Uploaded October 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Nicoletta Ceccoli is a San Marinian artist who is known for her richly detailed, dreamlike work. She was born in and still lives in the Republic of San Marino and studied animation at the Institute of Art in San Marino, Italy. She has illustrated many books, including Cinderella and The Girl in the Tower, written by Lisa Schroeder. Her work has been exhibited and sold internationally. Ceccoli has won the Andersen Prize, "honoring her as the best children's book illustrator in Italy."
[from Wikipedia]
[nicolettaceccoli.com/work.php]
Music: Alio Die "Lo Scrigno Del Cuore"
Nicoletta Ceccoli is a San Marinian artist who is known for her richly detailed, dreamlike work. She was born in and still lives in the Republic of San Marino and studied animation at the Institute of Art in San Marino, Italy. She has illustrated many books, including Cinderella and The Girl in the Tower, written by Lisa Schroeder. Her work has been exhibited and sold internationally. Ceccoli has won the Andersen Prize, "honoring her as the best children's book illustrator in Italy."
[from Wikipedia]
[nicolettaceccoli.com/work.php]
Music: Alio Die "Lo Scrigno Del Cuore"

![Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau (French: [mɔʁo]; 6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a major figure in French Symbolist painting whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists. He is recognized for his works that are influenced by the Italian Renaissance and exoticism. His art work was preserved in Paris at the Musée Gustave Moreau.
He was born in Paris, France, at 6 Rue des Saints-Peres. He came from a middle-class family. His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect for the city of Paris and his mother, née Adele Pauline Desmoutier, was an accomplished musician. Gustave Moreau lived a sheltered life growing up. Having visited Italy at age 15 he began his love for art. At age 18 he entered École des Beaux-Arts to study under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot and left in 1850. He then began to study art under his new mentor Théodore Chassériau, whose work strongly influenced his own. Moreau participated in the Salon for the first time in 1852.
Moreau had a 25-year personal, possibly romantic relationship, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux (b.Guise, 8 November 1835), a woman whom he drew several times. His first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853. In 1853, he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first Symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. Moreau quickly gained a reputation for eccentricity. One commentator said Moreaus work was like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer. The painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
On 28 March 1890, Alexandrine Dureux died. Her death affected Moreau greatly, and his work after this point contained a more melancholic edge. She was buried at the same cemetery that Moreau himself would be laid to rest (see below).
Moreau became a professor at Paris École des Beaux-Arts in October 1891. Among his many students were fauvist painters Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Jules Flandrin, Theodor Pallady and Léon Printemps also studied with Moreau.
Moreau died of stomach cancer and was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris in his parents tomb.
He was made a Chevalier de la Legion dhonneur in 1875 and was promoted to an Officier de la Legion dhonneur in 1883.
During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings. His work influenced the next generation of Symbolists, particularly Odilon Redon and Jean Delville, a leading figure in Belgian Symbolism in the early part of the twentieth century. Many of Moreaue works are on display in Paris Musée national Gustave Moreau at 14 rue de la Rochefoucauld (9th arrondissement). The museum is in his former workshop, and began operation in 1903. André Breton famously used to haunt the museum and regarded Moreau as a precursor of Surrealism.
The Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, known for works such as Final Fantasy, Angels Egg, and Vampire Hunter D, was inspired by Moreaus style. Amano said in an interview that when he was first experimenting with styles to try to find his own, he would try to mimic the works of Moreau.
[from Wikipedia]
Music: William Basinski Cascade Gustave Moreau](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DI8HiVYTJZk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Colette Calascione
Inspired by books and images of earlier eras, particularly the Victorian era, Calascione invents a world that is her own. Images of women and children in old photographs are transformed in the artist’s hands. She never literally copies a photo or its background. When she sees a figure she likes, her vision forms around it. Clothed figures in photographs are sometimes undressed by Calascione in her paintings, and placed in a mise-en-scene she creates. Rarely does the environment surrounding the figure come directly from a book or photo, as a ‘quote.”
