Announcing The Spirit World: A Curated Exhibition & Catalog
We're thrilled to unveil The Spirit World, a curated virtual exhibition and catalog exploring the spiritual, mystical, eerie, and uncanny through contemporary art.
From meditations on the unseen to explorations of ghosts, myth, and paranormal encounters, this collection brings together thirty-seven artists who interpret the otherworldly through their unique creative lenses. The result is a stunning catalog that bridges the visible and invisible worlds, inviting viewers to contemplate what lies beyond our everyday perception.
About The Exhibition
The Spirit World celebrates the diverse ways contemporary artists engage with spiritual themes. Whether through ethereal landscapes that evoke transcendence, portraits that capture the soul, or darker explorations of the paranormal and uncanny, each work offers a glimpse into realms we can sense but rarely see.
This theme resonated deeply with artists worldwide, and we received an overwhelming response to our call for submissions. The curation process was both challenging and inspiring as we worked to create a cohesive collection that honors the expansive nature of this theme.
Featured Artists
The Spirit World showcases work from:
Mariel Andrade, Sinem Beles, Jessica "JB" Burke, Matthew Carver, Kuang Chu, Sophia Conroy-Iglesias, Lauren Davies, Claire Dockray, Loren Eiferman, Emily Ezell, Jessica Fisher, Erin Fitzpatrick, Meg Hadley, Carolyn Hampton, Larry Dave Hanson, Isabelle Heldenfels, Carl Grauer, Jon Christopher Gernon, Aunia Kahn, Mehgann Maiellano, Julia McGlew, allison moyers, Shannon Nahara, Chris Nelson, Tomás Carlos Ortolani, Sarah Penina, Leo Rebolledo, Ama Romp, Colleen Francis Smith, Anne Spalter, Estelle Spinner, Jacqueline Strano, Maya Sumile, Kim Tateo, Lisbeth Thygesen, Emily White Tousley, and Rebecca Walker.
These artists work across painting, photography, illustration, sculpture, and mixed media, each bringing their distinct perspective to questions of spirituality, mystery, and the unknown.
Curated By
Ekaterina Popova – Artist, Founder of Create! Magazine, Coach, and Entrepreneur
Shelby McFadden – Artist, Designer at Maple Projects, and Author
Our guest curators brought thoughtful eyes to this project, selecting work that speaks to the complexity and beauty of spiritual exploration in contemporary art.
The Catalog
The Spirit World catalog is a professionally designed art book featuring full-color reproductions, artist statements, and biographical information for each selected artist. It serves as both exhibition documentation and a collectible art publication—perfect for collectors, curators, students, and anyone drawn to the mystical in visual art.
Each page has been carefully designed to honor the artist's work while creating a cohesive visual journey through the spirit world. This is a publication you'll want to return to again and again.
Where To Find It
Print Catalog: Available now on Amazon
Select Artists
Emily White Tousley’s work invites viewers to explore the complex ways we inhabit space with our inner selves. Blending sculpture, painting, photography, and digital media, her art examines how past consciousnesses influence the present and how incorporeal entities leave traces on physical spaces. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, her pieces resonate with themes of spirituality, memory, and the uncanny, offering a meditation on presence and absence.
Meg Hadley (alias Jesusjoints) transforms glass into a canvas for exploring the fragile, mystical intersections of belief, reality, and the human psyche. Her layered oil paintings capture the tension between imperfection and control, creating dreamlike, psychologically charged scenes. Featured in The Spirit World, a virtual exhibition examining the spiritual, mystical, eerie, and uncanny, Hadley’s work invites viewers to consider the unseen and the ephemeral in deeply personal and evocative ways.
Erin Fitzpatrick’s colorful, patterned portraits explore the intersections of memory, spirituality, and cultural ritual. Featured in The Spirit World Exhibition, her work reflects her time in Mexico City and her fascination with Santa Muerte, Día de Muertos, and syncretic spiritual practices. Fitzpatrick’s paintings, including Quiromancia, Hey Van Gogh It’s the Same As It Ever Was, and The Sage, invite viewers to experience the mystical and uncanny, bridging the visible and unseen.
Sinem Beles creates portraits and figurative works that capture the subtle presence of those we love, even after they are gone. Her painterly realist style and softened brushwork evoke memory, spirit, and emotional depth. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, her paintings invite viewers to explore the mystical, unseen, and lingering energies that connect past and present.
Shannon Nahara’s art merges photography, collage, and mixed media to explore memory, myth, and the unconscious. Her layered compositions invite reflection, bridging past and present while evoking transformation and healing. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, her work illuminates unseen narratives and the delicate interplay between personal and collective histories.
