Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a photographer whose work is influenced by nature transformed through industry. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are places outside of our normal experience, yet we have interaction with their output on a daily basis. He sets out to make it difficult for the viewer to ignore our human dependence on nature to provide material for our consumption. The photographs are at once attractive and repulsive, seducing and fear inducing.

Emily Robertson

Emily Robertson is an illustrator living and working in London. She is the co-founder of the artist collective PLATS, through which she has exhibited work in London, Glasgow and Germany. Her work has graced the walls of Marks&Spencers, the pages of Apartamento Magazine, and products of Poketo. It's easily assumed that she is well acquainted with good food considering her work for Marks&Spencer, possibly her most well known client. However, her sketchbook drawings and narrative portraits reveal a deeper world outside of her commissioned work and make her an artist worthy of watching.

Till Hafenbrak

Till Hafenbrak knows how to make the most of a limited palette. The Berlin based designer/illustrator uses unexpected and strongly contrasting colors to create vibrating landscapes of the natural world, often depicting animals and their interactions with humans. He also has a few commissioned works you can view on Flickr.

Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement as a painter and a graffiti artist under the tags "Meta" and "Matokie Slaughter." Kilgallen's paintings and murals reflected a variety of influences, including the dying art of hand-painted signs, elements of American folk art, mural painting, and a variety of formal painting strategies. At an early age, she was impressed by examples of works by Southwest and Mexican artists, and she employed these artists' use of warm colors in her own painting. Her works in gouache and acrylic on found paper (often discarded book endpapers) reflect an interest in typographic styles and symbology that can be traced to her work as a book conservator at the San Francisco Public Library in the 90's. She was the wife of artist and collaborator Barry McGee, a graffiti artist known under the moniker "Twist," among others. Kilgallen died in 2001, at age 33, from complications of breast cancer.

Victo Ngai

Victo Ngai's cultural background is hard to nail down: she speaks Chinese, English, and Japanese. She attended Christian schools, but is not Christian. She holds a British passport, but is not truly British. She is a Hong Kong citizen but holds no Chinese ID card. Her parents live in Hong Kong; her grandparents are Chinese American on the west coast. She goes to the Rhode Island School of Design.

Victo is an illustrator and finds her identity there. She takes strong influence from Japanese woodblock prints and Asian arts in general. She believes that style is overrated. "Style merely means one's habit of drawing based on one's own experiences. Therefore, everyone has a unique style because everyone has a unique life."

Victo works both traditionally and digitally. The lines are done with nib pens or rapidograph pens. The textures are done on different pieces of paper with various mediums, like graphite, acrylic, and oil pastels. Then everything is digitally composed and colored in Adobe Photoshop.

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski's solo show, "Timothy Galoty & the Dead Brains" runs through July 30 at Hauser & Wirth in NYC. At 30 years old, the Polish-born painter is one of the most critically admired young artists on the international art scene. The exhibition is named after a fictional rock band that serves as a kind of alter ego in Ziolkowski’s paintings. They portray a world of surreal landscapes and disturbing anthropomorphic imagery that vacillates between the familiar and the hallucinatory, the light and the dark. His work has been profoundly shaped by the folk traditions and lore of Poland, as well as its more recent, turbulent history. (Text taken from Vogue)

Carine Brancowitz

Carine Brancowitz is a French illustrator who began working as a junior art director in fashion and trend. Her simple lines have shown up in numerous magazines, websites, and blogs. Most recently, she's worked in apparel, doing a tour tee for Phoenix. She uses a limited palette, and brings in intricate patterns to create rich compositions. Her subject matter takes inspiration from fashion but has the sense of a deeper mood or story underneath.