Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2026: RAYMAR Painting Award Finalists Announced

Once again, dear entrants, you have made judging the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize an incredibly difficult task – but we did it!

We extend our deepest gratitude to the 2026 Jury Panel for their time and expertise. This year’s panel featured esteemed Arts Champions, including Emilie Dietrich, President & Creative Director of RAYMAR, and celebrated painter Brad Kunkle. Reviewing such a wealth of exceptional work was both a demanding and deeply inspiring undertaking. We are truly honored by the artistic excellence and passion demonstrated by our global community.

We have received paintings using: oils, acrylics, watercolours, coloured pencils, Gouache, pastels, hide glue, art sand, gold and metal leaf, ink, aerosols, airbrush, markers, charcoal, mineral pigments, bronze powder, crystals, embroidery, beadwork, textiles, stained glass, and much more!

The Prizes

RAYMAR Painting Award

The RAYMAR Painting Award 1st prize winner will receive:

• $3,000 USD cash, generously donated by RAYMAR, creators of the finest panels! Panels are their passion. They craft their panels with the world’s finest materials to serve as the foundation for your artwork. 
• $1,500 USD worth of art photography and/or Fine Art archival print reproduction from Static Medium.
• A beautiful, specially commissioned glass art award trophy.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• 3 month social media advertising package (Beautiful Bizarre Magazine: 2 million+ followers across all social media platforms).
• Winning artwork published in the December 2026 issue of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

2nd prize winner will receive:

• $1,500 USD cash, generously donated by Rosemary Brushes, the finest quality handmade Artists’ Brushes.
• $500 USD cash, generously donated by Art & Fable Puzzle Company, whose mission is simple: to kindle curiosity and ignite enthusiasm for visual art, through the simple and profound pleasure of puzzling.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

3rd prize winner will receive:

• $1,000 USD cash, generously donated by Rosemary Brushes, the finest quality handmade Artists’ Brushes.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

The Winners in each Award category and the Grand Prize Award Winner will be invited to participate in the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine curated exhibition ‘Glimmer’ at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, CA, United States later this year, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists!

A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger. Glimmers are small, everyday moments that make you feel joy, happiness, peace, or gratitude – which can help cue your nervous system to feel safe or calm. [The term was coined by Deb Dana.]

From the 200 Finalists across all Award categories, the Jury Panel will select the Grand Prize Award Winner.

The Grand Prize Award Winner of the 2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize will receive:

• $10,000 USD cash, donated by our Platinum sponsors Catherine K. Gyllerstrom, Bearwolf Books, INPRNT, RAYMAR, 33PA and MPB.
• A beautiful, specially commissioned glass art award trophy.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• 10 page in-depth interview editorial published in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine December 2026 issue.
• Winning artwork printed in the December 2026 issue of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, as part of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize editorial.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• 12 month social media advertising package (Beautiful Bizarre Magazine: 2 million+ followers across all social media platforms).
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award

The Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award Winner will be selected by popular vote from the 200 Finalists [25 per Drawing, Digital Art, Photography, Sculpture, Imaginative Realism and Emerging Artist Award category, and 50 for Painting Award category].

The Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award Winner will receive $1,000 USD cash, a year’s worth of social media advertising through the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media [2+ million followers], and a 12 month membership to the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory to ensure they are able to connect with the right audience of engaged creatives, collectors, curators and gallerists. Enabling them to raise their profile, associate their work with other leading creatives, and of course to grow their social media following. Plus more!

Voting will open on 2 September [AEDT, Australian Eastern Daylight Time]. To ensure you don’t miss your chance to vote, please join our email mailing list here.

In addition, each sponsor will choose one outstanding work from their award category to receive an Honourable Mention. Stay tuned to learn more!

See the BearWolf Books Emerging Artist Finalists here, the Sculpture Award Finalists here, the MPB Photography Award Finalists here, the INPRNT Digital Art Award Finalists here, the 33PA Drawing Award Finalists here, and the Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award Finalists here.