Architect and oil pastel painter Leo Rebolledo creates meticulously rendered scenes where classical technique meets the uncanny. Drawing from subconscious impulses, symbolism, and magical realism, his work transforms familiar spaces into poetic, unsettling dream worlds. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, Rebolledo’s paintings invite viewers to step beyond surface reality and explore the psychological and spiritual dimensions that quietly shape human experience.
Working at the intersection of myth, personal narrative, and psychological space, Colleen Francis Smith creates richly hued oil paintings that challenge inherited ideas of femininity. Her dreamlike gardens and forests become sites of transformation, tension, and escape, where figures merge with plant life and reality bends. Featured in the Spirit Worldexhibition, Smith’s work invites viewers into liminal environments that reflect the spiritual, political, and emotional complexities embedded in the feminine psyche.
Mariel Andrade is a Brazilian American contemporary painter whose work explores duality, illusion, and psychological tension through myth-infused imagery and playful paradox. Using saturated and pastel palettes, her paintings blur the line between one reality and another, inviting viewers to question perception and uncover hidden emotional narratives. Her work is featured in The Spirit World virtual exhibition, which examines the spiritual, mystical, eerie, and uncanny.
Matthew Carver’s work invites viewers into alternate realities, where time travel, ghostly encounters, and cyberpunk landscapes intertwine with spiritual and mystical themes. Featured in The Spirit World virtual exhibition, Carver’s paintings and graphic novels explore how stories, myths, and belief shape our understanding of the unseen.
Jessica C Fisher, a New York City-based painter, channels her emotional experiences into oil paintings that explore memory, darkness, and the human spirit. Her Blasphemous Saints series confronts themes of violence, complicity, and vulnerability, creating intimate narratives that invite reflection. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, her work bridges reality and imagination, revealing the unseen in hauntingly beautiful ways.
Isabelle Heldenfels’ work bridges the delicate line between remembrance and imagination, presence and absence. Through whimsical, nostalgic compositions drawn from family photo albums and domestic artifacts, she creates dreamlike paintings where the living and the dead quietly converge. Her pieces will be featured in “The Spirit World”, a virtual exhibition exploring the spiritual, mystical, eerie, and uncanny—from meditations on the unseen to encounters with ghosts, myth, and the paranormal.
Sarah Penina’s work inhabits the magical space between art and illustration, blending whimsy, vivid color, and playful ghostly figures to explore themes of childhood, escapism, and emotional introspection. Included in the upcoming “The Spirit World” exhibition, her paintings offer a tender meditation on memory, imagination, and the unseen threads that shape our inner worlds.
Carl Grauer’s latest series, Natural Thresholds, invites viewers into a contemplative space where the natural and spiritual worlds intersect. Through oil paintings framed in circular portals, Grauer navigates themes of loss, transformation, and hope, capturing moments that move from sorrow to solace. His work is featured in Spirit World, an exhibition exploring the mystical, eerie, and unseen.
Working under the name Glass Bambi, British artist Claire Dockray creates luminous, dreamlike paintings shaped by memory, fragility, and emotional resilience. Blending Pop Art, realism, and surrealism, her work draws from mid-century imagery, cinematic lighting, and personal narrative to explore longing, identity, and the unseen forces that shape human experience. Her work is featured in Create! Magazine’s upcoming The Spirit World virtual exhibition, which examines the spiritual, mystical, and uncanny through contemporary art.
Chris Nelson’s paintings contemplate mortality, ritual, and the quiet resistance of working by hand in a digitally saturated world. Featured in Create! Magazine’s upcoming The Spirit World exhibition, his oil paintings blend classical techniques with surreal undertones, using skulls and symbolic objects to reflect on both literal death and the modern loss of human ritual. Nelson’s work invites viewers to slow down and consider what is lost when creative processes become automated.
Julia McGlew’s artwork transports viewers to a calmer, kinder world filled with fantasy, nature, and surreal imagery. Featured in the upcoming The Spirit World exhibition, her paintings merge emotional depth with whimsical storytelling. Influenced by the overlooked beauty of animals and a vintage aesthetic, her work invites reflection, imagination, and escape into an ethereal, magical realm.
Jon Gernon transforms canvas into spaces of myth and imagination. Featured in Create! Magazine’s upcoming The Spirit World exhibition, his paintings and allegories encourage viewers to step into a world where narrative and imagination meet. Gernon’s work inspires audiences to create personal stories, making each encounter with his art a unique and participatory experience.
RMD’s photography transforms the ordinary into the mystical, capturing moments where spirit, presence, and intuition converge. Featured in Create! Magazine’s upcoming The Spirit World exhibition, her work invites viewers to slow down, reflect, and connect with the unseen layers of life. Through soulful imagery, RMD offers a meditation on love, magic, and the interconnectedness of all things.
