realism – Circle Foundation for the Arts

Diane Liguori

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American painter, Diane Liguori was born in North Carolina, raised in upstate New York, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area straight out of college. She is a former advertising executive and a public biotech Chief of Staff who gifted herself with a hard-earned new creative career as both artist and writer. Diane has an MFA from San Francisco-based Academy of Art University and a studio located in the heart of the Alexander Valley in Geyserville, California. Her work has been shown and sold in private galleries as well as juried regional, national and international exhibitions. Diane is a member of American Women Artists, California Art Club, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

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Akshita Lad

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Akshita’s art originates either from an emotional, autobiographical point of view or from a point of view based on the reality around her. She is led to intuitively paint with emotional freedom when she is creating her abstract expressionist works. When painting the reality around her, whether inspired by nature or people, she tends to follow more traditional techniques of painting.

Akshita paints with a lot of sensitivity and emotion. She uses colors, symbols and elements to imbue her paintings with a specific energy and meaning. Everything from the colors, textures, and brushwork come together in harmony and invite the viewer to connect with the emotions and story of her paintings. Her aim is to sustain this relationship - the instinctive, deep-rooted gut connection that is created between her works and her audience.

Akshita’s painting style is influenced by her love of the Renaissance and Impressionist Masters like Rembrandt and Monet. Whatever the subject matter, Akshita wants to create works that are timeless, elegant, and beautiful. Akshita Lad’s sense of aesthetics developed during childhood. While on family holidays visiting museums, she fell in love with the works of great masters like Da Vinci, Monet, and Rembrandt.

Akshita’s vast range of works includes portraits, landscapes and abstract expressionist paintings. Akshita is a believer that every thought and every creation has an energy and frequency. She uses this awareness to consciously creates art that amplifies messages of inclusion, positivity, joy and happiness. Whatever the subject, Akshita’s works display depth, elegance and beauty.

Akshita has shown at prestigious shows and galleries like Saatchi Art Gallery and the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. Her works have been selected for publication as well as in numerous online /open-call selections.

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Deimante Bruzguliene

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Liyuan Liu

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Liu Liyuan graduated from the Department of Dyeing and Clothing department at Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She loves painting and began to learn it during her childhood. Liyuan has completed research on classical and modern art and has excelled in studying figure painting. Now living in Vancouver, Liyuan has studied under the famous oil painter Xue Yanqun and the Chinese painting and calligraphy master Liang Zhaotang for many years.

Liyuan is also engaged in the application work of art advancement to famous schools in North America, helping students apply for prestigious schools in North America and Europe and has many years of experience with a 100% success! Her students have won many awards in the World Cup Art Drawing Competition and continuously published professional art guidance articles in the media such as Metropolis Daily, Global Chinese News, Afar, and Altitude, as well as accepted personal interviews.

In 2017, Liyuan did personal interviews with the columns of Canadian City TV "Elegance" and "Dating in the City." At the same time, she has been invited to give lectures on the Canadian Chinese Radio "Art Special Interview" and "Live Broadcast of the Guidance Series of Prestigious Art Schools".

In 2021 and 2022, she participated in the Vancouver artist group exhibition with five works. Liyuan's oil paintings have won awards in Switzerland; her watercolor works have also won awards on online exhibitions in the United States; her works have also been published in the well-known French artist magazine "Circle Quarterly Art Review."

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Art by Barbara

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Barbara Boeglin, born 1961, is a Swiss self-taught, amateur painter, working in oils and pastels. Her favorite subjects are flowers and realistic animals. She started painting in 2013, following the instructions of Bob Ross tutorials. After a few months of learning his style, Barbara discovered Gary Jenkins' TV shows. She studied his style in Berlin and got the Jenkins Art Teacher certificate. Barbara also visited Gary in his US home for three four-day semi-private classes.

