Ginette Beaulieu, 1954 | Magical realism painter

Ginette Beaulieu was always passionate about drawing and in particular, was drawn to the techniques of the Renaissance masters, of which she completed formal training from 1979-1980.

Beaulieu is educated in art restoration and in ancient painting techniques. She defines herself as a hyperrealist painter and uses oil, pastel and pencil in her work.

Her work is distinguished by the use of mediums that she develops from decanted oils and natural pigments.

Bertha Wegmann (1847-1926) Portrait painter

Bertha Wegmann was a Danish🎨 portrait painter of German ancestry.

At the age of five, her family moved to Copenhagen, where her father became a merchant. He was an art lover and spent much of his spare time painting.

She showed an interest in drawing at an early age, but received no formal education until she was nineteen, when she began taking lessons from Frederik Ferdinand Helsted, Heinrich Buntzen and Frederik Christian Lund.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) | Hope / La Speranza

Alex Venezia (American painter, 1993)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all

And sweetest in the Gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | Quotes about Women

Dame Laura Knight🎨 (British Impressionist painter, 1877-1970) | A girl reading

• "As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking".
• "Finché pensa ad un uomo, nessuno si oppone ad una donna che pensa".
• "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size".
• "Per tutti questi secoli le donne hanno svolto la funzione di specchi, dotati della magica e deliziosa proprietà di riflettere la figura dell’uomo a grandezza doppia del naturale".

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | Quotes

Dame Laura Knight🎨 (British Impressionist painter, 1877-1970) | The Dark Pool, 1908-1918 | Laing Art Gallery

• "I wish you’d find the exit out of my head".
• "Io scriverei poesie d'amore anche sulle parti di te che tu non sopporti".
• "My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child-wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry".
• "Se il mio cervello, distratto da un'ansia o da altra causa, deve distogliersi dalla carta bianca, è come un bimbo sperduto, che gira per casa e siede a piangere sull'ultimo gradino".
• "The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages".
• "Gli occhi degli altri le nostre prigioni; i loro pensieri, le nostre gabbie".

Anja Bührer | Surreal silhouettes

Anja Bührer, aka Latoday, is a Berlin-based photographer and digital artist. Bührer uses her hauntingly beautiful aesthetic to depict a myriad of dreamy scenes. Bührer's conceptual photographs lie somewhere between dreams and nightmares, as though one is trapped in this in-between state of unconsciousness.

There's a haziness throughout her dreamed, souls, and street collections that somehow balance the familiar with the unknown.

Maria Oosthuizen, 1972 | Embrace painting

Maria Magdalena Oosthuizen is a full-time artist exhibiting in various galleries.

Oosthuizen was born in Paarl (Western Cape) South Africa. She currently resides in Mossel Bay, a small coastal town in South Africa, with her husband, and three children.

Maria is a qualified hairdresser.

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) | Mannerist painter

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter🎨.

She is regarded as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male counterparts, outside a court or convent. She was the first woman artist to paint female figures, and was the main breadwinner of a family of 13.

Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, the daughter of the painter Prospero Fontana, who was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna at the time and served as her teacher. Continuing the family business was typical at the time.

Catherine Klein - Vintage Art

Catharina Klein [b. 1861, Eylau, East Prussia - d. 1929, Berlin, Germany] is also known as Catherine Klein. Her name was Anglicized during WWI to avoid any disinclination to buy her work. She is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Christine". Her signature is "C.Klein" and usually accompanies her work, especially in those postcards and prints closest to the original paintings which were in oil or gouache, an opaque watercolor paint. If her signature is underlined, it’s an indication of an earlier work. She rode the crest of chromolithography at the end of the 19th and into the 20th Century. Catharina Klein was born in 1861 in Eylau in East Prussia (what is now a Russian province called Kallinigrad which is actually separated by the Baltic States from Mainland Russia).

Berthe Morisot - Dahlias, c.1876

Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.

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Alice Pike Barney - Dream Book

Emma Ekwall [1838-1925]

Emma Ekwall-Scheutz was the first Swedish woman - painter, received the Royal Medal. She was born on January 18, 1838. After graduating from the Academy of Painting, where she studied from 1865-1870, lived for a time in Munich and Leipzig. She painted mostly portraits of their children, floral still lifes and genre scenes. She died in 1925 in Stockholm.

Mariana Stauffer | Palette knife Impressionist painter

'Art is the love of my life. I started painting and crafting at an early age. Art is something , that comes from within, it is a happy feeling, love, harmony, message to others. I am always leaving positive emotions and messages in my art works. I love painting cityscapes, landscapes, flowers, rain, nights, birds. My style is Modern Impressionism. Most of my paintings are created using a palette knife only'.

Luana Celli, 1980

Luana Celli è una pittrice Romana. Da anni vive e lavora in provincia. Ha frequentato l'Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma ed è stata allieva del M° Giulio Turcato.

Ha partecipato ad importanti mostre italiane riscuotendo sempre successi di critica e pubblico. Vincitrice di numerosi premi, espone nella famosa storica mostra "Cento Pittori Via Margutta".

Natalie Shau ~ Pop Surrealism Digital painter

Natalie Shau is illustrator and photographer from Vilnius, Lithuania. Her digital masterpieces have graced the pages of the French Vogue Magazine during a Lydia Courteille jewellery campaign and her extensive client list of music labels includes Island Def Jam, Sony Music Entertainment (formerly “Sony BMG”) Century Media and Nuclear Blast. Gothic horror fiction, fairy tales and Russian classics (e.g. Dostoevsky and Gogol) are among the influences she lists for her surreal and strange creations. Shau uses a range of media, mixing photography, digital painting and 3D. The quality she seeks is “at once fragile and powerful”.

Natalie Shau è una illustratrice e fotografa di Vilnius, Lituania. Lavora principalmente con supporti digitali, le sue opere sono infatti una miscela di fotografia, pittura digitale e elementi 3D. Le piace creare creature surreali e strane, fragili e potenti allo stesso tempo. Lo stile di Natalie è molto influenzato dalle immagini religiose, delle illustrazioni delle fiabe della letteratura classica russa e horror, da classici come Fyodor Dostoevsky e Nikolai Gogol. Natalie Shau lavora costantemente alle sue creazioni personali, ma realizza anche illustrazioni su commissione di gruppi musicali, stilisti e scrittori. Le sue illustrazioni per la campagna dei gioielli Lydia Courteille sono state pubblicate nella rivista francese Vogue. Nell’elenco dei cliente di Natalie ci sono molte etichette discografiche e agenzie di pubblicità come Island Def Jam, Ogilvy Mather, Sony BMG, Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Trisol e molti altri.

Catherine Coren, 1949 ~ Salon music

Catherine Coren was has always attracted the attention of art amateurs and contemporary masters because of her innate talent, her artist’s sensitivity and her sense of drawing.
In 1980 E. Baboulene wrote to her: “I am touched and marveled at the sight of your paintings, I congratulate you on your work”.
On the basis of Cezanne’s claim that a painter is recognized “by the distance he takes with motif” Catherine Coren is a genius painter. Her landscapes traced with supple and vehement lines, a touch of lyrical spark are plastically very pure. The artist's interiors are a mix of balanced layout, harmony of shades and cold lighting. Coren asserts herself as a great painter of the 1990’s and her laurels are the just reward for her passionate and unrelenting work. For more than 15 years, she has presented her works in Group and Solo Exhibitions in New York, Cannes, Bruxelles, Nancy, Paris and Strasbourg.

Alda Merini

«Io vivo sempre al buio, ma nei miei pensieri brilla sempre un sole».