Helena Orwell, Impression of Reflection - Usually painting at night, the ordinary scenario would be looking in the mirror before going to bed and going for the materials if I see a portrait to be made. But in this current self-portrait, I tried something different. When painting late at night, it is normal to feel tired and sleepy after 2 hours; so I decided to start painting in the morning. I spent the whole day with it, being more patient with the colours and accurate with the lines; nevertheless, my efforts were dedicated to the face and to the expression but not to the clothes, that I eventually decided to leave blank, imbuing the artwork with spontaneity.

Helena Orwell, Bathroom sink - This piece is one of my favourites. It motivated me a lot because it meant a change on the usual theme, it’s like moving from the content to the container; since I paint self-portraits using the bathroom’s mirror and in this case I paint the bathroom itself. It was also a challenge regarding the size, I normally work with paper sized 29,7×42 cm; but in this case it was 42×60 cm. This is specially meaningful because I don’t use an easel, I hold the paper by hand with the help of a cardboard. Despite the technical difficulties, the result is delightful as it fulfills the need to depict my bathroom’s sink. 

Felicity Talman, Alga Tarantella - Part of a series of pastel paintings inspired by seaweed that had washed up on the beach of the Welsh coastal town of Aberaeron. My process involves manipulating colour, shape and texture as a method of abstraction. Through this modification, I aim to create something otherworldly, sitting in an undistinguished place between realism and abstraction, that feels recognisable yet strange.  My practice is predominately inspired by nature and more specifically organic forms. Using soft pastels on sanded paper allows me to utilise multiple layers of colour and mark-making, enabling me to communicate colour and shape with an expressive freedom.

Isabella Kiremidjian, Fairy Mai - ‘Fairy Mai’ is an acrylic painting inspired by fairy tales and fantasy. This artwork is part of my A level project with the theme of ‘Imagination’. The concept behind this was to represent imagination within a portrait. I find it intriguing how humans can take reality and develop it into something surreal. I chose a fairy as the subject of my painting as it perfectly depicts how humans’ imagination have created a creature which has familiar, yet fantastical features. 

Jena Jerms (She/Her), Ira (2022) - Ira is the sixth painting in a series by fine artist Jena Jerms titled Septem Mala Somnia. In this series, Jerms explores the effects of sleep paralysis through the lens of surrealist interpretations of the seven deadly sins. Her work is concerned with human behaviour, the concept of morality, psychology and navigating personal trauma by making artwork as a means of coping. Ira represents the sin of Wrath, and Jerms’ recurring nightmares filled with primal rage and fear. She uses art as a therapeutic practice while investigating the mechanics of the human psyche.

Olivia Mieke Maria-Paulina Martha, A Study of a Room I - ‘A Study of a Room I’ is one of four digital art pieces created on Apple Notes. By using a black background, a range of different colourful lines and strokes, this digital drawing explores the theme of mental health and cabin fever during the pandemic. I spent the majority of my time throughout the lockdown in this space. The living room, once a comforting, familiar, pleasant and reassuring space transformed into a cage. Having the same routine every day, month by month, in a static environment, this space inspired me to re-imagine objects, furniture and colours. By playing with my imagination and re-assessing my surroundings, my current art style was developed from this experience.

Aleah Zerance, Hands Off! - This piece is a part of an ongoing series of mine involving the idea of the human form being a constant subject of movement. I’ve always viewed myself as an action, my body never sits still and I feel everywhere at once. Overlapping limbs and harsh foreshortened angles help me dramatize this feeling and opens a gateway into understanding these experiences more. My body never feels present which is a fight I have to deal with daily, making art about this feeling is a way to stay grounded.

YANG HAN WEN, Gaze (a series) - These three books are a series, Through my intricate and detailed sketchings and paper cuttings, I convey my own understanding of beauty, as well as what it should be. Particularly, how we should practise self-love and acceptance. 

Due to the pandemic and quarantine period, people spend most of their time at home and spend more time online. It brings more attention to the virtual world. It is also gradually affecting our subjective impressions of beauty.

YANG HAN WEN, Gaze (a series) - These three books are a series, Through my intricate and detailed sketchings and paper cuttings, I convey my own understanding of beauty, as well as what it should be. Particularly, how we should practise self-love and acceptance. 

Due to the pandemic and quarantine period, people spend most of their time at home and spend more time online. It brings more attention to the virtual world. It is also gradually affecting our subjective impressions of beauty.

YANG HAN WEN, Gaze (a series) - These three books are a series, Through my intricate and detailed sketchings and paper cuttings, I convey my own understanding of beauty, as well as what it should be. Particularly, how we should practise self-love and acceptance. 