Just for fun, Barbara took a painting class with Eric Wilson in Berlin. Eric paints realistic animals in oils and pastels. Barbara thought that this slow process would bore her, but she wanted to try anyway because of the beauty of Eric's paintings. Surprisingly she really enjoyed this slow, detailed process. This is when she started to paint animals in a realist manner.

In 2018 Barbara also began to paint with soft pastels and pastel pencils. The artist regularly takes three-day workshops with Eric Wilson in pastels. A few months ago, Barbara began employing a more impressionistic style in her paintings. She is always open to new technics and styles, for example, acrylic pouring.

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Elisabetta De María

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Born in Genoa, Italy, Elisabetta De María has cultivated a passion for drawing and painting since childhood. Growing up music absorbed her soul, and she graduated in Piano in just five years with Honors (10/10) from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin.

Later, Elisabetta was surprised to discover a strong passion for pastel portraits and a gift for producing incredible, hyper-realistic works which she exhibited in various shows.

In 2019, at the Wichita Convention, USA, she was awarded the CDA: Certificated Decorative Artist and she is the only Italian artist to have obtained the title. Elisabetta has been published in the American magazines Pixelated Palette, Painting Ezine, Painting World Magazine, Colored Pencil Magazine, Circle Quarterly Art Review, Canada Community's for Pastel Artists and of the Canadian magazine of Quebec, Coup de Pinceau.

Her projects have been included in Sharon Chinn's Sweet Patoodies Club and have been published monthly with great success since 2016. Elisabetta's works are exhibited in the most important pastel companies in the USA. Among the various awards received:

Honorable Mentions 2022 Red Rock Pastel Society of Nevada, Honorable Mentions of the Colored Pencil Art Competition 2022. In April 2022 she won The 51st International Artavita art Online contest, in May 2022 she was awarded the Certificate of Exceptional Merit Award conferred by the Appalachian Pastel Society and the June 16, 2022 the Certificate of Excellence Award in the Artist of the Month Competition Circle Foundation. In August 2022 he won the 54th International Artavita Online Art Contest.

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Yuqian Sun

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Yuqian Sun was born in Shenzhen, China, in 1997. At the age of 14, her long journey of studying abroad began. After graduating from Idyllwild Arts Academy in California, she earned her BFA degree at the University of Michigan in 2019.

Yuqian's career as a professional artist has never been derailed. At the age of 21, Yuqian published her original photography book and held her first personal exhibition. By now, her work has won prizes in multiple international art competitions and has been recognized by professional galleries, museums and art foundations in Europe, the United States, Japan and China.

Yuqian's art practice is derived from her photography works, which she started practicing when she was a kid. It was a pure hobby at first, but turnt into a long and comprehensive method of creation that carries her aesthetics. she aims to turn these externally lifeless models into internally living objects. Her work creates a poetic space that makes people reconsider where the borderline of life and lifelessness is.

Yuqian studied and experimented with traditional mediums, striving to refine her painting style into unique authorship. In her doll portrait series "Artificial Fairies" and "Gem in Their Eyes", she keeps looking for the ideal doll in the images she created.

Watercolor is the medium Yuqian has studied the most in the past nine years. The emotional intensity that emerges in the poetic flow of translucent color is the reason of her obsession with the medium. When working on representational paintings with watercolor, Yuqian imagines capturing a solid form with intangible materials like water and light. Yuqian has learned to be confident yet humble to cooperate with water instead of controlling it. Water-flow calms her down, teaches her to be honest with herself, and brings her inner world onto paper.

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Frank Soenke Haseloff

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"I've always been fascinated with the industrial revolution. I love the ingenuity of humans. We are always looking to find ways to overcome obstacles or to improve on what we do to make things more efficient. One thing that I am looking at as an artist is our relationship to those machines and the products of mass production. It’s fascinating how people have a way of personalizing inanimate objects. We have a way of taking something that was mass-produced and making it something unique and personal to us. Ownership and use of an object i.e., tools toys or machinery leave an impression or a mark that speaks to that person and how they used it or cared for it."

