Our Artists

“Those that Reach” is the second piece in a painting series about soul searching. This piece is the catalyst of a spiritual journey— the moment of truly turning inwards and venturing within your own heart. Those that reach will always find that what they are searching for is reaching back.

I’m a South African and internationally trained Bench Jeweller and Jewellery Designer with extensive experience spanning European and American goldsmithing techniques. Recognised for expertise in 3D design (with awards including Best of Show at FVCC and selection for the prestigious SNAG juried exhibitions). Combined a unique mix of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design tools to create unique and sculptural pieces. Strong cultural awareness, bilingual skills (English and Afrikaans) and a global outlook gained via international experience.

As an abstract and surrealist digital photographer, I create hallucinatory dreamscapes and landscapes ~ a realm of intense colors, shapes, and textures that tell myriad stories that defy everyday logic. Using only original material, I work exclusively with my iPhone to discover what surprises that phone apps, layering, and blending present to me. To this end, I am inspired by my surroundings as I continue to ripen my visual style by weaving together technology and nature into digital collages of eccentric imagery.

My improvisations often result in painterly abstract images that give viewers a tactile visual experience that transcends the ordinary. The concept I’ve been exploring lately arises from a desire to play with surrealist storytelling in a collage setting. Often embracing a Lilliputian perception of the world, it allows me to explore the interactions between architecture and human beings, as they exist in the cinema of our dreams.

I will shoot and then combine people and places from as many unnatural angles and perspectives as I can, which adds to each story. I often include close ups of flowers in the mix, thereby continuing an earlier abstract phase of my photographic pursuits which began with the onset of Covid in 2020. I am then layering not only the images themselves, but also the actual stories each one tells. As such, I entice viewers to share my dreams, which are truly a continuing break from “reality” and an adventure to see the unseen.

At 73 years old, I have turned to photography as my primary means of creativity, after a long, rich life collaborating in film, music, and particularly the theater, as a sound designer in NYC, and I've carried the lessons of that arena into my photography. My tastes are stimulated by an eclectic spectrum of artists from every art form, era, and genre whose spirits never fail to encourage my creativity. I’m an Outsider and a Late Bloomer, and shaping and sharing these abstract and surreal photographs is my response to the chaos of modern life, offering both my viewers and I moments of sublime immersion and escape.

"Me Llamo Cruz" The Series depicts the struggle of AFAB Nonbinary and socialization of womanhood that the artist has faced. "Me Llamo Cruz" comments on the masculine norm that is the only acceptable gender expression for AFAB enby persons. Nonbinary's definition is a lack of gender, but society is gendered down to the smallest of things, all ingrained into everyday life and culture. This diptych attempts to comment on the needed phenomenon of deconstruction of gender roles; Both 'fem' and 'masc' sides of these paintings are still a nonbinary figure, albeit one more 'acceptable'. The contrast between 'fem' and 'masc/andro', and the need to break these concepts, is represented by the clothing choices and food symbolism, a key component of the Artist's works as a whole. The Alebrijes, or spirit guiding animals surrounding the figures, also represent this, while simultaneously also acknowledging that the Artist's entire life has led to this identity and frame of thought.

The Deity of Galactic Neutrois serves as a devotional figure to divine beauty, devoid of all binaries. Blasting off from an amalgamation of cultural and societal forms of gender expressions, the Deity draws from what it has learned on planet Earth but also incorporates otherworldly manifestations.

"MetroVerse" is a multiple exposure photo print, utilizing visual layering to embody the constant state of urban adaptation. The superimposed images fracture and re-form the cityscape, mirroring how we must constantly process, merge, and navigate conflicting moments and demands simply to survive.

The digital space was created to seek ideas and human connection. This connection has helped people grow and evolve. As the connections grew, so did we. As time passed, we’ve strayed further from the the positive growth and in all the chaos and noise from misinformation, AI slop, and hate, one message grows louder and louder. As the tech companies grow and AI infiltrates everyday life, our critical thinking and connection to ourselves shrinks. As AI does the thinking for us and our algorithm feeds us insecurities, we can hear only one message - CONFORM.

My main passion is the wearable art of jewelry and talismans. I primarily utilize stainless steel findings paired with natural gemstones and pearls. I also use leather, shell, varying metals, paint and more. I love to use wood as well as incorporate jewelry into a common canvas.

My practice is a research-based and transdisciplinary art practice. I make work through a visual and experiential practice, along with written research, often accompanying each piece. I'm always up for a challenge and love trying new things, so I enjoy a variety of media. I hope to expand my horizons even further by using my trans-disciplinary art practice to include media that aren’t often paired, incorporating my jack-of-all-trades attitude into the new pieces I create. I am interested in how stories are told and art is made in a post-internet age. I am also interested in how bodies are portrayed, seen, and viewed in this time period.

Eros is an illustration, comics, and printmedia artist with an education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their illustration work is rooted in surreal anatomy and personal relationship to the body through a transgender lens, as well as surreal expression of love for the self and queer intimacy.

My art is first and foremost an expression of my mind and not only that but my identity as well. I focus a lot on personal journeys and how much and how far I have come from where I may have been 10-15 years ago. A lot of my work deals with my mental health journey and how borderline personality disorder is not only based on impulsivities but the ups and downs of life. Which I have learned to deal with by expressing through my art that not everything is black and white and we live in reality within the grey areas of life where certain ideas and aspects of the world can and will always find a way to live within the same plane as one another. I find that my art expresses how the different people of different backgrounds can coexist and how we should not be scared or afraid of what is to come of ourselves. I find myself even learning from past projects about the ideas behind each piece and the experiences that led to each one. Like everything in life; everyday is a new experience and my art showcases that by challenging myself to create new ideas and test the limits within myself and getting out of my comfort zone to create something entirely new and even improved.

