Raquel Di Carvalho paintings are connected with trips, experiences, the closest children. Each of her painting carries a series of data and symbols of ancient ethnic groups. From there a connection is made to current world affairs which sometimes express an apocalyptic extreme. Her contemporary reference is the artist Gottfried Helnwein. Her work is related to psychological and sociological anguish, as well as historical and political issues, mainly with children.

A graphic designer by profession, Ivonne Bess (Cuban born) started creating colored pencil portraits in 2011. Since then, her work has been displayed in various group shows as well as in a successful solo show at the start of 2020. Specializing in "fan art", her portraits have been sought after from collectors nationally and internationally. She currently resides in in the Midwest.

Working primarily in pastel and charcoal Daggi Wallace pushes the more traditional boundaries of the medium by incorporating other materials into her work and presentation. Inspired by her dual cultural life of growing up in a divided Berlin and now dividing her time between the U.S. and Europe she mixes realism with abstraction and personal narrative with social and political undercurrents.

Lydia Rose Spencer is a figurative oil painter whose work is inspired by stories, people, and the complexity of our shared human experience. She uses light, color, and expressive brush strokes to convey emotion into her subject matter. Lydia’s style is heavily influenced by the Impressionists and their use of paint. She allows the volume and texture of the oil paint to add physical and emotional dimension to her work. She feels a deep connection to the female story and the many roles that women play in society; the themes of her work center around these ideas. She is drawn to capturing complex and often difficult subjects and emotions in simple and powerful compositions.

David Morris was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1969 and then received undergraduate and graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University respectively. His figurative realism stems from an intense and persistent interest in human anatomy from multiple perspectives: beauty in form, function, and structure. While continuing to teach anatomy at the medical school level, he uses charcoal, graphite, and oil paint in his artwork to convey something beyond the scientific aspect of the body. Morris has a deep affection for working from life. He strives to share something about what he experienced in the presence of the person represented. In this process of portraying people he explores concepts of psyche, intimacy, and gaze as it relates to gender. 

Kathrin Longhurst's high-realist, figurative painting practice intentionally transforms difficult encounters of oppression and adversity into powerful and positive messages of hope and change. Having grown up in former communist East Germany, Longhurst's family escaped to Sweden when she was 15. The experience of this displacement, compounded by the jarring contrast between living within a totalitarian regime and that of a Western capitalist democracy was the spark that ignited Longhurst's enduring commitment to issues of social justice and freedom of speech.

Paulina Aubey’s LEGO portraits ingeniously merge popular form with popular content in order to question our relationship to celebrity. Having begun her artistic career working with pastels, Aubey’s passion for pop culture inspired her to try her hand with a more popular medium: LEGO bricks. She has elevated this unusual medium to the status of fine art, creating expressive portrayals of contemporary icons and the idols of her 1980s childhood.

Ingrid Capozzoli Flinn works primarily in oil, but also experiments in water media. Her main subject is the figure in an interior space, primarily working with the female nude. She uses the female form as a vehicle of expression, transforming the body, morphing the figure and interpreting the form through color, light, form and space. Her interests include a strong sense of light, the iconic figure, the silhouette, chiaroscuro and most recently opacity and translucency with an emphasis on building the forms and space through layers of paint and mark making. In essence, she works both within the western tradition of painting, but also extends it to express a personal vision of the world.

Pegah Samaie is an American-Iranian artist who was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran. Pegah’s art moves through the shadow of her past life. She uses art as a tool to face the experiences she and other women have encountered in a culture dominated by patriarchal governments and households.

Judith Peck is a Washington, DC area allegorical figurative artist who has made her life’s work to paint about history and healing, using a variety of methods and experimental techniques to achieve a diverse range of visual and tactile results that validate a strong narrative.

Carlos Fentanes is a Canadian self-taught artist originally from Mexico City, known for his photorealistic ballpoint pen drawings, as well as his work in oils and graphite. Fentanes explores themes related to the basic problems of humanity, including love, family, food, and transcendence, often drawing inspiration from his own family and childhood experiences.

J. Adam McGalliard, a Contemporary Realist artist, blends classical oil painting techniques with cutting-edge technology to investigate identity, myth, and societal divides. His layered work delves into personal narratives, archetypes, and human-nature relationships.

Nicole Alger’s figurative work is influenced by animism and human ritual as set in imaginary natural environments. Through her content and obvious brushwork, the paintings suggest movement and connection with an imagined environment. The vibrant colors are a symbolic language used to depict the inner world.

The New York painter John Hyland specializes in portraits and figure studies, though his oeuvre also includes still life, floral studies and depictions of the land, the sea and the city. Whether the subject is a friend, a model or a flower, John’s paintings utilize color, form, light and line while exploring emotional and psychological beauty and truth.

Anna Cyan is a passionate student of the human condition. As a realist, she grounds her paintings firmly in the figurative domain. But realism is not an end in itself. Anna depicts people in states of inner emergency – or emergence. Anna’s true subject is what it’s like to be alive.

Amy Sherald’s vibrant portraits celebrate the multiplicity of Black identity. Her paintings often feature solid pastel backgrounds that allow her subjects’ demeanors and intricately detailed outfits to take center stage. Sherald’s intimate style has won her fans around the world, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, who tapped Sherald to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Sherald, who received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, has exhibited in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, and Dakar. Her work, which has sold for millions on the secondary market, belongs in the collections of the Nasher Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Embassy of the United States in Dakar.

Lorena Lepori's figurative oil paintings have a narrative based on the representation of feminine figures beyond gender, relating to everybody who can express the power of femininity. She uses cross-dressing to reach out and create iconic alter egos to expand and embrace a hidden part of her models’ personality through look transformation. She relies on myths, fairytales and clichés challenging the traditional representation of the matters, re-introducing them in a contemporary setting, mixing old and new symbols to relate more with universal concepts.

A figurative oil painter based in Louisville, Kentucky, Debra Lott focuses on the female form with a desire to empower women and reflect upon the human experience. She sees her work as a way of recording the world through her own shared experience as a woman, addressing socially conscious themes and expressing deep human values and emotions. Her process of translating photography into painting is not a straightforward “photo-realist” approach but one that is tailored by subjective responses to the photograph and relationship with the model. Focusing on anatomy, lighting, and the textures of fabric and skin, she expresses feelings and sensations in the act of painting, that go beyond simply reproducing a photographic representation.

Mythology, sex, religion, transition and camp can all be found in the art of Victor Gadino. He is a New Yorker now living and working in Miami. He is an award winning artist and illustrator who holds an MFA from Pratt Institute. His dramatic figurative oil paintings and pencil drawings reimagine classical themes.

Through a detailed oil painting and drawing technique, contemporary artist Diana Carolina finds in her painting the aim to give visual form to the processes of introspection, interpretation, creation and relationship with reality and with herself. The artist is best known for her unique portraits made with a careful and meticulous realist technique. Diana`s work has been exhibited on several galleries and museums in cities such as Puebla, Mexico City, Querétaro, London, Miami, New York, Madrid, Los Angeles, and most recently in Barcelona, forming part of the renowned art contest ModPortrait 2021 at the MEAM.