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Marju Must

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Marju Must is an Estonian artist born in Tallinn and currently lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. She graduated from Tartu Art College, Estonia with a BA (2017) in Painting and Painting Restoration. She has been on exchange studies in Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences' restoration department in Kouvola, Finland. There, after a second semester she completed thesis with Finnish artist, Kaapo Rissala, transferring to wallpainting restoration and conservation. In 2011, Marju graduated from the Euroacademy with BA degree on Interior Architecture.

Marju's art reflects her interest in human nature and emotions. Currently, her primary focus is on juxtaposing elements of reality with surrealism. Depicting a visual incentive and an emotion revived on the canvas are equally important for her. In her earlier work, she was more focused on depicting realistic details and developing technical skills, while lately her work has transformed into expressing emotional states in a freeer form of paint, with textures and layers.

Marju’s artwork has been shown in several exhibitions in Estonia. She has been participating in group exhibitions since 2012. Her first solo show "Painted Poems" took place in Võru Town Gallery in Võru, Estonia, where she illustrated poems with paintings. Marju has illustrated and had exhibitions about the children’s book “Story Cellar” in Saare Country Central Library and Orissaare Library, Estonia. Her first participation in an exhibition abroad, was the show "Fear" which took place online in Krakow, Poland 2021.

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Nathan Miller

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What themes does your work involve?

Today I am working on a new series that explores wild animals and indigenous human cultures from around the world. And while this series considers the stories, traditions and challenges that surround wildlife, it also emphasizes the need to protect and coexist with wildlife. This series celebrates both animals in the wild and indigenous cultures. Despite the history of conflict, as human populations increase and wildlife populations decrease, there will need to be a shift toward coexistence.

Describe your creative process.

When I begin a painting, I first do a significant amount of research on a topic. I learn more about the culture or species that I am depicting in my work. I create a digital mockup with many photos until I have a layout that I like. Once the mockup is complete, I begin sketching it out on gesso board. And only then, once the layout is ready, do I begin to paint. The painting can take many hours, weeks, and sometimes even months, to complete. It's a very meticulous process. Even when the painting is complete, the process continues with varnishing the art, preparing it for print and, finally, choosing the frame.

What influences your work? What inspires you? Why do you make art?

Humanity has been disconnected from the natural world for far too long. This outer and inner disconnection from nature is causing the world around us to fall apart. While we distract ourselves with our own pursuits, and as we place ourselves above all else, ecosystems disappear. Somehow, we must find a way to reconnect with the natural world, to appreciate the value of wildlife, and see ourselves as a part of the ecosystem. I find value in all emotional life, and I enjoy depicting that life in different scenarios. In fact, I’m particularly interested in stories that pertain to both animals and people.
I hope my work can, in some small way, help others value nature, animals, and the impact of narrative realism in art.

What is good art? What makes a piece of art great?

I think art fell from grace in the 20th century. It was a period of rebellion from standards that took centuries to perfect. Wall accents were given more glory than thought provoking, masterful creations of genius and wonder. The juvenile and ridiculous were valued more than the beautiful and skillful. Today, fortunately, great art, I believe, is making a comeback. So, what is great art? I think great art is the art that requires time, practice, and energy to perfect. It's the art that is considered masterful, not because of a propped-up name due to gimmicks and fame, but because of standards of design, composition, color, light, dark, shape, and the nature of creativity, meaning, and thought-provoking emotion. Good art has elements of this. Great art has all of it.

What is the role of the artist today?

I can't say what the role of every artist is, because every artist has their own story and their own purpose. But I can say that one thing artists have in common is the desire to speak their truth through their art. Artists simply wish to create - to share what is in them or, perhaps, what comes through them. The challenge today is how much of an artist's work is genuine, and how much is a response to what's marketable. I don't fault artists for attempting to find a balance between the two. If art is a career choice, then it's important for the art to be marketable. The trick is to find a way to speak authentically through one's art in a way that resonates with a particular audience.