[from: https://www.artistaday.com/?p=3479]
Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Valse Sentimentale Colette Calascione](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DfeIYtiGc1g/mqdefault.jpg)
![Daniel Bilmes
Daniel Bilmes is a contemporary painter, working in Los Angeles. His approach is characterized by deep personal exploration, combining realism with elements of symbolism and abstraction. Through tactile textures and delicate expressions, his paintings weave together the magical and mundane. His work is at once hopeful and brooding. Realistic and symbolic. Somewhere between the vitality of the Russian circus and the gravitas of a Churchill speech.
Daniel began his art education at the age of 8 under the tutelage of his father, the respected artist and educator, Semyon Bilmes. Being immersed in art from such an early age had a profound impact on his personal growth and creativity, laying a lasting foundation of curiosity that continues to drive and inform his work today.
[from:http://www.danielbilmes.com/bio]
Music: Alio Die Yearning In Beauty Daniel Bilmes](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DtD0yspZa2M/mqdefault.jpg)
![Vladimir Kush
Welcome to the world of Vladimir Kush, where myth, metaphor and poetry combine in new forms. Through the juxtaposition of previously unrelated objects and the exploration of different viewpoints, the artist’s work makes reference to deeper meanings and metaphors, while still maintaining its realistic approach to representation, a style he refers to as Metaphorical Realism.
Vladimir Kush was born and grew up in Moscow, Russia. His father Oleg, a mathematician with artistic tendencies, encouraged his son’s natural talent at an early age. He also did his best to provide Vladimir with books of romantic travel by hard-to-get (and sometimes banned) authors such as Jules Verne, Jack London and Herman Melville, in the hopes that his mind would wander outside the grey world that encompassed him. At the age of seven, Kush began the formal training that led him to the Art Institute of Moscow where he furthered his mastery of color theory, composition, oils, and art techniques of all kinds. The school put forth what could be called the Cezanne method, and though Vladimir quickly mastered it, he then left it behind because form was lost in color and emotion took over where he felt the intellect should rightly roam.
After a mandatory stint in the Russian Army where he mostly kept busy painting large murals and portraits of generals, he briefly taught at his alma mater but found he could make more money (and have enough free time to explore his newly forming style) by painting portraits on the streets. It was there that he made connections with American embassy workers who helped ease his transition to the US after his first successful show in Germany in 1990 brought him to Los Angeles and eventually Hawaii, his home today.
Vladimir still visits Moscow often where the cold, dark winters force his imagination to roam, but the influence of the Hawaiian skies is readily apparent in many of his paintings. He sums it up for us: “Due to political and geographic restraints, I was forced to travel with my mind as a child, and it is this most of all that has shaped my artistic perception and voice, but I would likely never have painted the colors or clouds seen in my paintings if it hadn’t been for the sights of my tropical, second home.”
Kush has developed his own artistic credo that substantiates his Metaphorical Realism and which, above all, demands the following:
• Likeness, which is the evidence of high professional skill—it makes the viewer believe in the world imagined by the artist, as realism does in fiction and film.
• Avoidance of actual living forms, presenting the aesthetic object rather than emotional subjects.
• The use of deep irony to reach real aesthetic enjoyment, and as hammer to break apart old myths whose pieces will then be re-assembled in new forms, a process known as re-mythologizing.
He explains further: “I want to touch my audience on a much deeper emotional or intellectual level than would be possible by painting a pretty landscape or still life where viewers are tempted to place themselves in the landscape, or consume the bowl of fruit—the goal of realism is also its limitation. I try to provide layers of meaning for viewers to explore and emotionally respond to the discoveries they find in my art.”
The artist reaches for the realm of the incomprehensible where his knowledge will not be enough. He substitutes unreachable realities with metaphysical images; he throws a veil, hiding the essence. Otherwise, science would intervene, disintegrating the image and its beauty into components…what then would happen to Mona Lisa’s famous smile?
