Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Dorris Vooijs likes to mix things up. Her artwork is an altogether unique crossbreed between painting, collage making, drawing, textile art, and digital art and it can’t be contained or defined properly. A mix of traditional and modern techniques, it relies on anything from acrylic and oil paints to spray paint, textiles, and Photoshop.
Having studied Fine Arts at ArtEZ University in Arnhem and later obtained a BFA in Drawing and Art History, Vooijs’ art is built upon a solid foundation, an experimentation with shape and form. “I like to see what happens when you cross digital stuff and layer that with traditional methods,” she explains on her website. “Building up and peeling pieces away or scratching my way back to the surface, until I feel that it might be time to step back and leave it alone.”
Though her pieces vary, the process is fairly straight forward and usually begins with an image found on the internet or in magazines. Often, these images become the physical basis for Vooijs’ work. Using digital sketches, prints, markers, spray paint, thread, and ink, she transforms the original images so that they reflect her life and her aesthetics.
“Some pieces took so long I almost gave up,” she relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “Actually, I did repaint a lot of my work… sometimes it’s just the quickest fix and besides that, it’s budget-friendly. I also often work on a couple of pieces simultaneously.”
[from: mobispirit.com/building-up-or-peeling-away-dorris-vooijs-unique-art/]
Music: Robert Rich "Never Alone"
Dorris Vooijs likes to mix things up. Her artwork is an altogether unique crossbreed between painting, collage making, drawing, textile art, and digital art and it can’t be contained or defined properly. A mix of traditional and modern techniques, it relies on anything from acrylic and oil paints to spray paint, textiles, and Photoshop.
Having studied Fine Arts at ArtEZ University in Arnhem and later obtained a BFA in Drawing and Art History, Vooijs’ art is built upon a solid foundation, an experimentation with shape and form. “I like to see what happens when you cross digital stuff and layer that with traditional methods,” she explains on her website. “Building up and peeling pieces away or scratching my way back to the surface, until I feel that it might be time to step back and leave it alone.”
Though her pieces vary, the process is fairly straight forward and usually begins with an image found on the internet or in magazines. Often, these images become the physical basis for Vooijs’ work. Using digital sketches, prints, markers, spray paint, thread, and ink, she transforms the original images so that they reflect her life and her aesthetics.
“Some pieces took so long I almost gave up,” she relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “Actually, I did repaint a lot of my work… sometimes it’s just the quickest fix and besides that, it’s budget-friendly. I also often work on a couple of pieces simultaneously.”
[from: mobispirit.com/building-up-or-peeling-away-dorris-vooijs-unique-art/]
Music: Robert Rich "Never Alone"
![Maki Horanai
Maki Horanai was born in Japan and presently lives in South East Queensland, Australia. She grew up in small seaside villages in Hokkaido, northern Japan, where she often sat or played along the beach.
Makis early influences were the ocean, the shore, the birds and islands she saw both in reality and in her imagination. She began painting in high school and continued through college and graduate school where she was strongly influenced by the colors and themes of western and eastern art.
[from: https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2011/07/maki-horanai-japan.html]
[http://makihoranai.com/]
Music: Alio Die Monte Analogo Maki Horanai](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L_y_dFTe1RI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Louis Apol
Lodewijk Frederik Hendrik (Louis) Apol (6 September 1850 in The Hague - 22 November 1936 in The Hague) was a Dutch painter and one of the most prominent representatives of the Hague School.
The talent of Louis Apol was discovered early in his life and his father ordered private lessons for him. His teachers were J.F. Hoppenbrouwers and P.F. Stortenbeker. He received a scholarship from the Dutch King Willem III in 1868. Louis Apol specialized in winterscapes. People/figures are seldom found in his paintings.
In 1880 Louis Apol took part in an expedition on the ss Willem Barents to Spitsbergen (Nova Zembla) in the Polar Sea. The impressions of this journey were a source of inspiration during his whole life.
His work is widely spread and found in the USA, United Kingdom and Germany. The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag have work of Louis Apol in their collection. A street is named after him in the neighborhood of streets named after 19th and 20th century Dutch painters in Overtoomse Veld-Noord, Amsterdam.