So without further ado we are proud to announce the RAYMAR Painting Award Finalists of the 2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize…

RAYMAR Painting Award Finalists

2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize

The Garden explores the landscape as a living organism that reshapes the experience of those who inhabit it. Vegetation gradually envelops the figure, dissolving the boundaries between body and environment as the pictorial space shifts between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Rather than depicting a place, the painting proposes a state of transformation in which perception itself becomes the landscape.

Adorned is a painting dedicated to art itself, to being an artist and the doubts that come with it. Being an artist is not a choice; if you are one, you must immerse yourself completely in the art. My model is a brilliant artist and I couldn’t resist painting him. To me, he embodies this belief.

“Cycles” was inspired by the season of life that I find myself in. I’m surrounded by the love and celebration of family and friends growing their families. Paintings become time markers of my life, capturing my reflection on these big and small changes that each new year brings. As one chapter comes to an end, another begins. I find peace and solace in examining the parallels between the natural world and our own lives.

This painting presents an allusion to the endless fall of Icarus, suspended outside the flow of time. Neither fully ascending nor finally defeated, he remains forever caught in the fleeting moment between ambition and inevitability. His wings, still vast and powerful, can no longer alter his fate, suggesting that even our greatest gifts cannot free us from the consequences of our own nature. Rather than illustrating the myth itself, the work reflects on a universal aspect of the human condition. Icarus’ endless fall symbolizes the part of us that is forever driven to reach beyond our limits, despite knowing the risks. It is this desire to transcend, to dream, and to challenge the impossible that defines both our greatest achievements and our deepest vulnerability.

As bionic and organic structures merge, the boundary of life blurs. This work explores the essence of existence: can an artificial being possess a soul once physical and sensory differences vanish? Dreams are the ultimate proof of self-awareness. By depicting a bionic shark dreaming of a cyborg, I explore the inner spiritual world of artificial life. This mirror relationship represents a profound moment of self-recognition—the shark identifies its own status as a “replica” by observing another. In this dream, it moves beyond mere biological response to find the true weight of its existence.

I created this work based on the theme: “At night, the soul dies once; through dreaming, the soul is purified; and in the morning, it is reborn.” “Reality” and “dreams”—I painted this piece with the hope that these opposing forces might be connected. In some areas, I used a technique where I applied multiple layers of colour to the base and then carved them away with a utility knife. This reveals subtle, rainbow-like hues, and I hope these unique colours will help convey a dreamlike world.

Hidden Messages portrays my mother at a time of profound grief. Entwined in a veil of hair, she appears both fragile and resilient. A figure suspended between inner and outer worlds. The owls emerged after an unexpected moment during our photoshoot, becoming symbols of listening, intuition, and messages that may exist just beyond language. The painting explores how love and loss reshape our perception, and how we continue searching for connection even when silence seems absolute.

Blinded by his desire to possess her love, a prince slew a unicorn and offered its severed horn to a princess. The sacred relic, still bleeding, cursed her at its touch, binding her soul to its grief. She fell into an eternal sleep as centuries passed and kingdoms turned to ruins. Yet she remains untouched by time, cradling the horn whose wound never heals. Unwilling to die, it denies death to its possessor, preserving both beauty and sorrow forever.

Using mirror imagery, this painting hopes to capture a sense of self-nurturing, of being kind to oneself. The lace a gentle reminder of how delicate our emotional well-being can be and the strength of our inner voice.

Created for Modern Eden’s group show, Year of the Horse. An exhibition in which artists use imagery of horses to symbolize entering into the new year.

Eclipse of the Son heralds a changing of order in human civilization, a transformation to a Way entirely new and most ancient. The character in the scene is Eve, mother of humanity and God’s first, most beloved child. She stands at the gates of Eden ready to return of her own free will, complete in the integration of knowledge received from eating the forbidden fruit. Oracles of the past and future fly above her shoulders keeping her centered as she steps clothed in self-understanding back into divine embrace.

