The future of art

Hisako Kobayashi grew up in Tokyo before moving to New York City in 1981 to earn a Master of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute. An abstract painter, she has since exhibited her work on five continents over a span of three decades. Upon observation, her works clearly and openly illustrate a maternal devotion to her native Japan while at once embracing the essence of her newfound Western sensibilities. 

Art critic Donald Kuspit has authored this on her work, "Kobayashi's paintings exemplify the romantic idea that 'it...

Johan Wahlstrom is one of today's most vocal artists, known for his unencumbered critiques of the current social and political landscapes. 

In 1998, Wahlstrom moved to a small village in France where he immersed himself in his painting for seven years, part of the time under the tutelage of the Swedish artist Lennart Nystrom. Wahlstrom's dark narrative centers around the depiction of heads and torsos inspired by handwritten critiques in cryptic prose on scraps of paper that scatter his studio....

Ann Strassman is an American figurative painter working in Boston. Antiques and the Arts Weekly vividly describes her style as “expressive realism” that “evolves from an unforgiving eye which she has developed through experience. Through the use of exaggerated brushwork and dramatic tones she creates psychological tension. The vocabulary may well be German Expressionism and London school, but the vision is all her own.” 

Such compelling thought exercises led Strassman to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she developed the skills...

Born in Mexico, Duarte’s work is rooted in history both collective and personal, his own, he intertwines experiences of modern life with collective ones rooted in myth and history through the lens of his own Mexican culture. Despite the seemingly cultural specific themes he touches on, the experiences he brings are universal because he sees Mexican history, no different than Roman or Japanese - it belongs to all of us and within each story, each culturally specific narrative, we find the collective experience that binds us all. The narratives we tell ourselves across the world, whether it’s in Mexico, Kenya or...

Originally from Long Island, Christopher Volpe is an artist, writer, and teacher working and living in New Hampshire. His paintings in tar and gold leaf reference mortality, mysticism, and concern for the fate of a world buying and spending its way toward uninhabitability.

His work is collected internationally and held in the permanent collections of the New Bedford...