[from Wikipedia]
Music: Harold Budd & Brian Eno First Light Louis Apol](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LcrpfWq4nIg/mqdefault.jpg)
![Zdzisław Beksiński
Zdzisław Beksiński (pronounced [ˈzd͡ʑiswaf bɛkˈɕiɲskʲi]; 24 February 1929 – 21 February 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor, specializing in the field of dystopian surrealism. Beksiński did his paintings and drawings in what he called either a Baroque or a Gothic manner. His creations were made mainly in two periods. The first period of work is generally considered to contain expressionistic color, with a strong style of utopian realism and surreal architecture, like a doomsday scenario. The second period contained more abstract style, with the main features of formalism.
Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. He was a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Kraków Polytechnic with M.Sc. received in 1952. His paintings were mainly created using oil paint on hardboard panels which he personally prepared, although he also experimented with acrylic paints. He abhorred silence, and always listened to classical music while painting. Although he loved classical music, Beksinski also appreciated rock music.
An exhibition in Warsaw in 1964 was his first major success, as all his paintings were sold.
Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely and whilst listening to classical music. He soon became the leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his fantastic period, which lasted up to the mid-1980s. This is his best-known period, during which he created very disturbing images, showing a gloomy, surrealistic environment with very detailed scenes of death, decay, landscapes filled with skeletons, deformed figures and deserts. These paintings were quite detailed, painted with his trademark precision. At the time, Beksiński claimed, I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams.
The late 1990s were a very tragic time for Beksiński. His wife, Zofia, died in 1998; a year later, on Christmas Eve 1999, his son Tomasz (a popular radio presenter, music journalist and movie translator) committed suicide. Beksiński discovered his sons body. Unable to come to terms with his sons death, he kept an envelope For Tomek in case I kick the bucket pinned to his wall.
On 21 February 2005, Beksiński was found dead in his flat in Warsaw with 17 stab wounds on his body; two of the wounds were determined to have been fatal. Robert Kupiec, the teenage son of his longtime caretaker, and a friend were arrested shortly after the crime. On 9 November 2006 Robert Kupiec was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and his accomplice, Łukasz Kupiec, to 5 years by the court of Warsaw. Before his death, Beksiński had refused to loan Robert Kupiec a few hundred złoty (approximately $100 USD).
[from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Beksi%C5%84ski]
Music: Zero Ohms Glimpsing The Eternal Zdzisław Beksiński](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LcwpSlP5YVE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Sidney Sime
Sidney Herbert Sime (1867 – 22 May 1941, often S. H. Sime) was an English artist in the late Victorian and succeeding periods, mostly remembered for his fantastic and satirical artwork, especially his story illustrations for Irish author Lord Dunsany.
Sime was born in Manchester in poverty. After a five-year career in the mines, including as a scoop pusher, work at a linen shop, a barbers, and as a signwriter (setting up in his own right), he studied at the Liverpool School of Art. During his time there, he won several awards.
Sime quickly became famous for drawings and illustrations with fantastic themes, with a presence in Pick-Me-Up, The Idler and the Pall Mall Gazette. The fantastic treatment often masked biting satire, especially aimed at the rich and at politicians.
He received an inheritance after an uncle died and bought The Idler, but sold out within two years.
n 1904, Sime was approached by the author for whom he is most often remembered, the Irish Lord Dunsany, to illustrate his first book, The Gods of Pegana, finally published in 1905. This began an association which lasted for the rest of his life, with his illustrations especially prominent in Dunsanys earlier work (until c. 1922). For one volume, at least some of the stories were inspired by Sime works (The Book of Wonder), and for three, in special limited editions, each plate of illustration was signed by both author and artist.
Sime, who had produced a play with limited success in 1905, did both scenery and costume work for a number of productions, and had exhibitions in 1923 and 1927. In his later years, he produced less work but more in colour, his earlier work having been almost exclusively monochrome.
Today, Sime is best remembered for his work with Lord Dunsany.
At least four collections of Simes work have been published, though none are in print today.
Illustrator Roger Dean is among many who cite him as an influence.Writer H. P. Lovecraft was also a fan of his (mentioning the artist in the stories Pickmans Model and The Call of Cthulhu) as was Howard de Walden.
The Sime Gallery is still extant in the village of Worplesdon near Guildford but the most famous collections of Sime work belonged to Lord Dunsany and Howard de Walden. The latter is unavailable, and it is believed many were lost in a fire. However, the Dunsany collection, including all the originals of Simes work for Dunsany, plus a few other pieces, and notably with several in colour, can be viewed by arrangement at Dunsany Castle in County Meath, Ireland.