Painting is how I process and communicate the world. My work is my voice for the feelings and emotions I struggle to speak and find words for. The intense emotions of motherhood - love, sleepless nights, connection. The intense emotions of depression and loneliness. The intense emotions of simply living - finding joy, spirituality, friendship. When words fail me, colors and shapes become my voice. That voice is my work. It is my hope that my voice resonates with you.

These two video works use satirical commercial formats to examine how artists adapt to
the shifting social, institutional, and psychological landscapes of Miami’s art world.
Through parody, magical realism, and heavily stylized advertising language, the pieces
expose systems of visibility, cultural gatekeeping, performative inclusion, and the
nightlife-infused environments that shape artistic production.
By adopting the aesthetics of skincare ads and law-firm commercials, the works reveal
how artists evolve identities, strategies, and survival mechanisms within a scene
defined equally by ambition, glamour, critique, and chaos. Humor becomes a lens to
explore transformation, resilience, and the unspoken pressures embedded in Miami’s
cultural ecosystem.

We’ve all said something to this effect before: “I don’t ______ anymore, except ______”. An
inherent contradiction, where we try to occupy the space between truth and lie (if you’re crafty
and try hard enough, the binary is not so simple. This piece exists in that grey area. We are
always trying to kick our bad habits, but there are always exceptions. And why not? You only
live once.

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I view the process of drawing and painting as an enchanted retreat—an opening into meditation
and self-discovery. My practice blends watercolor with pen & ink or pencil, a combination that
allows for both precision and detail while also embracing looseness and spontaneity. Creating,
for me, is about balance—between order and freedom, control and release.
Through my work, I hope to offer viewers a magical space to pause, breathe, and smile. I have
been influenced by the luminous, haunting illustrations of Kay Nielsen, the dreamlike elegance
of Itzchak Tarkay, and the ornamental richness of Gustav Klimt, whose use of pattern, gold, and
symbolic detail inspires my own pursuit of “visual poetry” through line, silhouette, and color.
My work can best be described as modernized folk art—pattern-rich, sometimes layered with
watercolor washes, and animated by subtle shifts in light and texture. I often incorporate
shimmering paints that catch the light, producing a dreamlike glow. Rooted in my love of
folklore, mythology, nature, and the mysterious wonder woven throughout it, my art is an
invitation to step into a world both whimsical and reflective.

I am a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with pen and ink, colored pencil, paint, charcoal and even lipstick on canvas. My practice moves instinctually across media, allowing to be both tool and witness to my muse. Through boundary-pushing experimentation, I explore the fragmented terrain of the self and the shadowed interior of womanhood immersed with imagery resembling that of demonology and gnostic mysticism. My work emerges from the dark crevasses of my own mind where trauma and healing intertwine. As a survivor of domestic violence and addiction, I treat my work as both confession and invocation— unearthing what has been internally buried. My portfolio refuses resolution, forever changing; lingering in the liminal, where suffering becomes seduction and pain is transmuted into strength. I create to remain in constant dialogue with myself, communicating what haunts, protects, and transforms me. In this way, my work functions as a ritual; an offering and act of defiance in a culture of silence. I assert myself as a visionary who honors vulnerability as a source of not only resilience, but power.

The fragility of humans is a concept I love to decontextualize from innocent intentions, to violent impulses. Taking these psychological spectrums, I tear into the human psyche at its most primal form because at our core we are still animals.

This body of work focuses on my relationship with my body as a
transgender man, as well as my body’s history- it is an autobiography of
sorts. Throughout my youth, I often felt out of place amongst other girls.
My teen years were marked by struggles with depression, anxiety, and
gender dysphoria. Though I changed my name to something more
androgynous at fifteen, it took another four years for me to realize my true
identity. On the day before my nineteenth birthday, I came out to my
family. A month later, I started hormone replacement therapy.
Gender transition is physically and mentally demanding. Over the
past three years, I’ve injected myself with testosterone while being afraid of
needles; applied, reapplied, and removed tape from my chest; gotten top
surgery; and more. Even looking at your body early in transition can be a
struggle- it doesn’t align with what you know it should, which is distressing.
It took a long time and a lot of work for me to feel comfortable doing
self-portraits, let alone nudes. Though difficult, I believe that getting to
partake in your own creation is a truly beautiful thing.
This country is not kind to trans people, and it’s often scary. One of
my goals with these paintings is to give a glimpse of the person behind the
identity. I understand that a lot of people don’t know what a trans person
looks like, or even what “transgender” truly means. Though every transition
is wildly different, I hope that this body of work can help people understand
and perhaps feel some sympathy for the difficulty of the journey, one that is
made no easier by the ever record-breaking numbers of anti-trans
legislation being proposed.

My art practice allows me to take shelter from the world and sort
through difficult and confusing emotions. My paintings start messy and
loose, with splattered acrylics and inks for a background. These
backgrounds are the primary expression of the emotions related to the
imagery, and are truly cathartic to create. I almost always use bright and
intensely contrasting colors in my work. My usage of colors is often
backwards from their typical “meanings”, with warmer colors usually
representing pain or distress, while cooler tones imply a certain calmness or
happiness. Figures are left intentionally translucent to convey a passage of
time, as well as the ever-changing nature of the body.
I hope this autobiography brings you a deeper understanding of what
it means to be transgender, perhaps even what it feels like. Trans people
truly need your support more than ever at this moment in history.

I create faith-inspired abstract digital artworks rooted in movement, color, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As a street artist and urban botanist from the south I am inspired by the cracks in brick walls but also the life that emerges from those cracks. I want to make art that feels like that.