Author: Aria Sorell Vantine
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…
Blake Weston was born in Newport, Wales, and has been circling around art for most of his life. He studied Fine Art in Gloucestershire before moving on to Cardiff University, where he began with Time-Based Art under the conceptual wing of Andre Stitt. Eventually, he found himself pulled back toward painting in his final year. That shift—away from process-heavy art toward something more tactile—has defined his work ever since. Blake is currently preparing to pursue an MA in Fine Art. He sees painting not as a craft to perfect, but as a space for exploration. He wants his work to…
John Gardner doesn’t just carve features into bronze—he draws out character. His approach to sculpture is less about documentation and more about translation: of warmth, of spirit, of small moments that outlive history books. Based in South Africa, Gardner works with speed and instinct, shaping clay not to chase likeness, but to reveal essence. He believes a great sculpture isn’t finished when it looks right—it’s finished when it feels familiar, when someone sees it and recognizes not just the face, but the person behind it. His work spans tributes to legendary figures as well as introspective forms, and in every…
Camille Ross was born in San Francisco in 1964 and raised in two sharply different worlds—radical Berkeley and rural Mississippi. That contrast—liberal and conservative, urban and rural—runs through her photography. She is part Cherokee, with biracial grandparents. Her work is shaped by that layered background and the way race, identity, and class move through American life. A civil liberties activist as well as a photographer, Ross brings a sense of lived history and cultural questioning into everything she does. Her photos aren’t just images. They ask: who is being seen, who is looking, and what power sits in the gaze?…