[from Wikipedia]
Music by Steve Roach, Robert Rich Sidney Sime](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ljr3ep726ws/mqdefault.jpg)
![Aria Fawn
Though born in the Otherworlds, she was mostly raised in Colorado. Aside from a brief portion in a rainy Washington town as a squawking infant. Which remains mostly irrelevant.She began drawing as soon as she could hold a crayon and has not stopped the madness since.
In her art, she likes to reflect the monsters she meetsthroughout the dayand their naturally unnatural habitats. Swirling skies with beasts sprouting clockwork from their bodies, deer manifesting from trees and embryos floating within moons are just some of the common visuals found in her work which she often refers to as surrealist in nature.
[More at:https://www.shepaintswithblood.com/about-the-artist/]
Music: Vidna Obmana Out From The Garden Reminded Aria Fawn](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/N3jh9qP4Aiw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Sulamith Wülfing
Sulamith Wülfing (January 11, 1901 – 1989) was a German artist and illustrator. The author Michael Folz explains that Wülfings art was a, realistic reflection of the world she lives in: she has seen the angels and elfin creatures of her paintings throughout her life.
Born in Elberfeld, Rhine Province on January 11, 1901 to Theosophist parents Karl and Hedwig Wülfing. She had a sister, Hedwig, who was born is 1905 and died in 1968. For the first five years of her life she and her parents lived in complete seclusion. As a child Sulamith had visions of angels, fairies, gnomes, and nature spirits. She first began drawing these creatures at the age of four. The visions continued throughout her life, and directly inspired her paintings.
Sulamith Wülfing graduated from the Art College in Wuppertal in 1921, and in 1932 married Otto Schulze, a professor at the Art College. Together, they created the Sulamith Wülfing Verlag (publishing house). During World War II, the industrial area around Wuppertal became a bombing target, and Wülfings house was destroyed, along with many of her paintings.
Her family became separated during the war, when she received a false report of her husbands death on the Russian front and fled to France with her only child; they were later reunited. Under the Nazi regime her books were often burned and she was told repeatedly to paint by the rules at the time, which were large heroic scenes with the leader of States.
Wülfing considered the religious teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti her spiritual mentor and guide, and believed his influence helped her through difficult times. Wülfing died in 1989 at the age of 88.
he mood of Wülfings work ranges from serene to wistful to deeply melancholic. The subject is often mysterious, with narrative elements at whose meaning the observer can only guess—exactly as the artist intended. In her own words: To people attuned to my compositions, they may well be mirrors of their own experiences. It is because of this that I have left the explanation of the drawings completely to the viewer, so that they are not bound by my interpretation of what each picture should be.
Characteristic Wülfing paintings feature slender, fair-haired, fay young women and men, with large eyes and sad or thoughtful faces, wearing elaborately patterned gowns or robes, and sometimes veils, snoods, wreaths, or jeweled crowns. These maidens are placed in outdoor settings of twilight woods and moonlit meadows, or in castle-like interiors with vaguely Gothic detail (stone arches, stained glass windows, carved throne-like chairs). Some of the patterns on the clothing and furniture resemble Norse and Celtic knotwork.
Brambles and thorns, moths and butterflies, feathers, leaves, and delicately rendered flowers add organic richness, texture and complexity to the images. Many of the paintings have a fairytale feel, with grinning dwarves and gnomes, knights in armor, dragons, and the like. Some have a holiday focus, usually Christmas or Easter. Several appear to depict the Annunciation. A black and white series portrays the Stations of the Cross. In the more spiritually-themed images, radiant winged beings appear to give comfort or counsel to troubled humans. Several of the paintings touch upon the theme of pregnancy and motherhood, while others echo the experience of loneliness and separation, and still others are indicative of love and fulfillment.
Wulfing said this about her work: My drawings are a visual representation of my deepest feelings - pleasure, fear, sorrow, happiness, humor. For me it is not a matter of creating illustrations to fit nursery rhyme themes. My ideas come to me from many sources, and in such harmony with my personal experiences that I can turn them into these fairy compositions. My Angels are my consolers, leaders, companions, guards. And dwarfs often show me the small ironies and other things to make me smile even in lifes most awesome events.
While she was best known for her work in painting and illustration, she also did some work in collages and tapestry.