Due to the pandemic and quarantine period, people spend most of their time at home and spend more time online. It brings more attention to the virtual world. It is also gradually affecting our subjective impressions of beauty.

YANG HAN WEN, Gaze (a series) - These three books are a series, Through my intricate and detailed sketchings and paper cuttings, I convey my own understanding of beauty, as well as what it should be. Particularly, how we should practise self-love and acceptance. 

Due to the pandemic and quarantine period, people spend most of their time at home and spend more time online. It brings more attention to the virtual world. It is also gradually affecting our subjective impressions of beauty.

Diana Rojas, Event Horizon - “Event Horizon”, which shares its name with an astronomical term that means a theoretical point of no return associated with black holes, is a single channel audiovisual piece that explores light bending as a signifier of the colossal and divine in space and art. These real and illustrative instances of light bending remind us of the distance between us and the invisible and immense. “Event Horizon” focuses on the moving light that signals the unknowable

Discover More - www.dianarojasart.com / Instagram: @dianarojasart

Glover Marfo, Fearless - My work adopts  how symbolism and functionality can be intersected to create jewelry adornments, which can evoke protection, elegance and metaphorically convey a sense of power to women who have suffered from physical and emotional abuse. 

 As a way of navigating my current socio-cultural space as a student in the US, I draw from my past and create sculptural jewelry borrowing from both African traditional and contemporary aesthetic languages while entertaining cross-cultural influences of my lived experience. As an artist I wish to create jewelry which embody force and grace when worn. Photo credit : An Wang

Zoë Couvillion, For Tomorrow - The centered imagery of a hat in For Tomorrow is a reductive woodblock print, made with 14 separate layers of ink applied by the same hand-carved surface. The surrounding embossed paper initially reads as abstracted lines, but is actually an enlargement of the artist’s fingerprint. The final composition is a reflection on those tangible things that we use, leave-behind, and then return to: reminders of the intangible connections we share. It measures 31 inches (78.74 cm) by 23.75 inches (60.325 cm) and was completed in March of 2022.

Jihyun Kim, Delicious pill - The European pharmaceutical profession originated in the 18th century. The pharmacists used colourful Delftware to store their medicines to attract customers. European potters who make such pots applied tin glaze on earthenware jars and painted to imitate the luxury of white porcelain. 

I interpret the tin glaze as a way that was used to conceal flaws to look appealing. Some people nowadays are taking drugs in defiance of the dangerous truth or on the other hand, drug companies allure people with appealing, flamboyant packages. People are intentionally or unintentionally consuming drugs like a sweet little candy.

Louise Cunningham, Macbeth house - The Macbeth house allows the viewer to become immersed in Shakespeare’s play as they move from room to room using hidden keys and following bloody footprints. Each room contains one piece of removable jewellery that can be taken out and worn. The arthouses I produce combine my skills as a silversmith with my abilities as an artist. Using traditional techniques, I produce one of a kind art pieces that celebrate my passion for Gothic literature and jewellery.  

Ayan Aziz Mammadova, Universe - Summer morning, pleasing to the eye with bright colours… In an instant, everything can be destroyed by pressing only one button...and then the dark skeletons of once towering cities will appear before the eyes...and there, somewhere far, far away, it froze, but some kind of life still glimmers…sadly, drooping, lowering their heads, they try to survive, once amazing with their unimaginable beauty and quivering tenderness, beautiful flowers...now the cold breath of suddenly coming winter...has made them orphans, her cold breath enveloped the gardens with magic flowers that were full of life and children’s laughter until recently, now frozen in a sad expectation of their end, covered with hoarfrost... crying with tears.

Ayan Aziz Mammadova, Mood Flares - The world we live in is a colourful canvas in which all the colours of life are involved... It is orange, turning into red - the colour of despair, the cry of children to the sounds of sirens somewhere very close to war, blood and fighting… this is black - destructive, unreal, impossible, but alas, it became possible, real… purple is the colour of creativity… blue is a reflection, and thus the realisation of righteousness, that is, the ascent to the blue colour, however, only yellow is the lowest step of the ascent, stepping on, perhaps, an opportunity for humanity to climb it, and move up to blue - the colour of heaven, spirituality and forgiveness...

Maraki Girma Mamo, Killing The Ego - I think to grow as a person we must kill our ego and detach from things that drag us down. Those things maybe part of us ,but with little strength we have we must kill the monster within, before it kills us. 

