In the peculiar and multicoloured landscape of contemporary art, Wouter Steel’s oeuvre tries to capture it’s own space. Averse from trendy and hollow boasting, but with a headstrong stubborness and attention for the metier, he tries to turn a personal mythologie in to sensual and compelling images wich stay burned on the retina long after. He knows and honours his old masters. His paint application is very intuitive and his finishing touch fanatic, everything to create the perfect illusion. His oeuvre is a neverending search for true authenticity, never totally adequate, neither sufficient. His themes are contemporary and universal, sometimes alluring, sometimes humoristic, but always with an underlying existentialist questioning to the essence of seduction, and the sense and nonsense of our society. The versatility of his ever changing thematic and stillistic aproach betray a rich imagination, connected with a precise and merciless perception.

In love with this huge grey polystyrene bottle rack sculpture created by contemporary artist Vincent Mauger (Born in 1976 in Rennes, France).

The artwork and photographs of Ilana Denis Bauer have been described as sophisticated and alluring, but it was before her formal training as an artist that Ilana’s skills began to unfold. Since her early years, drawing and crafting things by hand has been a part of every day life, as the arts were often encouraged and cultivated in the home. In addition to the creation of original art, she designs stationery, wedding invitations, and photographic albums. While attending the art and design school Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, a Bachelor of Fine Arts was earned from acquiring skills in both the fine arts and graphic communications. Academic studies of the history of art and graphic design contributed to a foundation in this field. A native of Chicago, Ilana now resides in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she continues to gather inspiration in the every day culture of this lower-Rhineland city and its surroundings. Family and friends, nature, history, and personal events also take a role in the subject matter of her drawings and photographs. Ilana’s illustrations have been featured in magazines such as Nylon Guys and Gallery Magazine Barcelona.

The portfolio of Anny Wong is definitely worth a look. She is a a film major at Rhode Island School of Design. Check it out.

“The series ‘Mouse Milk‘ was inspired by the characters of early Slavic mythology who change their form from story to story and vary between animal, human and object qualities. Those creatures seem not quiet adjusted to our world, are missing essential parts, sprouting inexplicable organs and are therefore sympathetic to our own human weaknesses and limitations.” – Nika Kupyrova

Robert Carter is an award-winning illustrator. He was born in St. Albans, England, and moved to Ontario, Canada, at an early age. Robert combines a strong foundation in portraiture with a unique sense of visual and conceptual problem-solving to create striking, vibrant, and textured illustrations and portraits with subjects ranging from the realistic to the surreal. Robert now lives and works as a freelance illustrator in Baden, Ontario, Canada.

Marc Quinn’s wide-ranging oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual. Using an uncompromising array of materials, from ice and blood to glass, marble or lead, Quinn develops these paradoxes into experimental, conceptual works that are mostly figurative in form.

Diggin’ the work of T. Dylan Moore, an illustrator currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. I look forward to keeping an eye on this guy’s work.

‘Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde installs miniature clouds in empty gallery spaces. But these are neither digital manipulations nor fluffy Poly-fil sculptures strung from the ceiling. The cloud works are, in fact, real, with Smilde using smoke, moisture, and spot lighting to conjure up his momentary creations. His latest work, Nimbus II repeats the artist’s first experiment (Nimbus, 2010) in which he spun a rain cloud in the center of an immaculate studio gallery, whose blank, polychromatic walls further underpinned the Surrealist imagery.’

Kelsey Dake is an illustrator based in Phoenix, AZ. Click here for the link.