel — to reconnect with the subtle and the slow. Whether on canvas or in sound, my art is an invitation to breathe, to reflect, and to remember that beauty can be quiet.

My goal as an artist is the same as my goal as a human — connection. I work to find the place where we all meet; that place where our differences recede and we can settle in. That’s why I draw, to find that snapshot moment where someone can look at my art and go, Oh, yes. I know that feeling.

My artistic practice centers on portraiture—on drawing out the unseen essence of a subject and translating it through the delicate control of graphite. I explore the quiet power of detail—each mark is an invitation to slow down, to look closer, and to witness what is often overlooked. Every drawing is a form of deep listening, an act of attention that honors the emotional and psychological presence of the individual.

I believe hyperrealism, when pursued with discipline and sensitivity, becomes more than a replication of the visible world—it becomes a mirror, a bridge, and sometimes, a wound made visible. I’m fascinated by the complexity of the human face and the subtle interplay of light, texture, and expression that gives a portrait its emotional charge. As a psychotherapist, I’m naturally attuned to nuance, which shapes my artistic philosophy: that realism can reveal as much about the internal world as the external one. It allows me to build tonal depth slowly, almost sculpturally, honoring the patience, presence, and attention each subject deserves.

My style has evolved over the last eight years to a refined form of realism that balances technical control with expressive intent. I see art as a language, and my goal is to create a sense of atmosphere and feeling. I’m currently exploring new directions, including the integration of charcoal for its expressive depth and contrast. I’ve just completed my largest piece to date—a graphite portrait measuring three feet tall and two feet wide—which has expanded both my physical and emotional engagement with the medium, allowing space for story, intimacy, and connection.

My goal is to create drawings that don’t simply replicate life but evoke it—quietly, powerfully, and with honesty.

Two of my great Passion in life are colors and Organic shapes and curves. Through my colors, I seek to the beauty of overlapping colors by layers, to the one and only unique organic shapes in the world.

This eventually progressed to my receiving my Bachelor of Arts degree in industrial, interior, and craft design from Musashino Art University in Japan. I especially, learned Japanese traditional forging, metal mold, and welding techniques. I find pleasure and joy in freely expressing curves in those forging process learning.

The beauty of all the things that exist in the earth around me, especially flower curves recaptured my passion for painting, watercolor, printmaking, and sculpture. It is my goal as an artist to encourage organic curves in the world and to express beauty and richness from no two organic curves being the same.

Colors and organic shapes bring me peace and offer me a place to meditate on the beauty in the world and the grace I feel while living in it.

Newmoon (Maddy Younwu Lee) is a 3D artist based in Chicago and South Korea. She received her BFA in Film, Video, and New Media in 2023 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Newmoon uses 3D programs such as Maya, ZBrush, Adobe Substance Painter, and Mari to create 3D artwork. Her experiences with exhibitions drove her interest in creating immersive art. The main medium of her works is imagination, and she constructs this dreamy world into a 3D model and adds imaginative elements such as geometric objects and futuristic colors. This transforms a landscape into an ideal fantastical world. Her inspiration comes from games, S/F films, Greek mythology, and her dream journal which she started writing in 2015. Her goal is to invite the audience to her dream world. She creates models such as a temple, wings, sculptures, and other objects to construct the space. Her 3D scenes mostly consist of reflective materials such as chrome, glass, mirror, and diamond. Gold, silver, and low-saturated colors are primarily used in the artworks. Newmoon also creates 3D animations adding camera works in her 3D scenes.

As an artist, I find inspiration in fragments of nature held close for reflection. I employ a personal vocabulary of fluid marks and organic imagery to express the ephemeral quality of the natural world. Within this realm, my work varies from representational interplay between painting and drawing to flora and fauna and botanical interplay.

I tend to work in series in the exploration and development of a particular image. My subject matter includes botany fauna relationships and the impact human actions have on nature. Through attention to detail, I strive to communicate nature’s continuous beauty to viewers. My goal is to construct a sense of awe that nature presents and evokes the same emotion through my artwork.

In my paintings, flowers become more 3D-like plant architecture. The structure is made visible, and the flower petals that are stretched over the ribs or veins that give them their structure come to life. There is tension and freshness of a plant bursting with life in contrast to the wilting and desiccation of individual parts of a flower. The cycle of birth, destruction, and rebirth is intertwined as an essential part of the forces of nature.