Author: Seraphina Calder

Helena Kotnik approaches painting like a quiet excavation. With degrees in Fine Arts from Barcelona University and the Akademie der bildende Künste in Vienna, and a Master’s that sharpened her conceptual eye, she works from the inside out—digging into culture, psychology, and form. Her work straddles the border between reflection and critique. She doesn’t decorate; she investigates. Drawing from recognizable sources—classic paintings, social roles, personal moments—she reconfigures them, less as references than as tools for inquiry. Take Friends (2025), a piece loosely anchored to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Kotnik doesn’t copy or parody the original. Instead, she pulls it apart…

William Schaaf has never treated art as decoration. For him, it’s a process—of making, remembering, and healing. Now 80, he’s still in his studio, still forming horses from bronze, canvas, and clay with the same intent that’s guided him for over sixty years. Horses are his subject, yes, but they’re also a kind of language. They carry memory, power, and spirit. Schaaf’s relationship with the equine form is personal and spiritual, shaped by a long-standing respect for Zuni and Navajo fetish traditions. His work reaches back into those practices not to replicate them, but to honor their deeper purposes: healing,…

Clint Anthony’s art begins where words leave off. Rooted in emotional honesty, his work uses color and texture as direct conduits to feeling—whether it’s joy, longing, or the deeper contradictions of being alive. Though he now lives in Australia, much of Clint’s creative DNA was formed during his two-decade stay in New York City. From 1996 to 2017, he immersed himself in the city’s vibrant cultural life, studying at The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and developing his visual language at The Art Studio NYC. He also played an active role in the art scene, curating shows at The Gershwin Hotel.…

Adamo Macri was born in Montreal in 1964 and studied a wide mix of disciplines at Dawson College—commercial art, photography, graphic design, art history, and fine arts. It shows. His work never sits comfortably in one category. Though he’s often grouped with sculptors, that only scratches the surface. He works in multiple mediums—photography, drawing, video, painting—and tends to blur the lines between them. His approach is idea-first. What holds it all together is his fixation on meaning: how a single word or image can carry history, slang, and myth, all at once. Macri’s photographs are tightly composed, often with a…

Born in 1964 in San Francisco, Camille Ross grew up split between two very different Americas: Berkeley during its politically charged heyday and the quiet backroads of rural Mississippi. That contrast—activism and conservatism, city grit and country silence—runs through her life and her photography. With biracial roots and Cherokee ancestry, Camille has always seen the world from a layered perspective. These intersections show up in her work—not as statements, but as quiet revelations. Over the years, she’s moved between roles: civil rights activist, educator, and documentary photographer. But the common thread has been observation. She’s not just snapping photos. She’s…

Leslie Lambert doesn’t paint from a distance. She paints from the inside—boots on the ground, dust in the air, and heart tuned to the rhythm of Western life. Her work isn’t just about wide open spaces or cowboys on horseback—it’s about moments. Real ones. The ones that matter when you live close to the land. Based in the American West, Lambert has built a career on watercolor, particularly the poured technique—a fluid, unpredictable process that reflects the environment she’s immersed in. She’s not just capturing the West. She’s part of it. A signature member of the Cowgirl Artists of America…

Mandy West didn’t come into art with a formal education or years of gallery-hopping behind her. She started painting seriously in 2022, and that fresh, unpolished approach is part of what gives her work its pulse. She calls herself a mixed media artist, but that doesn’t fully capture what she does. Mandy is more of a creative wanderer—testing materials, combining techniques, and leaning into whatever draws her in that day. One moment she’s working with wax, the next she’s layering plaster into peaks, or scratching lines into wood grain. She’s not trying to perfect an image. She’s trying to stir…

José Brito Santos doesn’t paint for the sake of beauty. He paints to grapple with the noise of the world. His art doesn’t sit quietly in the background; it stands right in front of you, daring you to look away. Based in Portugal, Brito uses thick black ink, glued newspaper clippings, and rough textures to tell stories that aren’t simple or clean. His canvases feel like living, breathing battlegrounds—crowded, loud, and deeply human. His materials come with their own baggage: pages that once carried news, words that once held meaning, now stripped and reassembled. Brito’s paintings are not just images;…

Beth Vendryes Williams grew up surrounded by noise, life, and the endless motion of six younger siblings in a bustling home on Long Island’s North Shore. In that swirl of chaos, art became her quiet place. When the house got too loud, she escaped into books, the woods, or her sketchpad. Drawing and painting became more than hobbies — they were ways to slow down and listen to her own voice. Over time, her creative practice deepened. She began to wonder why the urge to create was so persistent. Art, for Beth, turned into a form of reflection. Through it,…

ArtDodson jewelryPortrait of Jack Whitten with Pink psyche queen (1973), Ca. 1975 © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy The Estate and Hauser & Wirth.Jack Whitten. Siberian salt chopper . 1974. Photo by John Wronn. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.You can almost feel a Swoosh of Air as Cascada paint through the canvas in Jack Whitten First move (1974). In this abstract painting, Whitten’s eternal experimentation, something that was critical of his artistic practice, comes to life in a blow. The gentle smell, a photographic blur made with paint,…