Author: Seraphina Calder
Cheryl Crane-Hunter doesn’t just make art—she listens for it. Her work is shaped by a deep awareness of the natural world and a lifelong grounding in art education. Over the years, her practice has become a kind of spiritual dialogue. Her paintings are quiet but full of presence, grounded in intuition, and alive with meaning. Through her brush, she explores the unseen, the symbolic, and the emotional layers that lie beneath the surface of things. Nature, light, and spiritual energy are constant threads in her work. Cheryl often paints by the sea, connecting with moon cycles and tides, letting her…
Born in 1965 in Montreal, Doug Caplan’s relationship with photography started with a simple Polaroid. He was a teenager when his parents handed him the camera—plastic, manual, and unforgettable mostly for the smell of developing film. That moment didn’t ignite an instant obsession, but it planted something. Life carried on. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after settling into married life, that photography returned with more weight and purpose. This time, it stuck. Over the years, Caplan has worked with both film and digital formats, but what stands out is his eye—not for drama, but for things we’re trained to…
Linda Cancel was born in 1959 in the quiet town of Moscow, Idaho. One of her first memories—watching fireworks shimmer over the Snake River as a toddler—left a lasting impression. From that moment on, she seemed drawn to light and the way it lingers. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she grew up surrounded by mist, pine, rivers, and snow—an environment that shaped her sense of mood and space. At twelve, she began private oil painting lessons with artist William F. Pogue. He introduced her to story-driven painting and the traditions of the Golden Age of Illustration. This early exposure influenced…
Albert Deak’s art invites exploration—it opens doors to unfamiliar spaces and layered ideas. Since earning his degree in ceramics from a respected university in Eastern Europe in 1989, Deak has followed an ever-expanding creative path. He began with clay, a material rooted in form and touch, then moved into painting, graphics, and digital work. With each transition, he’s deepened his focus on ideas rather than tools, using every medium as a way to engage with concepts that stretch beyond the visible and the known. Deak draws on the freedom of Pollock, the layered ambiguity of Richter, and the spiritual focus…
Alexandra Jicol follows a path shaped by depth and introspection. Born in Bucharest during a time of political limits and social tension, she spent her early years between the quiet of the mountains and the stark rhythm of city life. That contrast—between openness and structure—continues to echo through her work, where emotion, memory, and landscape merge in quiet dialogue. Her work is centered on emotional excavation. It’s not about decoration. It’s about peeling back the layers of experience. Each painting is a reflection of thought and feeling, caught in motion. Over time, Jicol has shaped a personal language built from…
Based in Athens, Vicky Tsalamata is known for her no-nonsense approach to art and meaning. A Professor Emeritus in Printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts, she works with mixed media, often using archival prints on 100% cotton Hahnemühle paper. But the material is just a surface. What she’s really after is a deeper look at who we are, how we behave, and what gets lost along the way. Her work doesn’t decorate. It questions. With sharp humor and unflinching tone, Tsalamata points back to Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine—and beyond that, to Dante—to show how little has changed in how…
Caroline Kampfraath works from a place of memory and emotional charge. Based in the Netherlands, she shapes sculptural forms out of found materials—metal cans, bottles, pieces of the human body—to give weight to fleeting thoughts and unspoken feelings. Her art holds the tension between presence and absence, what’s remembered and what slips away. Each piece feels like a quiet marker of time, rooted in her lived experience and tuned to the shifting rhythms of the world around her. Her materials may be ordinary, but in her hands, they speak. Her art doesn’t settle into a tidy category. It’s raw in places,…
Miguel Barros doesn’t paint just to fill a canvas. He paints to reflect something essential—how we live alongside the natural world, how we move through it, and how it moves through us. Born in Lisbon in 1962, Barros carries with him the layered perspectives of Portugal, Canada, and Angola. These three homes, spanning continents and histories, have shaped his view of art as a cross-cultural dialogue. In 2014, he moved from Angola to Calgary, Alberta, opening a new chapter of experimentation and introspection. Barros studied Architecture and Design at IADE in Lisbon, finishing in 1984, and you can still sense…
Ruth Poniarski came to painting through structure. She began her creative life in architecture, earning her degree from Pratt Institute in 1982. For ten years, she worked in construction, bringing blueprints to life in the physical world. But eventually, lines and measurements weren’t enough. In 1988, she turned to painting—not as a hobby, but as a more open-ended way to think and feel. Where architecture was grounded in rules, painting gave her freedom. She began to build in a new way: with symbols, stories, and inner vision. Her work brings together threads from mythology, literature, philosophy, and history. The result…
Sylvia Nagy moves easily between the technical and the intuitive. Her background in industrial ceramics is rooted in a strong foundation—she studied at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, where she earned her MFA in Silicet Industrial Technology and Art. That training set the tone for a practice that’s both structured and exploratory. Later, at Parsons School of Design in New York, she expanded her role as an artist and educator, even designing a course on plaster mold making. Whether she’s working in a studio or a classroom, Nagy brings an eye for form and a deep…