I originally planned to create a painting themed on anatomy, but decided against it as the subject felt too somber and rational. The revised work depicts a pregnant mermaid maiden being treated by a rabbit doctor. Viewers are free to interpret it as they wish. For me, this piece conveys the inherent power of life, from which all the mysteries of the world derive. Pain makes the soul aware of the physical body, and every act we take is a quest to find the meaning of our own existence. Some friends read it as a commentary on marine pollution caused by nuclear wastewater discharge, which was never my intention. My focus lies in inner exploration rather than grand narratives. I have no interest in current events; literature and philosophy form the foundation of my painting.

Winter Breakfast presents a quiet, introspective scene: a young woman seated before a sparse morning table, set against a luminous winter landscape. Snow-covered houses, bare trees, and distant birds create a sense of stillness, while the intimate foreground contrasts with the vast, contemplative world beyond.

When you get a moment to yourself, often you end up contemplating your day, your past, your future. In The Bath, the young woman is just entering adulthood. Some might interpret her as harboring nostalgia for the past, missing her childhood. Others might see her as remembering a trauma in her childhood, and how it has shaped her personality and immediate future. The fetal position she finds herself in could suggest a return to the safety of childhood, a kind of refuge rediscovered in the bath. The rubber ducks serve as reminders of simpler times—playthings once full of comfort and meaning, yet so easily left behind. In that way, The Bath becomes a meditation on the fragile threshold between innocence and experience, where memory, loss, and the longing for safety quietly collide.

The scene is theatrical, absurd, apocalyptic. I want this work to operate as an allegory for nature reclaiming agency in a world shaped and damaged by human dominance, while also reflecting on the nature of our own accountability. The Borzois, elegant yet comically inept, echo the structure of a traditional firing squad, where responsibility is diffused among the many and individual culpability dissolves in the group. In a lot of my work humour and visual ‘prettiness’ function as a deliberate entry point into darker themes. I wanted this piece to act as an absurd sort of mirror for a society adept at avoiding personal responsibility with collective anonymity.

My sister wrapped her nude reclining body in a sheet while I made graphite sketches of her supine figure. Her image brought to my mind the idea of transformation. A chrysalis is a casing formed around a caterpillar after shedding its skin to prepare for emergence as a butterfly. This phenomenon has become a cultural icon symbolizing transformation. My painting represents human metamorphosis as a wrapped figure whose crowned head emerges from her chrysalis. The kneeling figure is participating in this transformation as a personification of the emotionally charged thoughts and feelings that arise with change and renewal represented by a maple leaf and an oak leaf.

This work is about autism and people who live their lives with a constant feeling of being emotionally and mentally distant from others and reality, as if they exist and communicate with outer world from beyond the wall, as a snail being inevitably isolated in its shell. For me autism is a very personal and sensitive subject that I kept quiet about for a long time. All objects on the painting have meaning. In order to keep their fragile reality in balance people with Asperger Syndrome (now ASD) often gather objects that help them to feel more stable – a kind of material conductors to reality. It can be books, usually of specific subjects; art and music in a form that they can TOUCH – musical instruments, brushes, paints and canvases; also TOUCHABLE subjects from nature – leaves, stones.

This painting reimagines Sophocles’ tragic heroine Antigone, shown standing defiantly in a grand, ruinous gallery. She cradles a child — an imaginative reference to her son, who appears in the lost Euripidean play The Epigoni — signifying the enduring consequences of resistance and legacy. Behind her hangs Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865) by Nikiforos Lytras, anchoring the work within classical and art historical tradition. The empty frame and scattered pages evoke erasure, forgotten memory, and the fragility of cultural inheritance. Through this layered composition I depict the tension between private morality and public law.

Dave’s work is a celebration of human form in its potential for beauty and expressiveness.  Obscured ephemeral glimpses of perfection fuel his search for subjects and paint marks.  In his words, “God — and the devil — is in the details.”  Dave’s work often explores the human relationship to our world, in both a physical and spiritual sense.  “I’m obsessed with our timeless ‘elemental’ connection to our world, and the alchemical way our minds form imperfect explanations and mythologies to rationalize it. My own sensibilities tend toward agnosticism and science, but our profound need as a species to make sense of ourselves is essential to our psyche.  So, while our narratives are inherently fanciful, our need to explain our existence is certain.”

