Johanne Bossmann paints without brushes. Working exclusively with her hands, she spreads highly diluted acrylics across raw canvas until the pigment merges with the textile fibers in a process that is, as she puts it, irreversible and honest. The result is a series of ethereal, flowing horizons that function less as landscapes and more as invitations to breathe.

Marketa Hopkins paints movement, patience, and the gradual passage of time into every brushstroke. In her studio she developed a signature technique that gives her large-scale acrylic works their distinctive visual rhythm, balancing the elegance of darker tones with the warmth and energy of her more luminous pieces.

Rebecca Santry paints the Pacific Northwest the way it feels from the inside. In her Soft Fascination series, layered brushstrokes and an earthy palette translate nature's quiet rhythms into a visual meditation, an invitation to slow down, breathe, and reconnect.

Beatrice Findlay’s paintings merge abstraction, figuration, and landscape into dynamic explorations of movement and life energy. Her work uses color and gesture to evoke emotional resonance, drawing from decades of artistic practice and a continuing series of running figures.

Alexandra Niculescu’s large-scale paintings merge abstract expressionism with Rococo influences to explore the body as a site of memory and transformation. Her work channels gesture, emotion, and lived experience into a visual language of resilience, healing, and feminine strength.

Emi Avora’s practice bridges Greek heritage and life in Asia, weaving together interior spaces, still life, and landscape into layered compositions. Her paintings explore identity, mythology, and perception through color, scale, and symbolic encounters between objects and forms.

Felicia van Bork transforms printmaking into layered collages that balance intuition and structure, turning discarded monoprints into vibrant compositions of movement and meaning. Her process embraces play, experimentation, and material reinvention, revealing unexpected harmony within fragmentation.

Yian Lee’s work invites viewers to pause and reflect on the idea of belonging. A self-taught painter from Taiwan, Lee blends abstract geometry, meditative processes, and layered forms to explore subconscious landscapes and inner states that resist fixed meaning. Her paintings act as a gentle meditation on self, memory, and the spaces where belonging emerges from within.

Michael Hambouz, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, musician, and curator, creates work deeply informed by chromaesthesia and personal history. Drawing from music, memory, and his Palestinian-American heritage, Hambouz experiments across mediums—painting, printmaking, sculpture, and animation—to explore themes of loss, transformation, and resilience. His vibrant abstractions, often influenced by sound and architectural forms, invite viewers into layered reflections on identity and generational experience.

Portland-based abstract painter Chad Glazener presents his evocative, gesture-driven work in Create! Magazine’s Lightness of Being virtual exhibition. Each piece emerges from silence, offering a visual record of presence and inviting viewers to explore their own interior landscapes. Glazener’s paintings nurture contemplation, blending playfulness, embodiment, and spiritual awareness to reveal the subtle lightness that arises when we fully inhabit the moment.

Nicolle Cure’s mixed-media abstract paintings delve into the delicate intersection of sound, emotion, and visual form, inspired by her personal journey with Ménière’s disease. Featured in the “Lightness of Being” exhibition, her work invites viewers into quiet moments of introspection and resilience, revealing beauty in stillness and transformation.

Discover the vibrant mixed media paintings of M.E. Leaver, a Davidson, North Carolina artist featured in AQ Volume VI. Her work explores the beauty that emerges from life’s chaos, using oil, ink, watercolor, and acrylic to create contemporary and abstract pieces meant to uplift and inspire viewers.

Rajul Shah blends ancient philosophies and contemporary abstraction in her layered Kintsugi-inspired works. As a featured artist in AQ Volume VI, Shah uses color, texture, and symbolism to explore resilience, renewal, and the beauty of imperfection.

Los Angeles-based artist Ashley Ravidas transforms pattern, color, and design into meditative geometric abstractions that reflect on joy, balance, and memory. In her interview for AQ Volume 6, Ravidas shares how intuitive experimentation and moments of stillness shape her creative process.

In her emotionally rich abstract landscapes, Denver artist Kathy Knaus channels the tension and harmony of the natural world through expressive color and texture. Her work, featured in Create! Magazine’s virtual exhibition Land and Longing, reflects on the healing parallels between people and the earth. Drawing from her background in Five Element Acupuncture and a lifelong connection to nature, Knaus creates vivid, intuitive compositions that ask us to slow down, look closer, and honor the beauty in resilience.

In her feature for Land and Longing, Rainey Straus shares The Old Growth Project, a multidisciplinary body of work that merges technology, ecology, and ritual. Through LiDAR scans of California’s redwoods and embodied observation, Straus paints the presence of trees beyond human-centered narratives, inviting us to consider new ways of relating to the natural world. Her work unearths beauty and urgency in the forest’s voice, resonating with themes of loss, reciprocity, and reverence.

Chicago-based painter Sally Blair creates large-scale oil paintings that explore the intersection of the micro and macro. Her intricate, brightly colored compositions are rooted in themes of geometry, science, and the sublime. With a background shaped by the landscapes of New Mexico and West Texas, Blair brings a unique perspective to contemporary abstraction, evoking the grandeur of unseen worlds.

Discover the transformative art of Sunmyung Hann, a Newfoundland-based artist blending South Korean heritage, meditation, and the natural landscapes of Newfoundland to explore unseen energies. Through her Radiate series and other works, Hann creates visual representations of the invisible forces shaping our world, inviting viewers into a journey of self-discovery and spiritual connection.

Wendy Kawabata is an artist who has travelled and lived for periods in diverse and far-flung places and is now based in Hawaii. The landscape, the environment, love, and more than a sparkle of dry wit feature prominently and symbiotically.

Jennifer Small is an abstract painter whose work is about elevating the everyday to express appreciation for the wonder of the ordinary. She is a Pennsylvania native who received her BFA in Painting and BS in Art Education from Millersville University and an MFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design.