My name is Joseph Bui. I am a portrait photographer and artist based in Houston, Texas identifying as Vietnamese-American and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. I recently graduated in May 2022 from Colby College in Maine with a B.A in Studio Art: Photography.

I am a Canadian artist and always have had a passion to paint and draw. I was born and raised in Toronto and my parents immigrated here from Italy. When my guidance teacher was trying to find where I should go to high school, he looked at my grades and saw my highest were in art, so off I went and entered the art program at Central Tech in Toronto. This was the start of my formal art training and I was lucky to be starting it so early. I was drawing from a live model in grade nine and was taking many other art classes. I then went on to study at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and also received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph.

I am an artist specialising in conceptual imagery and self-portraiture through fine art photography. While earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2013 with a focus on creative writing and literature, I acquired a love for stories, which I later nurtured and focused into my distinctive artistic imagination. Originally from Hungary, I grew up in Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand before settling in Herefordshire in the United Kingdom with my husband and two children.

I am a Canadian artist with a passion for figurative art. I first knew I would become an artist at a very young age, being severely dyslexic. I drew what I could not put into words. I dabbled a bit with painting and that came so easily to me, I knew that this was what I was meant to do. However, coming from a traditional middle-class family a career path as an artist was not an option for me. So I channelled my love of drawing into studying technical Illustration at Sheridan College in Ontario which led me to a career in advertising. However, I felt that I was always pushing down my desire to paint. Finally, I decided to listen to my heart and pick up a brush and start painting. 

My name is Anna Mihailidou and I was born in 1975 in Athens, Greece. My painting journey began at an early age more as a refuge due to difficult years in my life. During the course of my life, it became an internal necessity, something that continues to this day. The life of an artist is not easy especially when you have to survive. So, because my need for painting was irrevocable but I couldn't survive just on my artwork I had to take other jobs to support myself financially.

I developed a burning curiosity for drawing and started engaging myself with painting comics and images of interest to me at the time and through exploring various mediums, I developed my practice over time. I did not initially set out to be an artist, only after earning my BSC in Plant Biology from the University of Benin did I come to the realisation that art was my true passion as I set out to pursue my art career in 2018.

I am a painter living and working in a small Midwest (USA) university town with my husband, two children (18 and 20), and pets. I earned a BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from Indiana University in 1997. I have pursued museum work as a day job but have never stopped painting. Once my children were older, I recommitted to my painting career, adopting a daily studio practice.

My advice is “don’t tell your big dreams to small-minded people.” If you suffer from low self-esteem as I do, negative comments can be the death knell of your art project. I only listen to criticism that is constructive (i.e. helps me problem solve or challenges me to improve) and I only share my artistic ideas with people who I know are open-minded.

I am a full-time professional artist, living and working in a small coastal town in England. Since a child, I have always drawn and painted and although they recognised talent at my school it was not considered the 'normal' thing to go on to university.

“What inspired you”, again, is the the crux of my artistic struggle and I’m still sorting through it! I do recall the first ‘sculptural’ thing I ever made. It was in Mrs. Pets’ 7th grade art class. We were experimenting with papier mâché. I was nudged to make something highly specific: a seed-like form, painted red on the outside, like an apple but more like a pomegranate seed, and inside was to be a long stairway leading to a special city with lots of tall, silver skyscrapers. I was inspired to call it, “The Apple Island”, and it stood in our school’s foyer display cabinet next to popsicle stick houses and painted rock paper weights for the rest of the year as an object of curiosity.

My name is Gabriella Wyke and I am a 26-year-old freelance photographer and the owner of recently established, Gifts from Gab Studios Limited- an art-based company that provides various creative solutions such as photography, videography, graphic design and much more.

Music takes a very important part in my career as an artist. I love listening to many beautiful songs and symphonies, and I find it amusing to title my artwork after these compositions. I used to play the guitar before, but I ceased any music-making in favour of creating fine art.

My name is Stephanie Garner and I am an Australian contemporary visual artist based in Victoria. I received my BCA Honours in 2016 from Deakin University and later completed my Masters of Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne in 2020. My practice explores themes of environmentalism, femininity and mysticism in the varied mediums of painting, photography, drawing and collage.

I am a Mexican artist and Art Therapist. My career as an Art Therapist proved to me that by engaging in the expressive arts I could safely explore memories, alleviate distress and be mindful. Art has always been part of my life since I was a child, it is a safe and soothing space that gives me an opportunity to constantly reflect upon my emotional experiences.

I’ve been a creative person my whole life and my career has seen many iterations of that creativity. I started training as an architect before moving to art school and studying graphics. In my career, I’ve been a copywriter, graphic designer, storyboard artist, illustrator and illustration lecturer. But through it all, I was always drawing and painting. When this love of the human form collided with my fascination for the artists and craftsmen from the stone age I  started on my current path – to express primaeval human experience through the majesty of rock! 

Years ago (late 1980’s I think), my old roommate came home with this enormous book on John Singer Sargent. I was mesmerized by how Sargent could convey so much information with such few marks on the canvas. That week I put together my first large canvas, picked up some oil paints and a “How to Paint in Oils” book and painted my first Sargent inspired painting for my living room.

It took me almost three decades to begin my life as an artist. The threads were there all along, from my artist grandmother permitting me, a toddler, to splash around messy paints in her basement, to being told during my yearly graphic design scholarship review that I should consider a career as a fine artist. I did almost anything to subconsciously avoid the inevitable truth that I was an artist.

I think one of the main things I have learnt so far as an artist is to ultimately create dialogue, not only between the audience and myself but also between the audience themselves. For example, the crumpled landscape composition invites interpretation and aims to create discomfort and hopefully, insight. This insight could lead to a shift in perspective and then, behaviour.