This piece is inspired by its namesake: certainty. As a general rule, I find that feelings of certainty, though comfortable, are incredibly dangerous things. Doubt is the impetus for seeking greater knowledge, whereas certainty is the terminus of inquiry. There is, perhaps, no more fascinating manifestation of the role of certainty in inquiry than the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, and a famous equation by Erwin Schrödinger. In this piece, both subjects, cats representing curiosity (one in sharp focus and the other in a blur, one inside the painting and the other outside of the painting), are ‘dead’ and the perpetrator is certainty itself.

I painted Medusa for my last show in May. I worked on this painting for over a year gradually developing the layers and characters of the different snakes. I wanted to relate the duality of her nature and her humanity. Some of the serpents attacking her some attacking each other. A metaphor for the complexity of self.

“Swiya Tew” is a shíshálh phrase expressing heartfelt gratitude. It refers to a safe harbour, the goodness of the land, and a loving return home. We are a part of nature, not apart from her, and she welcomes us back into harmony when we are ready to listen.

Anyone who visits Bath knows there is a possibility of spotting someone in Georgian dress – especially with Jane Austen’s 250 year anniversary last year. I wanted to capture Bath’s amazing and unique Georgian heritage – but today. Georgia works at The Jane Austen Centre – just round the corner from Princes Street. Her AirPods had stopped working the morning I captured her so I decided to include that within my painting – as she walked to work. I love the mix of ‘old’ – her yellow silk dress, the blind window, bath stone wall and signage font, side by side with ‘new’ – her AirPods, the yellow road markings and contemporary hair clip. I decided to title this work ‘Miss Bennet was an excellent walker’ – a gentle nod to Jane Austen fans and Pride and Prejudice.

Everything seemed to fall naturally into place when setting up this arrangement, from the rhythm of the pose to the movement of the drapery. That sense of flow seemed to carry into the working process itself. It was a painting that took me by surprise when I realized it was finished for it lacked all the usual moments of struggle that so often arise somewhere between the beginning and the end of a piece.

This painting depicts the ancient Greek muses guiding the creative process. Their dance twists and weaves various threads together, emerging partly out of their gowns. The male figures are pushed forward by their forces: Polyhymnia (the muse of sacred poetry) and Erato (the muse of romantic or erotic poetry). The arrangment actually began with sketches of choreography under development by Australasian Dance Collective, drawn from life in their studio. But it then went through a whole series of changes as I resolved the image Later I took indirect inspiration from Iris van Herpen for the styling of the gowns and included versions of a couple of my favourite relief sculptures from William Morris Hunt and Frederick Hart. Both pieces suggest to me a tumultumous but creative force.

A depiction of trauma and abuse. Not all haunted houses are inhabited by the supernatural.

This painting has been years in the making. In my twenties, while in Paris, I saw an older woman dressed in layers of lace and silk. Glamorous in her dishevelment, she carried an air of grace and resilience. I imagined she may once have been a dancer or performer. I sketched her over the years, and she came to embody the women I have known and admired: the beauty of ageing, the wisdom of experience, and the quiet strength with which we carry our dreams and burdens. Like the swan, she embodies grace through transformation.

An exploration of survivorship, strength, reclamation, and autonomy, “Survivor” is a visual metaphor based on the thought experiment of “choosing the bear”. As a survivor and artist I wanted to reflect upon my own journey in an effort to uplift and celebrate the bravery, sanctity, and autonomy of other survivors. This viral hypothetical speaks to the bravery of those faced with sexual violence while also highlighting the need for advocacy, community, education, and accountable recourse. Ultimately it is my greatest wish that this piece can allow others to feel seen, and encourage safe spaces for conversation. On the journey of survivorship we may emerge from the darkness into light and step into our own power, discovering that we ourselves are stronger than even the most ferocious beast.

Forgotten Tales explores the shifting nature of symbols through a contemporary synthesis of myth, legend, and archetypal imagery. By combining human and animal forms in an ambiguous, emotionally charged space, the work invites multiple readings rather than a fixed narrative. It reflects my interest in how different cultures interpret the same symbols in different ways, revealing meaning as something fluid, unstable, and continuously reshaped by memory, perception, and collective experience.