Katie Stewart, The Blind - Narrative cannot exist in a vacuum, yet this is a common issue in a society regimented by binary and mono perspectives. Katie Stewart collages layers of found objects and photographs taken in different variations and repetitions to reflect the inherent abundance of contexts and natural multiplicity of narrative. Of such a plethora, one image or scene is chosen and recreated with paint, overlaying the mixed media piece, and demonstrating how one idea may be elevated at the expense of others. Automatic writing is incorporated into the work in reference to the fragmentary nature of understanding and association in the human psyche. The concept of our experience of existence itself as collage founds Katie’s practice.

Maraki Girma Mamo, Martyr - There is an Ethiopian saying which goes like this. “Rather than my seal to be broken , may my neck be decapitated” which means rather to take off the cross on my neck it’s better for me to die. This is a motto I try to live by, so this piece is dedicated to this statement.

Annie Liones Nguyen, Grief is a Dish Served Cold - Grief is a Dish Served Cold is an imagery of how grief is reimagined as a physical form of a dining experience that is unpleasant. The poet describes the experience as painful to swallow, as well as using other elements on the dinner table to add layers to the experience of grief, or trying to ease the sorrowful feeling, such as a drink and a napkin.

Julia Blochtein, To live is to desire and to desire is to suffer - I like to think that being an artist is a suicidal act, but I do it every day. The desire to create from what I feel, from the incomprehensible, from the inexplicable through words. The daily doubt driven by the current model of society leads me to kill my ego every day, the one that feeds the Will that Schopenhauer talked about, that being an artist is to follow the opposite direction of the Will and to follow the path of pure contemplation, even if this leads to a small escape from the tyranny imposed by rationality. It is therefore my intention to call into question his statement that “to live is to desire and to desire is to suffer”.

Ng Huei Cher, Vermin Witch - She is a witch from the ancient mainland. She bred thousands of bugs and they have to fight within the dark utensil until the last survivor left. They are born to be manipulated and serve their queen, the vermin witch.

Katie Stewart, Bathwater - Narrative cannot exist in a vacuum, yet this is a common issue in a society regimented by binary and mono perspectives. Katie Stewart collages layers of found objects and photographs taken in different variations and repetitions to reflect the inherent abundance of contexts and natural multiplicity of narrative. Of such a plethora, one image or scene is chosen and recreated with paint, overlaying the mixed media piece, and demonstrating how one idea may be elevated at the expense of others. Automatic writing is incorporated into the work in reference to the fragmentary nature of understanding and association in the human psyche. The concept of our experience of existence itself as collage founds Katie’s practice.

Taya Elizabeth, Florence + Friends - This work was born of an amalgamation of memories from a recent impromptu trip I took to Florence with some friends. The piece, comprised of a combination of charcoal sketches from museums and galleries we visited and drawings of memories and photos captured throughout the week, is layered erratically to echo how I see them and how they make me feel. I wanted to create a visual representation of how the memories exist in my mind - the warmth created from small moments can come together to create something everlasting, bright, and colourful.

Madison Albanese, Residual Salt - I grew up watching home videos and running around with my Strawberry Shortcake 35mm camera. This practice sparked a curiosity within me. It inspires me to document important relationships in my life. The memories recalled upon again and again. I explore the degradation of time and the revival of fleeting moments through media. My work is comprised of portraits based on my photographic archive. I base my curation of these images on composition, direction of gaze, atmospheric qualities, and the emotions the images conjure. I transform these references into mixed media works. I intuitively experiment with mark, and material to discover new relationships within each piece.

Qiyue Zhang, Way back home - “Way back home” depicts me in New York City, living alone in a foreign country. There must be lonely moments, but I hope to find finer things in ordinary life. As an Asian woman, I always feel anxious and unstable. We face some threats in society, and it is also hard for us to become confident. A lot of times, I feel safer in a subway car where I’m alone. We see news every day, and no one wants to be the one who meets the monster on the way home.

Michelle Mall, Dionaea muscipula - “The Venus flytrap (dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant and belongs to the sundew family. The species occurs only in a very limited distribution area on the east coast of the United States and was first described in 1768. Its fast-moving leaf traps are striking. When stimulated, the Venus flytrap quickly collapses its elaborately constructed trapping blade to catch insects and spiders. The trapping mechanism is one of the fastest movements in the entire plant kingdom, lasting up to 100 milliseconds. The artwork refers to the modern venus, catching men”. The work is a print on high-quality acrylic glass, which is limited to an edition of just 3 pieces. Measurements are 30cm x 40cm. 

