2. Vesna Bursich

Vesna Bursich was born in Turin in 1974.

From a very young age, she consistently devoted a large portion of her time to drawingand painting, creating an intimate and almost secret relationship with her works and trying to seek in shapes and colours the expressiveness that words failed to match. Her interest and her need to observe grew stronger toward any kind of visual art, from15th-century classical painting to contemporary art.
After completing her Restoration Studies, in 1998 she graduated in Painting at the Accademia Albertina in Turin. Attracted by different descriptive forms, she can skillfully face oil painting on canvas as well as digital processing or other experimental forms making her work a multifaceted experience.
Her research is directed towards the representation of those emotional states affecting also her life course.
Although her works are not always immediately understandable, they will make your eyes lingering to observe, moving a memory deep in your heart, a memory that could be a question or an answer, a suggestion or a blame. A meeting or a confrontation, direct, fearless and honest.

6. Tjalf Sparnaay

Tjalf Sparnaay is a Netherlands-born, London-based artist whose oil paintings are ridiculously hyper-realistic. When I first saw these images I assumed they were photographs. Sparnaay is an expert at taking everyday, throwaway items such as discarded Cola cans and a bag of chips, removing the items from their environment, and turning them into textured works of art, no shadow, wrinkle or crevice overlooked. Sparnaay calls his style “Mega-Realism.”

More about the artist HERE.

8. Kevin Peterson

Kevin Peterson studied art at Austin College in Sherman, TX where he received his BFA in 2001. Kevin now makes his home in Houston, TX where he works out of Winter Street Studios

Artist Statement:
My work is about the varied journeys we take through life. It’s about growing up and living in a world that is broken. These paintings are about trauma, fear and loneliness and the strength that it takes to survive and thrive. They each contain the contrast of the untainted, young and innocent against a backdrop of a worn, ragged, and defiled world. Support versus restraint, bondage versus freedom, and tension versus slack are all themes that I often visit. My work deals with isolation, loneliness and longing teamed with a level of optimistic hope. Issues of race and the division of wealth have arisen in my recent work. This work deals with the idea of rigid boundaries, the hopeful breakdown of such restrictions, as well as questions about the forces that orchestrate our behavior.

See more work by Kevin Peterson HERE

6. Terry Rodgers

Terry Rodgers is an internationally recognized artist who has worked and lived in Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and Ohio. Elizabeth

His work was represented in five museum group exhibitions in Europe during 2007 as well as in Art Basel. And in 2005, three of his monumental figurative canvases were presented at the Valencia Biennial.

Abroad he has had solo exhibitions in galleries in Zurich, Amsterdam and Milan, and participated in group shows around the world. In the United States, he has had solo gallery exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago.

Over the past few years, he has also exhibited at numerous museums in the US including the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, the Bakersfield Museum of Art, the Erie Art Museum, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Midwest Museum of American Art. Abroad, his work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum-Hertogenbosch, the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich, the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in Spanbroek and at the Kunsthal Rotterdam.

Immaculate ReflectionRodgers has been featured in numerous publications in America and abroad including Die Welt, Art in America, Citizen K, German GQ, Kunstbeeld, Arte, Art and FLAUNT to name a few. And his book, Terry Rodgers — The Apotheosis of Pleasure, published by TORCH Books of Amsterdam, was released in December 2006.

Rodgers’ current work focuses on portraying contemporary body politics. His rendering of the upper-class leisure life stands as an iconic vision of today’s society. The resulting paintings are not snapshots or slices of life, not verite records of actual moments in actual party or family situations, or diaristic records of his life, but carefully constructed and composited fictions, designed to elicit the most meaning and sustain the maximum amount of ambiguity.

Terry Rodgers attended Amherst College, with a major in the Fine Arts. His strong interest in film and photography influenced his style in the direction of representational realism in art.