When I started photographing seriously, I was drawn to situations where people were in their own workspaces. These were places where people felt most at home, most themselves. They did not need “to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” I tried to stand and watch a little before photographing to convey my appreciation for the worker’s skill and engagement. A man’s work is his life and should be respected. 

As it turns out, there is less competition for big goals. Even in academic spaces, artist's are rarely told they can make a living, neither are we taught how to go about that. But the reality is, there is more opportunities than your art teachers say. Too many people don't believe their art holds value, so not many people commit to pursuing this career path. My advice is to treat your art like a business, even if your ultimate goal isn't financial. There are people who will value your work. The trick is to plow through the naysayers until you find those people who need to hear what you have to say.

“I would say incorporating a mindfulness element to your practise. Doing things like acknowledging when your work makes you anxious and becoming comfortable with that space. Knowing that I am going to feel uncomfortable many times during an artwork and viewing each of those moments as practise and growth has helped me build a healthy feedback loop to some big barriers I used to struggle with.”

Painting realistic still life has taught me to pay closer attention to the things we encounter on a regular basis—often without contemplating their details and intricacies. One of my goals as a painter is to get my audience to slow down and appreciate the everyday in a new light, to take in the nuances and details they may never have noticed or considered before. When painting food and drink, at my most aspirational, I hope to induce a sense of synesthesia in the viewer, triggering the experiences of taste and texture through the eyes.

“If you're working with collage, think about the longevity of your artwork. What can you do to preserve that piece for the longer. And if you are now facing any kind of pain but are afraid of investigating the causes of it, just trust, let go, and be open. The answers will come.”

“The most important lesson I’ve learned so far is to trust my creative intuition. It’s easy to be distracted by the plethora of images, information, and opinions on social media. When I was working in fashion, it was vital to keep in-step with current trends and to create for the consumer. This engendered a ‘hamster-wheel’ mentality with all meaning sucked out of the creative process. With hindsight, I think that’s why I moved away from fashion towards becoming an artist. I came to the realisation that my best work happened when I ignored the ‘noise’ and worked at my own pace concentrating on expressing the flow of ideas inside my head. I make work that tells the stories I want to tell. If other people like and understand it, that’s great, but if they don’t, that’s fine too.”

“You have to show up to make the work. Physically, mentally and emotionally. The most important part of any artistic practice is discipline, whether it comes naturally or you have to work at it. I keep regular hours in the studio and work almost every day. It’s important to take breaks and take care of yourself and recharge, but I try to work as much as possible. We only have so much time in our lives and we’re blessed as artists with this gift, don’t take it for granted.”

The main advice that I have is not to give up. Keep making art and keep applying to shows. When I started applying to shows after grad school, I would get into one out of ten shows. These days my ratio is significantly better, but I still get more rejections than acceptances. I think that the biggest challenge for any artist is to keep producing art and continue putting yourself out into the world despite the rejections.

My advice for artists wanting to have a solo show is to get a body of work together, show this to people (in person or on the internet), enter competitions, and then follow opportunities that arise. I found doing formal photography study at university, where you are trained to put together a series and exhibit, was an essential step for me towards having quality work ready for a solo show. You can also make your own opportunities by applying for shows at galleries.

I am primarily a self-taught sculpture artist with the exception of a few workshops. I have been sculpting since early childhood. Growing up, my mother brought me to her art studio because she could not afford to hire a babysitter, so I guess my mother was my first art teacher. In her studio, I had my own art supplies, and this kept me busy while she worked on her own work. I have a cherished photo of me sculpting in the garden with my mother when I was 2.5.

During Covid, but not inspired by the pandemic, I had begun to work with vintage gay pornographic calendars. For a few months I experimented with different cutouts and how I could use the materials as a way to visualize my feelings about the years I spent in the closet. I was excited by the work I was making but something was lacking. I had a Eureka moment one night when I was boxing up my work and I happened to place the background of one image I had cut out on top of another month’s image and I had this really neat overlay that caught my eye.

Returning to the familiar language of drawing in 2016, I find myself grappling to navigate the paradox of having an environmental agenda and art practice dependent on materials while living within socio-political systems that cause irreversible damage to the planet. My drawings are pictorial representations of seeing, sensing, and thinking created to document internal and external landscapes, driven by the desire to understand the current ecological crisis, the scale and complexity of which remain hard to comprehend.

Making art was the only thing I wanted to do for as long as I can remember. Growing up, this passion was encouraged, but less so as I approached adulthood. I was accepted into the College of Fine Arts at the university of my choice, but before I could even set foot on campus, my parents got cold feet and insisted that I change course. As an 18-year-old kid whose parents were still writing the checks, I went along with their plan to study occupational therapy (OT) instead of art, not fully appreciating what impact this decision would have on my life years down the road.

Home life was toxic and for escape, I turned to music, horses and drawing. I married my high school boyfriend and raised two children in Boulder, CO, before finally realizing that I needed to make some major changes in my life. By chance, I signed up for a stone carving workshop and was instantly hooked.

My name is Tochukwu Darlington Obiakonwa and 2chuxs is my nickname, a coinage from my first name Tochukwu which I sign on my finished drawings. I am a self-taught artist from Nigeria and sometimes I think that I have always been an artist even in my mother’s womb. I studied banking and finance at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Abia state Nigeria. Growing up on the streets of Orile, a lower-class suburb in Lagos Nigeria was a pure mix of fun and discipline. My immediate environment contributed immensely to my life as an artist. My playmates, siblings and childhood friends all played a role both consciously and subconsciously.

Since art school, I started to participate in shows. I studied Theology and later Art Management and Curatorship. Today I hold two Masters of Arts and the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management a nomadic study program in Greece, Portugal and Luxembourg. I spent the summer semester in Sweden and received an Erasmus grant to study art in Italy. In 2013 I graduated from Printmakers Department at the Art Academy of Latvia. And for 5 years I am a freelancing artist, teaching visual arts and I am a member of the Latvian Union of Artists.

My name is Ryan Gondarowski and I am an America-based fine artist. I was first introduced to art by my grandmother at the age of 12, who taught me to work from life. My passion eventually led me to study at the Academy of Realist Art in Boston with a one-year scholarship at age 17. Since graduating in 2022, I have continued the study of academic art to this day.

I started to feel that I was lacking truly creative design opportunities and increasingly I found myself designing furniture, often using industrial and bold materials. I quickly realized that I needed help fabricating properly, and felt a study in sculpture should be helpful, which I pursued in Belgium where we were living at the time. However, while learning to work with varied materials I was introduced to figurative sculpture, and it totally moved me. I immediately shifted my focus to sculpting figuratively and portraying the human condition.

My name is Asha, I am a graphite and charcoal artist. From a young age, around the age of 5, I began drawing people which included full-figured people in different positions whether it be standing, sitting or kneeling and I’ve always had an interest in clothing. My background includes a corporate career in fashion design during which I designed sleepwear. Alongside that, I also did commission portraiture. I went to school for fashion design from 2011 to 2015 and received a Bachelor's degree in Fashion Design. And also an Associate's degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology.