Genevieve Simms

Genevieve Simms was born and raised in Newfoundland. She went west to study art in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and then to NY for a one year program at SVA. She is currently working and living in Edmonton, Alberta. Simms doesn't just illustrate people; They are characters captured in snapshots of their lives. Her latest work is full of saturated colors with bright pops that draw the forefront out of an otherwise flat perspective.

Mercedes Helnwein

Mercedes Helnwein was born in Vienna, Austria, daughter to painter and art provocateur Gottfried Helnwein. She grew up dedicating her time equally to visual arts and literature. At thirteen-years-old, she published a two-page comic for a German woman's-lib magazine. She spent her teenage years drawing and writing in Ireland where she relocated with her family. Later, she moved to Los Angeles where she officially began her career by contributing to a group show hosted by Jason Lee. Despite her success as a visual artist, Helwein continued to write and published her novel in 2008, "The Potential Hazards of Hester Day." Helwein currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Ireland, practicing in a wide range of mediums including oil pastels, paint, graphite, film, and continues writing.

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.