Author: Mary W
Miguel Barros creates art that invites us to reflect on our bond with the natural world. Born in Lisbon in 1962, he carries with him the cultural threads of Portugal, Canada, and Angola—three places that continue to shape his vision. When he relocated from Angola to Calgary in 2014, he opened new doors for his creative work, adding fresh landscapes and experiences to his palette. His education in Architecture and Design at IADE Lisbon (1984) gave him a grounding in structure, yet his painting slips free of rigid frameworks. His art balances form with fluidity, order with spontaneity. For Barros,…
Iris van Zanten (1971) has long pursued the core of image-making. After completing her studies at the Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam in 1996, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in Art History at the Vrije Universiteit. Her training gave her both practical skill and an acute awareness of the weight of art history. That dual foundation fuels her practice. Her work is about paring things down—seeking the gesture or texture that makes a story resonate. She often draws from sources that have been painted, carved, and retold for centuries—mythology, Biblical scenes, archetypal stories—and she looks for…
Lidia Paladino is an Argentine artist known for engraving and drawing, with a particular focus on textile drawing. Her path in art began with a deep immersion in textiles, where she explored how fabric can hold memory, rhythm, and design. Later, she decided to return to engraving, refreshing her techniques and building on her earlier practice. This decision set her on a long and fulfilling journey that has led to recognition, including the First Municipal Prize for Engraving in 2003. Her work moves between two worlds: the permanence of engraved line and the delicacy of hand-painted silk. This duality defines…
L. Scooter Morris calls herself a sensory illusionist, and the phrase fits. Her art doesn’t aim to record what the eye plainly sees but rather what the body senses in passing—the fleeting spark between perception and memory. She turns brief encounters into paintings that feel both immediate and enduring, charged with more than surface detail. At the center of her practice is what she terms “Sculpted Paintings.” These works resist flatness. Layer upon layer of color, texture, and light push forward, as though the canvas itself wants to break free of its frame. Acrylics and mixed media become her tools…
Nancy Staub Laughlin is an American pastel artist and photographer who works at the edge where two mediums meet—the sharp lens of the camera and the softness of pastel. She earned her BFA at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and has shown her work across museums and galleries on the east coast. Her art has been featured in articles, interviews, and sits in both private and corporate collections. The late Sam Hunter, art historian and critic, once described her vision as “refreshingly unique,” a phrase that captures her practice well. Laughlin turns images of the natural world—flowers, skies, horizons—into…
Some painters give us images that charm the eye. Others leave behind experiences that echo, reshaping how we think and remember. Kimberly McGuiness works in the second way. Her art does not simply hang on a wall—it engages, challenges, and speaks. Each piece unfolds as a living story, threaded with archetypes, symbols, and voices that reach beyond the canvas. For McGuiness, art is more than craft. It is both reflection and guide. She draws on myth, memory, and the subconscious, shaping them into narratives that feel both ancient and intimate. Her imagery opens doorways into imagination and feeling, asking viewers…
Ruth Poniarski did not step into art through the studio but through the drafting table. She earned her degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in 1982 and spent the next decade immersed in construction—absorbing the rigor of plans, measurements, and precision. Yet those same years sharpened a quiet pull toward another path. By 1988, she shifted to painting, trading linear certainty for a medium where intuition and symbolism could take the lead. Her paintings carry echoes of that architectural training, but instead of steel and stone, she constructs with myth, philosophy, and dream imagery. Each canvas is a space of…
BYDORAPAL is a painter whose work functions as narrative, a way to translate emotions that resist language into images that speak. The influence of classical fashion is present, but what defines her approach is the ability to move beyond surface beauty into something inward. An oil painting, in her view, is not just pigment arranged on canvas—it becomes a vessel for memory, balance, and contemplation. Every mark, from a delicate glaze to a confident stroke, carries meaning. Her canvases radiate calm, yet they also stir something deeper, suggesting fragments of dreams and layered feelings. International recognition has followed, with her…
Michel Marant, born on August 4, 1945, in Saint-Junien, France, has built a body of work deeply tied to the land and to everyday rhythms. He studied at the National School of Decorative Arts in Limoges and is registered with the Maison des Artistes. Over time, his art has moved into a personal form of contemporary art nouveau, where pencil, acrylic, oil, and collage meet across canvas, paper, and cardboard. His reach is international—he is a member of “Academy Atlanta” in the United States, cited in market indexes such as AKOUN and ART PRICE, and certified with an I-CAC rating.…
David R.L. is a 29-year-old autistic artist, poet, and musician from Marshalltown, Iowa. For more than half his life—17 years—he has been immersed in the fine arts. His creative path has been marked by persistence and curiosity, always circling back to the need to express, to connect, to survive. He began at seven, sketching ancient Egyptian relics and simple still lifes, unaware that those first drawings would grow into a practice that now spans painting, poetry, and music. For him, creativity is not decoration or pastime—it is language. Sometimes it takes the shape of a line or a brushstroke, other…