Leovigildo Martinez

Leovigildo Martinez is perhaps the most famous of all painters at work today in Mexico. Born in 1959, Martinez makes his home in the southern state of Oaxaca, the birthplace of corn and the ancestral land of more than 50 indigenous groups. He himself is from the group known as the Mixtecs, but he is, most notably, a master storyteller, employing vibrant colors and textiles and capturing the folklore of his people to present to the larger world vivid scenes of fiestas and other important events of life in the villages in the central valleys of Oaxaca.

Guillermo Olguin

Guillermo Olguin, also from Oaxaca in southern Mexico, is the most dynamic painter in the country now enjoying a global following. However, in contrast to his fellow artists painting scenes of life in Oaxaca, Olguin prefers monochrome or natural colors in his highly stylized paintings of animals and people from across the globe. He does not celebrate the folklore or traditions of his people but rather draws inspiration from mythology while depicting scenes from life in exotic locales such as India and Hungary.

Pegan Brooke

Pegan Brooke creates large paintings of an abstract nature and of a soothing quality. Soft and peaceful with tones of a single color, the work of Brooke reveals an unusual rhythm and a ghostly lightness while evoking feelings of harmony and longing in the viewer. Brooke works from a home base on the coast of Northern California and also from a second studio in the more mountainous region of central Idaho, a place of a different kind of beauty in the vast American landscape.

Astrid Preston

Astrid Preston, through her large paintings of rural landscapes, presents a world which is somehow familiar yet unlike any other: The hills, trees, and bushes appear to be like others of their kind but they also could be from another planet. Preston is a master of imposing an order and a formality but also an alien quality on a scene from a pastoral setting which becomes transformed almost into a separate reality by such highly stylized attention to detail. The result is an image which not only catches the eye; it forces the viewer to watch closely, as if something incredible is about to happen. Born in Sweden in 1945, Preston has made her home over the years in Southern California, but the art she has created through the decades represents nature as it exists in a very different place.