This piece has 56 individually painted birds in it. I have always longed to fly, I used to have dreams about it all the time. To me, birds represent freedom but also the fragile nature of life. The white elk represents power and a type of loving devotion and protectiveness. Here, the stag guards a young girl, my inner child. Flowers are woven into his antlers because he is a steward of the land and all the beauty and power of the world. At the top of the mountain, they find peace together, a moment of true connection with the universe. All of the birds here are native to the western United States and their native ranges overlap with the native range of wild elk. It is important to me that all of the birds are individually identifiable, real species.

Breaking the stillness of figurative art, Catfights #9 injects vibrant movement and satire into a classic medium. Through anachronistic, highly textured historical costumes, I craft humorous images from tense situations, mocking human pettiness. The fabric’s rich texture, heavy velvet and crumpled silk, becomes a playground for distortion. The series title says it all: it is about “catfights,” disarming drama through theatrical irony.

A chameleon (Furcifer pardalis) rests atop a 20th-century Chinese cloisonné teapot decorated with peonies, lotuses, and birds. Symbolizing patience, intuition, and adaptability, the chameleon changes color according to its mood and environment. It knows when to blend in, when to stand out, and moves through life with measured efficiency, conserving energy and respecting natural rhythms. The teapot is a rich symbol of generosity and quiet solitude, while its form suggests the ability to hold emotions and thoughts until the right moment to release them. Tempus Memores (“Time to Remember” in Latin) reflects the importance of remembrance, celebration, healing, and learning from the past.

A white bird offers a branch of red berries to the girl, as if marking the beginning of something — a meeting, an arrival, or a return. I am interested in these subtle moments when the world responds to us not through words, but through images. Here, nature is not presented as a landscape, but as an inner experience preserved by memory.

Wrapped in flowers, the female figure faces the viewer with a direct gaze, but her expression does not reveal her intentions or thoughts. She is absorbed in her own world, and her energy radiates from her in the form of a horizontal strip of flowers and foliage. She is formally dressed, and an earring dangles from one ear while a cap tightly covers her head. She is timeless – she could be a model for a contemporary fashion advertisement or a depiction of an ancient goddess welcoming rebirth.

Hedone is the goddess of Greek mythology, from whose name the word “hedonism” is derived. In this work, she is depicted as the ultimate symbol of pleasure, confined to a bed in a state of comatose slumber by an insect-obsessed boy. The boy’s obsessive love and his act of pinning down this beautiful entity mirror my own primal urge to create. Just as he seeks to capture and preserve an fleeting ideal, my brush captures the chaotic intersection of desire, confinement, and dark devotion. This piece reflects the inescapable madness of the creative impulse itself.

The Witch explores the relationship between individuality and archetype. The portrait deliberately resists conventional standards of beauty, presenting a face that is distinctive rather than idealised. The title emerged intuitively after the painting was complete, reflecting the psychological presence of the figure rather than a fixed narrative. By naming the work after a timeless human archetype, the painting encourages viewers to question how identity is constructed through both appearance and collective imagination.

There is a bend in the river at the edge of the woods, where nearby a blue heron nests. It stabs at the water like a lightning strike and snatches out a minnow after having been statue – still for minutes on end. I spend what time I can settled into the still places of the land around my house, observing. I wanted to write the heron into a narrative about its living alongside us, but in lives past and places left behind, as seen in The Water’s Edge. The bird pulls an old photograph from the river with the same instinctive ease that it catches its minnows. Behind it stands a small old homestead on a hill. The woman in the photo from the 1940s was in a stack of old family portraits and snapshots, but I don’t know of what relation she is to me.

In this world today, people need hope more than ever before – reassurance that beyond the torrent, after the exhale, there is beauty and warmth. There is so much ugliness, yet humanity is so incredibly beautiful.

Since 2012, my work has centered around finding common ground between the world we experience and the worlds we are. My oil painting process is integral to this. It allows me to work intuitively, through the lens of my feminine psyche, to explore directions I couldn’t have anticipated. The Belonging II is part of my ongoing search to understand how to respond to questions that can only be sensed.

