Author: Seraphina Calder

José Brito doesn’t paint to match a sofa or flatter a living room. He paints to wrestle with the world. Born and based in Portugal, Brito’s work is raw, loud, and uncompromising. He trades polish for grit—layering thick black ink, torn newspaper, rough textures, and fragmented text into pieces that feel like living documents. His materials come with history embedded in them—headlines, photographs, ads, propaganda—and he doesn’t try to clean them up. Instead, he lets the mess speak. Brito’s work grabs you. You don’t drift through one of his exhibitions; you stop, stare, get pulled in. His paintings are full…

Oenone Hammersley is an artist with her feet in the earth and her eyes on the living world. Her work is built around a deep connection to nature—rainforests, wildlife, rivers, and skies. Known for her vivid paintings that blend realism with abstraction, Hammersley doesn’t just paint what she sees—she paints what she feels about the planet. Her art explores the tension between beauty and fragility, using layers of color and texture to express environmental urgency without being heavy-handed. Hammersley’s paintings carry a quiet reverence, a kind of visual prayer for the wild spaces still untouched. She reminds us of what…

Stuart Beck was born in 1967 in Lancashire, United Kingdom. His first lessons in painting came from his father, who introduced him to the basics and nurtured a quiet creative habit that stuck. Over time, Beck developed a visual language of his own—rooted in abstract painting but deeply connected to what he calls “the real world.” His work pulls from the things he’s seen in nature, architecture, and culture—across travels, memories, and daily moments. There’s an observational quality in what he does, even though the forms are abstract. What stands out in Beck’s practice is not just technique, but what…

Oronde Kairi works out of Germantown, Philadelphia, where the walls of his studio pulse with color, sound, and story. His art doesn’t sit quietly. It sings, moves, and remembers. Through bold lines and vibrant palettes, Kairi paints the texture of Black life in America—urban scenes, icons, music, everyday moments turned monumental. What makes Kairi’s work feel alive is how deeply it’s rooted in rhythm. Not just visual rhythm, but cultural rhythm—the kind you hear in soul records, see on street corners, and feel in childhood memories. He leans into the beauty of daily life and gives it gravity. Whether it’s…

Carolin Rechberg approaches art the way a traveler approaches new terrain—curious, open, and alert to every shift in light, sound, and surface. Born in Starnberg, Germany, she’s drawn to movement—not just physical, but creative. Her work stretches across painting, sculpture, ceramics, performance, poetry, photography, sound, textiles, and installation. It’s not an inventory of skills. It’s a way of staying in motion. What matters to Rechberg isn’t the finished object—it’s what happens in the making. She treats process like language, where gestures, materials, and sensations speak more clearly than explanation ever could. She works with her whole body. She listens with…

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…