A few of Wülfings books were published through Bluestar Communications. This publishing company was part of the New Age movement, which was a push for “therapeutic spirituality” in the 1970s.
During the artists lifetime, over 200 of her works were published in the form of postcards by the Sulamith Wülfing Verlag. A large-format book with forty color plates, The Fantastic Art of Sulamith Wulfing was edited by David Larkin. Published in 1977, the book is now out of print. During the 1980s, a series of limited edition commemorative plates featuring Wülfings art were issued. Wülfing also created a series of illustrations for Hans Christian Andersens story The Little Mermaid.
[from Wikipedia]
Music: Slow Dancing Society The Red Summer Sun Sulamith Wülfing](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NGpk3xiHZcw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Léon Spilliaert
Léon Spilliaert (July 28, 1881 November 23, 1946) was a Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist.
Spilliaert was born in Ostend, the oldest of seven children of Léonard-Hubert Spilliaert, who was a perfumer, and Léonie (née Jonckheere).From childhood he displayed an interest in art and drawing. A prolific doodler and autodidact, he was predominantly a self taught artist. Sickly and reclusive, he spent most of his youth sketching scenes of ordinary life and the Belgian countryside. When he was 21 he went to work in Brussels for Edmond Demon, a publisher of the works of symbolist writers, which Spilliaert was to illustrate. He especially admired the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Watercolor, gouache, and charcoal were the means by which he produced much of his best work, including a number of self-portraits executed in black crayon in the early years of the twentieth century. A significant influence on Spilliaert was Odilon Redon, whose expressive use of black finds parallels in his own work. Frequently depicting a lone figure in a dreamlike space, Spilliaerts paintings convey a sense of melancholy and silence.
His later work shows a concentration on seascapes. He died on November 23, 1946 in Brussels.
[from Wikipedia]
Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata in G minor Opus 19, Andante Léon Spilliaert](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NUb_k5kRSLM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth (/ˈwaɪ.ɛθ/ WY-eth; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.
In his art, Wyeths favorite subjects were the land and people around him, both in his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his summer home in Cushing, Maine. Wyeth often noted: I paint my life. One of the best-known images in 20th-century American art is his painting Christinas World, currently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This tempera was painted in 1948, when Wyeth was 31 years old.
In 1937, at age twenty, Wyeth had his first one-man exhibition of watercolors at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City. The entire inventory of paintings sold out, and his life path seemed certain. His style was different from his fathers: more spare, drier, and more limited in color range. He stated his belief that the great danger of the Pyle school is picture-making. He did some book illustrations in his early career, but not to the extent that N.C. Wyeth did.
Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily classified as a realist painter, like Winslow Homer or Eakins. In a Life Magazine article in 1965, Wyeth said that although he was thought of as a realist, he thought of himself as an abstractionist: My people, my objects breathe in a different way: theres another core—an excitement thats definitely abstract. My God, when you really begin to peer into something, a simple object, and realize the profound meaning of that thing—if you have an emotion about it, theres no end.
He worked predominantly in a regionalist style. In his art, Wyeths favorite subjects were the land and people around him, both in his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his summer home in Cushing, Maine.
Dividing his time between Pennsylvania and Maine, Wyeth maintained a realist painting style for over seventy years. He gravitated to several identifiable landscape subjects and models. His solitary walks were the primary means of inspiration for his landscapes. He developed an extraordinary intimacy with the land and sea and strove for a spiritual understanding based on history and unspoken emotion. He typically created dozens of studies on a subject in pencil or loosely brushed watercolor before executing a finished painting, either in watercolor, drybrush (a watercolor style in which the water is squeezed from the brush), or egg tempera.
On January 16, 2009, Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, after a brief illness. He was 91 years old.
[from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wyeth]
Music: Steve Roach & Vidna Obmana The Graceful Sky Andrew Wyeth](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OY1ebB4aFlE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Erik Satie - Gnossienne No.1
Alfred Eric Leslie Satie (Honfleur, 17 May 1866 Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist. Starting with his first composition in 1884, he signed his name as Erik Satie.
Satie was introduced as a gymnopedist in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a phonometrograph or phonometrician (meaning someone who measures (and writes down) sounds) preferring this designation to that of musician, after having been called a clumsy but subtle technician in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.
In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. He was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music and the Theatre of the Absurd.
Gnossienne is the name given to several piano pieces by French composer Erik Satie in the late 19th century.