This painting is about transforming pain into healing. Pearls are formed naturally when a parasite or debris enters the shell of a mollusc and as a defence mechanism the mollusc secretes layers of calcium carbonate which over time creates a pearl. The poppy growing from the wrist vein is a symbol of remembrance: to remember the trials of the past. The pearls are a symbol of the beauty transfigured from the pain or talismans of resilience.

In my paintings I explore the instinctive sense that the world is more deeply inhabited than we recognise. I am fascinated by the possibility that the world contains lives unfolding alongside our own, hidden in plain sight. They feel at once like forgotten memories and unrealised possibilities, as though they have always existed just beyond the limits of our perception. The painting becomes a looking glass through which the veil briefly slips, revealing a fleeting glimpse of what lies beyond ordinary understanding while reflecting something of our own unknown selves. The viewer becomes an accidental witness, arriving for only an instant before the ordinary closes around them again. The recurring childlike figures in my work are not symbols of innocence but timeless custodians and participants.

The young Dryad Daphne protects herself by growing leaves and roots.

The painting “Death and the Maiden” follows an old folk tradition in German art. In this version death is depicted as a grim but gentle companion in the maidens last moments. He holds her in the midst of a foggy field, raises her from the ground while she draws her last breath upon seeing him. In the distance a figure walks away. This painting acts as a portrait of both characters, it shows death as a part of nature, almost growing out of the landscape itself like a tall tree, and the mystery and tragedy of the maidens fate, whose story is told through her expression. Ultimately, it is up to the viewer to guess what her true story really was.

This painting was inspired by the short poem “Passing and Glassing” by Christina Rossetti.

My paintings transform everyday reality into poetic, dreamlike worlds where memory, nature, and the subconscious intertwine. Through layered symbolism and luminous imagery, I explore transformation, vulnerability, and the quiet mystery of existence. Each painting invites viewers to slow down, discover their own narrative, and reconnect with the sense of wonder that often disappears in everyday life.

By ‘North of Earthly Reason’ I wanted to imply that this is outside of logical reason, a following of pure intuition, convoluted as little as possible by overthinking. I feel like art is a portal to an adjacent headspace, one where the lines between colours, music and form blur and sing with vitality and life. This is an attempt at capturing that place.

One of the most iconic animals in the world, dwindling numbers out in the wild. From pure relentless hunter, definition of fearlessness and solitary perfection, to a luxurious pet for private zoos and wealthy heirs of misplaced fortunes. Wasting away on pretty carpets instead of breathing under the trees’ shade.

This painting is deeply personal and intimate. As if in a nutshell, I enclose my inner world—ordinary yet utterly fairytale and unreal. A strange, over-aestheticized romanticism of loneliness and isolation. Subtle, yet Rococo nonetheless. Or rather, “too much”—just the way I like it. Beauty encased in a jewelry-like shape. An embryo—an egg —a return to the womb. This is undoubtedly a painting about loneliness, about trying to enclose what is precious and hide it from the world. The mystery and charm of exotic Arabian Nights tales, crafted from a carpet found in a garbage can.

Les Fleurs du Mal is a homage to Baudelaire: not an illustration of chosen poems, but an attempt to hold the spirit of the collection as he first conceived it, before the trial of 1857 stripped six pieces from it. They were not restored until 1949. It is a dense composition. Three fatal women with their scythes, upright and inverted; three solar moons; an oriental city; a vegetal giantess; mosaic ruins, barricades, wrecks, a horizon of fire and ice. A boat borrowed from Waterhouse, mountains borrowed from Mucha. Composing it meant holding a broken scale in balance: one cannot tell whether all this is rising or withering. Everything seems to be collapsing, and yet it holds.

You fight, trying to climb that hill. struggling to overcome the elements, carrying just your body. only to find out when on top that it wasn’t what it seemed. it wasn’t gravity that pulled you down, no windblasts kicking you away. looking down you see you. dozens of versions of you, battling each other, kicking, scratching, pushing, pulling, in fear of falling, in fear of failing, as if life depended on it. Not one seeing that the fight their fighting is with no one else but themselves.