Masakatsu Sashie

Masakatsu Sashie

Masakatsu Sashie’s fantastic “orb” paintings depict large, city-like spheres that float gently above the remains of a failed civilization. The giant orbs, which seem to be self-contained worlds unto themselves, are pieced together from the scraps of old Showa-period buildings and bits of consumer culture, such as vending machines, pachinko parlors, fast food signs, and video game components. Part retro and part sci-fi, the orbs appear to hover gracefully between the worlds of a nostalgic past and a dystopian future.

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden came to preeminence in the 1990’s during a time when many artists, critics and collectors were quietly championing a return to the art of painting. With his masterful technique and disquieting content, Ryden quickly became one of the leaders of this movement on the West Coast.

Upon first glance Ryden’s work seems to mirror the Surrealists’ fascination with the subconscious and collective memories. However, Ryden transcends the initial Surrealists’ strategies by consciously choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation. His dewy vixens, cuddly plush pets, alchemical symbols, religious emblems, primordial landscapes and slabs of meat challenge his audience not necessarily with their own oddity but with the introduction of their soothing cultural familiarity into unsettling circumstances.

Viewers are initially drawn in by the comforting beauty of Ryden’s pop-culture references, then challenged by their circumstances, and finally transported to the artist’s final intent – a world where creatures speak from a place of childlike honesty about the state of mankind and our relationships with ourselves, each other and our past.

Clearly infused with classical references, Ryden’s work is not only inspired by recent history, but also the works of past masters. He counts among his influences Bosch, Bruegel and Ingres with generous nods to Bouguereau and Italian and Spanish religious painting.

Over the past decade, this marriage of accessibility, craftsmanship and technique with social relevance, emotional resonance and cultural reference has catapulted Ryden beyond his roots and to the attention of museums, critics and serious collectors. Ryden’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a recent museum retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Mark Ryden was born in Medford Oregon. He received a BFA in 1987 from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles where he paints slowly and happily amidst his countless collections of trinkets, statues, skeletons, books, paintings and antique toys.

Michael Hussar

Michael Hussar

Driven by love, hate, sin, redemption and death, Michael Hussar's oil paintings present the viewer with a contextual maturity that is both confrontational and evocative. Hussar describes his work as "a voyeuristic snapshot of perceived humanity, complete with freaks and fakery; a gothic wonderland illuminating the gray area between truths and lies." Hussar's attachment to his paintings runs deep; each piece is a journal of sorts, allowing him to come face to face with his demons and exorcising them with each new stroke of the brush. Hussar's paintings are in the private collections of Warren Beatty, Francis Ford Coppolla and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Michael Cheval

Michael Cheval-official website

Michael Cheval is the world's leading contemporary artist, specializing in Absurdist paintings, drawings and portraits. In his definition, "absurdity" is an inverted side or reality, a reverse side of logic. It does not emerge from the dreams of surrealists, or the work of subconsciousness. It is a game of imagination, where all ties are carefully chosen to construct a literary plot. Any one of Cheval's paintings is a map of his journey into illusion. His work is often metaphorical and requires a sharp eye to decipher the often hidden allusions.

Alexei Ravski

Alexei Ravski

Alexei Ravski unites landscape painting with the art of the surreal in his dramatic, large-format compositions. Meticulous in technique, they are marked by a striking use of perspective that invites the viewer to step into the fantasy.

Born in 1961, Alexej Ravski exhibits in France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, the United States, Belarus and his native Russia.

Victor Safonkin

Victor Safonkin

Safonkin’s surreal paintings deftly explore and expose human emotions ranging from pathos to elation through bizarre and unworldly images that appear to the artist in dreams.

Safonkin’s mastery of perspective, composition, color and anatomy, and his exploration of themes including philosophy, religion, and mythology create incredibly powerful narratives. In Safonkin’s work we see the decline of the individual in an age of a corrupt modern civilization whirling swiftly toward complete urban decline; yet Safonkin continues to search for meaning within the madness and the possibility that man will reclaim his soul and emerge reborn whole.

In the words of artist, producer, and director Terry Gilliam:

"Far too much modern art is intellectually vague, emotionally sterile, abstract and conceptual.... In contrast, Viktor Safonkin's art confronts the human condition head on with powerful mythic images all sumptuously rendered in an unapologetic classical style that reaches back into an ancient past to rub shoulders with the likes of Brueghel and Bosch."

Safonkin won the Salvador Dali prize from the Alliance Salvador Dali International (2000); the Franz Kafka medal from the Franz Kafka European Society (1996); and was an honorary professor of art from the Accademia Internazionale Grecia-Marino, Italy (1999). In 2007, Safonkin had a solo exhibition at the H.R. Giger Museum, Gruyère, Switzerland. He also participated in the European Parliament exhibition (2007) and the inaugural exhibition of the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Berlin, Germany, (2008). His work hangs in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fantastic Realism, Zeist, Holland, and the Museo Internationale D’Arte Surrealista, Gallipoli, Italy.

Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell

N. Rockwell Museum

"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed."

N. Rockwell

Since his work is categorized as illustration and was most famously featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, fine art critics were slow to acknowledge the importance of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) as true artist, though his work was enormously popular during his lifetime and has endured as a crucial element in America's perception of itself in the 20th century. Through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, the 1950s and 60s, Rockwell illustrations were a part of daily life, showing, as he once said, "the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed."