Denise Henley | Portrait painter

Born in Guyana, South America, Denise Henley first realized her artistic passion at the tender age of eight. She spent much of her young life immersed in drawing.

As an adolescent, she moved to the United States to study art and after obtaining a B.A in Visual Arts, went on to pursue a career as an artist.

While she works in several mediums and subject-matters, her passion lies in capturing the beauty of the human figure. A constituent of realism, she continuously strives to perfect her drawing skills, believing it to be the backbone of the portrait process.

Balthus | Modern painter

Balthus, pseudonym of Balthazar Klossowski, also spelled Balthasar Klossowsky (born February 29, 1908, Paris, France - died February 18, 2001, La Rossinière, Switzerland), reclusive French painter who, in the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait.

He is best known for his controversial depictions of adolescent girls.

Eduard Gordeev | Impressionist Cityscape photographer

Eduard Gordeev /Эдуард Гордеев is a talented photographer who lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He creates artistic landscape photo series of his beloved city St. Petersburg.

These magnificent cityscape images look impressive and atmospheric with a bit of effect of acrylic paintings.

These urban streets seem drenched in mystery and rain.

His captures look as if they were acrylic paintings.

The reflections of city lights and all melting colors turn them into extraordinary pieces of art.

Vatican Light Show Calls Attention to Climate Change

Pope Francis inaugurated a special year of Mercy at the Vatican on Tuesday but fears of terrorism meant that the crowds in St Peter’s Square were much more modest than expected.

The Vatican had hoped that up to 100,000 people would take part in an open-air Mass in the huge Renaissance piazza, but in the end an estimated 40,000 people attended.

Pope Francis inaugurates special Year of Mercy.

Cornelia Hernes, 1979 | Classical Realist painter

Cornelia Hernes was born and raised in Norway until the age of twelve when her family moved to Africa where Cornelia went to boarding schools in Kenya and Tanzania. Much of her fascination with exploring the human condition through her paintings can be attributed to her early exposure to different cultures. Her work is centered on portraying and evoking a large scope of emotions, ultimately with the aim of celebrating life.

Maggie Taylor, 1961 | Digital Surrealist /Visionary painter

Maggie Taylor (born in Cleveland, Ohio) is an artist who works with digital images. She won the Santa Fe Center for Photography's Project Competition in 2004. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe and is represented within the permanent collections of several galleries and museums. She is the third wife of American photographer, Jerry Uelsmann.

She produces prints by scanning objects into a computer using a flatbed scanner, then layering and manipulating these images using Adobe Photoshop into a surrealistic montage.

Julius Olsson | Seascape painter

Albert Julius Olsson (1 February 1864 - 7 September 1942) was a British maritime artist and keen yachtsman.

He was born in Islington, London, to a Swedish father and an English mother. Olsson cruised with his yacht most summers, and The Studio (an illustrated fine arts and decorative arts magazine published in London from 1893 until 1964) commented: 'He knows the way from the Scillies to the Isle of Wight as most men know their way to the nearest railway station'.

He exhibited a painting of Newlyn in 1887, and sold a painting at Newlyn in 1897.

Henry Ossawa Tanner | Realist / Symbolist painter

Henry Ossawa Tanner, (born June 21, 1859, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.-died May 25, 1937, Paris, France), American painter who gained international acclaim for his depiction of landscapes and biblical themes.

After a childhood spent largely in Philadelphia, Tanner began an art career in earnest in 1876, painting harbour scenes, landscapes, and animals from the Philadelphia Zoo. In 1880 Tanner began two years of formal study under Thomas Eakins at Philadelphia’s prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he was the only African American.

Pablo Neruda / Maggie Taylor | Poetry / La poesia

And it was at that age... poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, not silence,

but from a street it called me,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among raging fires

or returning alone,

there it was, without a face,

and it touched me.

Georg Pauli | Symbolist /Cubist painter

Georg Vilhelm Pauli (2 July 1855 - 28 November 1935) was a Swedish painter.

Pauli was born in Jönköping. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1871-75 and 1878-79, and studied and worked in France and Italy for several years during the 1870s and 1880s.

He studied naturalist in- and outdoor painting, influenced by Bastien-Lepage. In 1887, he married Swedish painter Hanna Hirsch (1864-1940).

VR Morrison, 1976 | Figurative Realist painter

VR Morrison’s highly realistic and lavish paintings draw inspiration from classical painting traditions and allegorical subject matter which is mediated through the artist’s interest in popular culture, history and high fashion. This ultimately lends her paintings a fresh, contemporary edge and an often palpable, air of tension.

Born in Sydney Australia of Scottish, Samoan and Chinese heritage, VR Morrison ran away from school at the age of 15 to study fashion design.

Francis Picabia | Quotes / Aforismi

• La nostra testa è rotonda per permettere ai pensieri di cambiare direzione.
• Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.
• Notre tête est ronde pour permettre à la pensée de changer de direction.
• The devil follows me day and night because he is afraid to be alone.
• Il diavolo mi segue giorno e notte perché ha paura di essere solo.

Christiane Vleugels, 1963 | Timeless

Christiane Vleugels is a talented Traditional Artist from Belgium. Her giant Hyper realistic paintings seem to tell a story and invite you in for the experience.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Vleugels, see Christiane Vleugels, 1963 | Hyperrealist painter.

Hermin Abramovitch | Abstract photographer

Hermin Abramovitch is a talented photographer from Romania.

Currently living in Israel and working as a Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Manager at Harmonic at Harmonic. before he worked in Six Sigma Black Belt at GE Healthcare.

He studied at the Universitatea 'Politehnica' din Bucuresti, Romania.

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD).

Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in ancient Greece is the period of Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC.

Classical Greece began with the repelling of a Persian invasion by Athenian leadership. Because of conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered as the cradle of Western civilization.