Author: Mary W

Originally from Košice, Slovakia, and now based in Switzerland, Libuša Němcová leads a life split between caregiving and creativity. Working abroad as a full-time home care aide, she manages long hours and emotional labor with grace—but it’s in the quiet in-between moments that her art comes to life. What started as simple sketches during childhood has slowly developed into a steady, self-taught art practice. Her story isn’t built on big breaks or fast success. It’s built on quiet persistence, curiosity, and a lifelong pull toward expression. In July 2024, Libuša presented her first public sales exhibition at the newly opened…

Jane Gottlieb has built her life around color. Raised and based in Los Angeles, she started out painting, but her path shifted over the years—first to photography, then to hand-painting directly on photographic prints. Over three decades ago, she began transforming Cibachrome prints with vivid pigments, layering photography with a painter’s intuition. It was messy, deliberate, and personal. Eventually, she brought her process into the digital age. She now scans her original works and reworks them in Photoshop, creating bold, high-energy prints on surfaces like aluminum, canvas, and paper. Her digital process doesn’t erase her past—it builds on it. Every…

Lidia Paladino works with intention. Based in Argentina, she’s known for engraving and drawing, but her earliest explorations were rooted in textiles. Working with fabric and thread taught her how to slow down. She learned to listen to the process—one that demanded repetition, texture, and time. That early attention to touch and surface stayed with her, even as she pivoted back to engraving. Returning to printmaking wasn’t just a matter of switching techniques. It was a deeper commitment—to craft, to image, to meaning. Over the years, her practice has grown into something grounded and patient. In 2003, she received Argentina’s…

Alan Brown’s creative life started in silence—specifically, in the hush of a darkroom. Watching images emerge from nothing under the red safety light wasn’t just a technical process; it was a shift in awareness. That slow unfolding of a photograph, its reliance on patience and precision, stayed with him. It taught him how to observe, how to wait, and how to let something take form over time. That early experience became a foundation. Brown studied Communications at Syracuse University, focusing on Advertising Photography and picking up a minor in Art History. The dual focus helped him develop not just a…

Derrick Bullard picked up a paintbrush as a teenager and didn’t put it down. Back then, he was navigating life with undiagnosed ADD and trying to find something that could hold his attention. School didn’t. Neither did most hobbies. But painting did. It was the one thing that asked nothing more than time, focus, and a willingness to show up. That was enough to keep him going. He didn’t follow a traditional path. No art degree. No critics pushing him forward. No gallery telling him what to do next. Bullard carved out his own route—quiet, steady, and deeply personal. More…

Deborah K. Tash, born in 1949 in the Bay Area, merges poetry and painting in a way that’s both personal and mythic. Her work draws from her mixed heritage—Mexican on her mother’s side, Celtic on her father’s—infusing her art with memory, ancestry, and spiritual presence. Identity for Tash isn’t static. It’s woven from place, bloodline, and imagination. The term Mestiza runs deep in how she sees and expresses the world—not as a label, but as a fluid way of belonging to multiple realms at once. She’s drawn to color and texture, yes, but also to story—especially the ones that live beneath the…

José Brito doesn’t paint for comfort. His work doesn’t aim to calm or blend in. Based in Portugal, Brito treats painting more like a confrontation than an escape. His materials are torn, layered, and stained—black ink, newspaper scraps, paint thick enough to hide something beneath. What he puts on canvas feels more like a record than a picture. These are surfaces that have been scraped, rewritten, pushed to their edge. You won’t find smooth finishes or quiet compositions here. Brito’s materials already come with stories—headlines, ads, bits of political debris. He doesn’t clean them up. He lets the rawness stay…

Oenone Hammersley’s work speaks from the ground up—through water, leaf, and sky. Her connection to the natural world is steady and instinctive. She’s not just inspired by rainforests, rivers, and wildlife—they’re central to how she sees and paints. Her art moves between the recognizable and the abstract, pulling in texture, light, and atmosphere to create something that feels both grounded and fluid. There’s no drama in her delivery, but a quiet insistence—an understanding that the natural world is both beautiful and endangered, and that we need to pay attention. This fall and winter, Hammersley will show her work at several…

Stuart Beck, born in 1967 in Lancashire, UK, found his way into painting through his father’s encouragement. Art was never something distant or lofty—it was part of everyday life. That early exposure shaped his path. Beck eventually moved toward abstraction, but always kept a connection to real places and real things. His work might not show literal landscapes or figures, but it reflects what he’s taken in: the surfaces of buildings, the wear of time, the way nature creeps in and out of the built world. His paintings are like quiet observations—things most of us walk past without noticing. There’s…

In a quiet corner of Germantown, Philadelphia, Oronde Kairi creates art that hums with life. His paintings are full of movement and feeling, grounded in the rhythms of the city and the culture that shaped him. His subjects often come from music, sports, and urban history, but the way he approaches them makes them feel personal—less like icons, more like familiar voices in the room. Kairi’s visual language is bold—bright color, strong lines, and expressive composition—but what makes his work land is its sense of place and memory. He captures the everyday and makes it vivid: a streetlight, a denim…