Tara Petrović, Yugoslavia, Through All Eyes But Mine - Though I never had the chance to personally experience Yugoslavia, growing up, I’ve always found myself attracted to the history of it, the culture. Through my family, I’ve been able to hear multiple viewpoints and experiences on the former country. It is a part of me, a part of my history, a part of my family. This work aims to showcase the different people that lived in Yugoslavia— the binding force behind them being the nation itself. From left to right, my grandmother, a professor of latin and french, my great uncle, an active military member, and my grandfather, a doctor. 

Yuchen Lu, Lilies of the Valley - Originally from Beijing, Yuchen Lu is an illustrator now based in New York. Graduated from School of Visual Arts BFA illustration major class of 2022. She finds inspiration from nature, mythologies, fairytales, and dreams; stemming from a fascination of fantasy since her childhood. Yuchen draws in pen and ink, and then colors each piece digitally. Lilies of the Valley is inspired by the spirit of this flower. Growing in the forlorn bottom of valleys, but strive to flourish… 

Joel Kurtz, No. 0423 - This piece is a landscape that emerged from my memories of my childhood in British Columbia, which is quite different from where I live now in Brooklyn. I remember running and learning to ride my bike as a little boy, surrounded by the vast and serene evergreens with a river running through them.  As I worked on the painting, I stopped thinking about my childhood and began to explore the surreal, the intermingling of the known and unknown, the juxtaposition of the tangible and intangible elements of our world. My art is an exploration of these elements.

Mariia Eremina, PLEASURE - My main inspiration is the astonishing wealth of Nature. Nature gives me freedom and confidence; through its variety of colours and textures, it is a place where I feel safe. The context of my work is focused on environmental issues, climate change and pollution. I also explore mental health of the individual, specifically by considering how colour and nature therapies can improve our physical andmental health. Through my paintings I would like to demonstrate that the fragility of nature is something magical, unique and worth protecting.

Zoë Couvillion, Higher - Higher is a 15 inch (38.1 cm) by 21.5 inch (54.61 cm) lithograph, drawn on limestone and then printed on Rives BFK in March of 2019. In the image, enormous hands break the stillness of one of my childhood memory scenes. By using surreal hands as metaphor for my own volition, I focus on those things I cannot move or affect in my past experiences, and ask what I can choose to carry forward into my present-day.

Ange Mullins, Earth III - My interest centres around a human, non-human interconnectedness specifically with the natural world. Anthropocentric narratives & socialised habitualisation are gradually being re-evaluated within western communities & I aspire through my practice to augment nature’s vitality & importance, thereby encouraging an increased & mutually symbiotic relationship between us. These interactions are interpreted in my piece Earth III by using foraged earth from Dorset, enhanced with handmade ink made from materials found near my home in Northamptonshire, the combined results feels deceptively simple, much as nature can appear at first glance, but on further inspection offers shape, complexity and tactility. 

Tan Hui Ru, Wilderness and… - ‘Wilderness and…’ centres around my affection towards my friend’s pet cat and how a cat that wasn’t even my own, was one of my greatest and dearest comrades during a time of personal struggle. Acts as simple as receiving new photographs of him and catching glimpses of what he was doing brought me a sense of joy, comfort, satisfaction and security that I struggle to convey in words but attempt to do so in this piece. This painting was done during my second year at LASALLE. The assignment required us to create two oil paintings using the theme ‘Wilderness and Domesticity’. Ever since then I have considered this piece to be my most genuine work.

Myrthe Biesheuvel, Death - This painting is the result of a late evening of experimentation. I was playing with colors, shapes, and textures, on several boards simultaneously, when this image suddenly appeared. I’m excited about the sharp lines which were made by scratching my palette knife into the oil paint layer. I don’t consider ‘Death’ to be a morbid or scary painting, but rather as a painting communicating something very deep, from a faraway place. Its title could just as well be ‘Transition’. 

Zoë Couvillion, Jerry’s Last Stop - The central imagery in Jerry’s Last Stop was first drawn onto lithographic limestone, then printed onto Rives BFK in 2021. Hand-carved linoleum was run through a press against the print’s dry paper: creating the work’s surrounding embossment. The final piece reflects an abandoned gas station, and asks what our buildings exist as when people are no longer there to inject them with specific purpose. It measures 22 inches (55.88 cm) by 30 inches (76.2 cm).

Alex Hagerty, Dancing in the Waves - The ocean connects us to our inner child. As the push and pull of the tide moves our bodies in all directions, the salty wind twists our hair into knots, and the seafoam somehow finds its way into our mouths through gasps of laughter–we no longer have control. We let go. We play. Something a lot of us forget how to do as we grow up. We often grip so tightly onto the things we want, that we forget nature is pushing and pulling us in the right direction every day. When we dance in the waves, it helps us remember the little version of ourselves who knew it would be okay.