Saties coining of the word gnossienne was one of the rare occasions when a composer used a new term to indicate a new type of composition. Satie had and would use many novel names for his compositions; for example, ogive had been the name of an architectural element until Satie used it as the name for a composition, the Ogives Similarly with vexations, croquis et agaceries and so on—but gnossienne was a word that did not exist before Satie used it to indicate a composition. Gnossienne appears to be derived from the word gnosis; Satie was involved in gnostic sects and movements at the time that he began to compose the Gnossiennes. However, some published versions claim that the word derives from Cretan knossos or gnossus and link the Gnossiennes to Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur myth.
The Gnossiennes were composed by Satie in the decade following the composition of the Trois Sarabandes (1887) and the Trois Gymnopédies (1888). Like these Sarabandes and Gymnopédies, the Gnossiennes are often considered dances. It is not certain that this qualification comes from Satie himself—the sarabande and the Gymnopaedia were at least historically known as dances.
The musical vocabulary of the Gnossiennes is a continuation of that of the Gymnopédies (a development that had started with the 1886 Ogives → Sarabandes → Gymnopédies → Gnossiennes) later leading to more harmonic experimentation in compositions like the Danses Gothiques. These series of compositions are all at the core of Saties characteristic 19th century style, and in this sense differ from his early salon compositions (like the 1885 Waltz compositions published in 1887), his turn-of-the-century cabaret compositions (like the Je te Veux Waltz), and his post-Schola Cantorum piano solo compositions, starting with the Préludes flasques in 1912.
[from Wikipedia]
Artwork:Remedios Varo
Played by:Daniel Varsano Erik Satie - Gnossienne No.1](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PLFVGwGQcB0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Camille Saint-Saëns - The Swan
Le Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns.
Le Carnaval was composed in February 1886 while Saint-Saëns was vacationing in a small Austrian village. It was originally scored for a chamber group of flute, clarinet, two pianos, glass harmonica, xylophone, two violins, viola, cello and double bass, but is usually performed today with a full orchestra of strings, and with a glockenspiel substituting for the rare glass harmonica.
Saint-Saëns, apparently concerned that the piece was too frivolous and likely to harm his reputation as a serious composer, suppressed performances of it and only allowed one movement, Le Cygne, to be published in his lifetime. Only small private performances were given for close friends like Franz Liszt.
Saint-Saëns did, however, include a provision which allowed the suite to be published after his death, and it has since become one of his most popular works. It is a favorite of music teachers and young children, along with Prokofievs Peter and the Wolf and Brittens The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra.
Le Cygne (The Swan)
Two pianos and cello: This is by far the most famous movement of the suite, often performed sole and is used to showcase the interpretive skills of the cellist. The lushly romantic cello solo is played over rippling sixteenths in one piano and rolled chords in the other.
[from Wikipedia]
Artwork:Leonora Carrington Camille Saint-Saëns - The Swan](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PXAlznKcJvA/mqdefault.jpg)
![Virginia Frances Sterrett
Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1931) was an American artist and illustrator.
Sterrett received her first commission at the age of 19 (shortly after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis) from the Penn Publishing Company to illustrate Old French Fairy Tales (1920), a collection of works from the 19th-century French author, Comtesse de Ségur (Sophie Fedorovna Rostopchine).
A year after the publication of Old French Fairy Tales, a new title including commissioned works from Sterrett was presented by the Penn Publishing Company—Tanglewood Tales (1921). From 1923, in failing health, Sterrett was able to work on projects for short periods of time only and as a result, she was able to complete just one further commission prior to her death—her own interpretation of Arabian Nights (1928).
Her best-known work is the suite of illustrations for Arabian Nights (1928). She died of tuberculosis.
The comments of the St Louis Post-Dispatch in the supplement published following Sterretts death (published 5 July 1931) pay fitting tribute to her life and work:
Her achievement was beauty, a delicate, fantastic beauty, created with brush and pencil. Almost unschooled in art, her life spent in prosaic places of the West and Middle West, she made pictures of haunting loveliness, suggesting Oriental lands she never saw and magical realms no one ever knew except in the dreams of childhood ...
Perhaps it was the hardships of her own life that gave the young artists work its fanciful quality. In the imaginative scenes she set down on paper she must have escaped from the harsh actualities of existence.
[from Wikipedia]
Music by Hammock Virginia Frances Sterrett](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PbrK3LQ7lT0/mqdefault.jpg)