[from:https://www.artifactsgallery.com/art.asp?%21=A&ID=762]
Music: Alio Die Honey Mushroom Part 1 Vladimir Kush](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DuCjP4smIjc/mqdefault.jpg)
![John Kenn Mortensen
Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen (also known as Don Kenn) writes and directs television shows for kids, but during his free time he pays tribute to the darker, spookier side of childhood filled with monsters and ghosts. Ugly, terrifying and bone-chilling monsters creep out of the darkest childhood nightmares and right into Kenn’s sticky notes. That’s right – the artist draws his highly imaginative little scenarios, where kids meet ghastly monsters, entirely on yellow post-its. In this contect, the creativity and intricacy of these little drawings truly leaves one in awe.
[from: https://www.demilked.com/creepy-childhood-monsters-sticky-notes-don-kenn/]
John Kenn Mortensen was born in 1978. He is a Danish artist who lives and works in Copenhagen. Mortensen is a master with pen and paper and his imagination is second to none. During the day, he employs these skills as an animator and director of children’s television programmes. But when darkness falls, he lets his imagination run wild, and from the nib of his pen flows a host of monsters, ghosts and ghouls, terrifying enough to give those who are faint of heart cause to double check that their doors are locked at night.
“I write and direct television shows for kids. I have a set of twins and not much time for anything. But when I have time, I draw monsterdrawings on post-it notes… it is a little window into a different world, made on office supplies. People will always be afraid of monsters. For some people, spiders are monsters… just very small monsters.It warms my heart when I am able to scare people or just give them the sense of having experienced a small adventure from something so simple as a drawing on a post-it note.There is this very fine moment right before you realize you are gonna be eaten by something you never thought existed. It is like when you get bad news and you think…I never thought this was gonna happen to me.” – John Kenn Mortensen
[from: https://wowxwow.com/artist-profile/john-kenn-mortensen]
Music: Alio Die & Antonio Testa Pie in the Sky John Kenn Mortensen](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DyOLyK984Aw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos
Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos (b.1982) is a brazilian artist whose work plunges on the realms of the mythical, mystical and occult. Lupe worked as a graphic designer, tattoo artist and children’s book illustrator before start pursuing her own particular artistic voice.
[from: http://www.lupevision.com/about]
Music: Alio Die & Aglaia Cumulus Congestus Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E9Hy5czF2gs/mqdefault.jpg)


![Sergei Chernenko
Sergei Chernenko artworks are compelling reflections of mysticism that enter a realm of vibrant abstraction, intricate depiction, and incandescence.
His canvases are filled with extraordinary figures and fantastic landscapes, illuminating a rich inner vision they characterise the unknown mysteries of existence and memorable vivid new worlds.
His meticulous brushwork and brilliant use of light show an intimacy with Goya, Breugal, and Rembrandt, while the imaginative panorama of subject matter suggest the strong influence of the more mystic surrealists, Bosch, Dali, and De Chirico.
Eastern spiritualism and Western academic realism form the back bone for Sergei`s philosophical framework, producing an alliance of spirit and substance. In the invisible borders of unfamiliar worlds, Sergei delves into the correlations of fear and joy, solitude and collision,
eternal peace and perpetual movement.
[from: http://www.russianartgallery.com/artist/Sergei-Chernenko/]
Music by Oöphoi Sergei Chernenko](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EvlWDfc19Lw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Andrzej Pągowski (Polish Poster Art)
Andrzej Pągowski (born 1953 in Warsaw)is a Polish artist who specializes in graphic design and poster art.
Pągowski graduated from The State University of Fine Arts in Poznan in 1978 and began to design posters, which has since become his main interest. In addition to posters, he designs theatrical settings, prints and catalogues.
One of the younger of the Third Generation of artists of Polish School of Posters, he easily made the transition from socialism to capitalism; in 1990, he created his own graphic studio, STUDIO P, which developed into an advertising agency in 1993 and continues in operation today. In 1992, he had become art director of the Polish edition of Playboy.As an artist, his individualized posters evoke a range of moods and ideas. He claims to have created a separate concept for each of his many posters, saying: “Every poster for me is an individual exercise different from the previous one.” His art can be found in many European museums as well as the Museum of Modern Art in New York,.He has also had one-man shows in Stockholm, Paris, London, and Warsaw.
[from Wikipedia]
Music: Oophoi Endless Rain on Altair Andrzej Pągowski (Polish Poster Art)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/F53TmajzQjQ/mqdefault.jpg)