Multidisciplinary artist Aunia Kahn brings a vibrant, symbolic visual language to The Spirit World exhibition, weaving personal history, cultural influence, and mystical storytelling into layered compositions. Her work reflects a powerful journey of survival and renewal, offering viewers a transformative encounter with color, symbolism, and inner mythology.
Danish artist Lisbeth Thygesen brings shimmering layers of Nordic nature, magic, and mystical symbolism to her work, which is featured in Create! Magazine’s upcoming virtual exhibition “The Spirit World.” Her paintings and sculptures bridge the physical and spiritual, inviting viewers into realms of myth, intuition, and quiet transformation. Learn more about her practice, background, and artistic vision in this featured profile.
Tomás Carlos Ortolani creates paintings that connect the viewer with worlds beyond perception, using symbolism, dreams, and personal narratives to explore the unconscious. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, his work blends technical mastery with deeply psychological and spiritual themes, offering a contemplative journey into the unseen.
Mehgann Maiellano’s work captures the delicate balance between humor and eeriness. Through photography and mixed media, she places ghostly figures in rural landscapes, inviting viewers to reflect on memory, solitude, and the uncanny in familiar places. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, Maiellano’s art transforms ordinary settings into spaces of mystery, wonder, and quiet unease.
Lauren Davies blends photography, sculpture, and textiles to investigate the hidden histories and layered narratives of place. From abandoned Rust Belt factories to haunted mansions, her experimental works merge archival research with striking materiality and ironic perspective. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, Davies’ art evokes the mystical, eerie, and uncanny while proposing new ways of seeing personal, cultural, and institutional histories.
Maya Sumile creates mystical work that bridges the tangible and intangible, blending self-portraiture, Gothic literature, and Romanticism to explore the human condition. Her paintings and environments evoke the uncanny while balancing dread and serenity. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, Sumile’s work invites viewers to experience narratives that give form to silence, dreams, and enduring human stories.
Jacqueline Strano transforms garments and vintage imagery into vessels of memory, identity, and resistance. Through hand-stitched embroidery and mixed media, she merges past and present, revealing the threads that connect women’s lives across time. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, Strano’s work invites viewers to explore the intimate dialogues between femininity, power, and ornamentation.
Anne Spalter, a pioneering visual artist in both traditional and digital media, presents immersive, symbolic landscapes in the upcoming Spirit World exhibition. Her work blends surrealism, science fiction, and archetypal imagery to explore the boundaries between the natural and the cosmic. Through her series Surrealist Landscapes and Future Landscapes, Spalter merges dreamlike geometry, luminous color, and algorithmic processes to create worlds where inner and outer realities converge. Featured internationally in major collections and publications, her practice invites viewers to encounter transformation, intuition, and the mythic dimensions of contemporary experience.
Emily Ezell, born in Monroe, Louisiana, creates apocalyptic and surrealist paintings that blend neon, mutated creatures, and corpse-like nymphs with historical references to the Old Masters. Featured in the upcoming Spirit World exhibition, her work explores the uncanny, pop surrealism, and Southern Gothic themes, creating images that are simultaneously provocative, grotesque, and mesmerizing. As an educator and professional artist, Ezell continues to push the boundaries of narrative, technique, and the surreal, inviting viewers into worlds that challenge perceptions of beauty, desire, and decay.
Sophia Conroy Iglesias, a British-Spanish artist, creates intimate and psychologically charged works in oil, graphite, and hand-bound books. Featured in the upcoming Spirit World exhibition, her art blends historical figuration with contemporary perspectives, exploring mythology, touch, memory, and the feminine experience. Each canvas is paired with a handwritten poem, extending her visual narratives into an interior world where presence, absence, and the spectral intertwine. Her work invites viewers to encounter bodies, gestures, and spaces that hover between reality and the unseen.
Amalia Romp, a New York native now based in Los Angeles, is a multidisciplinary artist and set designer whose work spans papier-mâché sculpture, avant-garde tableaux portraits, and immersive storytelling. Featured in The Spirit World exhibition, her art draws on surrealism, expressionism, circus motifs, and global cultures, creating fantastical worlds that invite viewers into her imaginative process. From brainstorming to building, photographing, and editing, Amalia handles every stage of creation herself, crafting deeply personal and visually striking works.
Somerset-based artist Estelle delves into the human psyche and the enigmatic depths of the subconscious through painting, illustration, digital art, and installations. Her work, featured in the upcoming Spirit World exhibition, fuses darkness and surrealism, from ethereal landscapes shrouded in mist to haunting figures that seem to gaze into the soul. Each piece invites viewers to explore their innermost fears and desires while experiencing a hauntingly beautiful vision of reality intertwined with the fantastical.