Author: Aria Sorell Vantine

Eliora Bousquet is a French-listed abstract painter and illustrator whose paintings sit right where emotion starts to widen into something hard to measure. Born in Angoulême, France, in 1970, she fully entered her artistic life in 2009. Rather than reading as “late,” that start feels intentional—like she waited for the moment when instinct could take the wheel without apology. Her work follows intuition more than blueprint. There’s a gentle, persistent sense of wonder in it, along with a clear attraction to the night sky: its stillness, its distance, its repeating rhythms. In Bousquet’s hands, nature and the cosmos aren’t separate…

Kathryn Trotter paints the way some people speak when they’re excited—fast, bright, and with zero interest in toning it down. Her canvases hit you first with color and surface. You can feel the paint in them before you start naming what you’re looking at. Animals show up like celebrities arriving to a party: centered, confident, and surrounded by an entire world of florals, pattern, and ornament that refuses to stay in the background. The work reads as joyful on first contact, but it doesn’t float on charm alone. If you give it a moment, you start to see how controlled…

When Oenone Hammersley settled in Palm Beach Gardens in 2024, Florida’s lush environment quickly began to show up in her studio. She brings a practice informed by theatre design, years of travel, and a deep commitment to the natural world. Internationally recognized for mixed-media paintings that combine saturated color with tactile surfaces and glowing light, Hammersley often circles back to water—its shine, its movement, and its fragility. Her work has been exhibited in Palm Beach, New York, London, Paris, Washington D.C., and Miami, and is held in both private and public collections. The tropical gardens around her have become a…

Paul “Gilby” Gilbertson approaches painting the way some people approach science: start with the materials, pay close attention, and keep testing until something clicks. In the early 1970s, he stumbled onto a watercolor method that would later become strongly linked to his work—dropping salt onto wet pigment to create textured, crystal-like patterns. It wasn’t a planned discovery, and it didn’t arrive with a neat explanation. It simply worked. The important part is that Gilbertson stayed with it. He kept exploring when salt produces the most interesting results, how it changes depending on timing and moisture, and how it can shift…

Pasquale J. Cuomo’s story starts the way a lot of real creative lives start: with a teenager and a camera, not fully aware of what he’d just picked up. He was born in the United States, and over more than fifty years behind the lens, photography didn’t stay a hobby or a phase—it became a steady through-line. Cuomo moved with the medium as it shifted from film to digital, learning the patience of darkroom time and the speed of modern capture, and letting both approaches shape the way he sees. What comes through in his work is a long relationship…

L. Scooter Morris makes artwork that behaves like a presence in the room. She calls herself a sensory illusionist, and that description fits: her practice lives in the gap between what you think you’re seeing and what your body registers before you have the words. Morris builds “Sculpted Paintings” that refuse to stay quiet on a wall. They push forward and pull back. They catch light, swallow it, and send it back at a new angle. Up close, you notice the physical work—acrylic layered with mixed media, edges that hold shadow, ridges that read like touch. Step back, and the…

Miguel Barros was born in Lisbon in 1962, and his art carries the imprint of a life lived across several worlds. Time spent between Portugal, Angola, and Canada has given him an expanded sense of what “place” can mean—how it shapes identity, how it lingers in the body, and how memory can travel even when a person does. He trained in Architecture and Design at IADE Lisbon, graduating in 1984, and that foundation still shows in the way he approaches painting: with a sensitivity to structure, pacing, proportion, and the way space can be organized without losing emotion. When he…

Nestled within the vibrant rhythm of Milwaukee, Janet Adventure Sather is reshaping how we understand abstract sculpture. Instead of clay, stone, or metal, she turns to something almost unbelievable—conductive light, fiber optics, and stranded sugar. This radiant and fragile material glows, bends, and breathes life into her two- and three-dimensional forms. Her sculptures don’t simply sit in space; they shimmer with an inner current, mirroring the emotional charge and unseen energy surrounding the people who inspire them. Through this unlikely medium, Sather captures the invisible layers of human experience—our moods, tensions, hopes, and hidden strength—translating them into shapes that feel…

Maria, who creates under the artistic name ZOCALO, is a Swiss-based artist originally from Russia, and her art feels like a quiet conversation with memory, feeling, and the unseen layers that shape who we are. Her work does not rush. It does not shout. Instead, it invites you to pause, breathe, and notice the delicate impressions left by time, experience, and the movement of human thought. Working primarily with mixed media and acrylic on white canvas, Maria builds her paintings slowly, allowing texture, depth, and subtle shifts of tone to speak as much as color or shape. Her inspiration is rooted…

There are artists who paint what they see, and then there are artists who paint what they feel. Rebecca Navajas belongs firmly in the second group. Her work isn’t about recreating life with precision. It is about translating emotion into color, gesture, and presence. Her paintings move with energy. They breathe. They remind you that strength can be tender, beauty can be vulnerable, and identity can be layered, complicated, and deeply human. Rebecca Navajas approaches portraiture not as documentation, but as conversation. She paints faces as if they are living landscapes. Every curve, shadow, and brushstroke holds story. The eye…