Artist Ali Leja of Johns Creek, Georgia, wants her audience to smile. Carefully weaving her personal story into modern, upbeat paintings, Ali is creating positivity and happiness. The many happy subjects in her art reflect hopefulness and laughter.

Our January cover is titled “Island Life”. “I love painting women and figures who look elegant and fun. I do a lot of women paintings in summery clothes or bathing suits with really big hats. I like that they don’t have faces so people can imagine them to be whoever they want,” Ali explained.

This month’s cover artist, Jimmy Lawlor, was born in Wexford, Ireland, in December 1967. He now lives in Westport, in the magnificent West of Ireland. Jimmy has been exhibiting for more than 20 years.

Like many artists, Jimmy has been drawing since he was a kid. When he was a teenager, he realized he wanted to become a full-time artist. It was a dream that seemed impossible. Ireland was in the middle of an economic depression, and art was the last thing on people’s minds.

Native Mississippian Kathryn Morris Trotter claims painting is her greatest passion. After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in textiles and apparel design, Kathryn had an innate curiosity about life, travel and the world of creative art. All this propelled her into the corporate world of fashion, interiors and textile design, which highly influenced her choice of subjects and painting style.  

After enduring her artistic struggle to express her true self, Kathryn has settled into her love for the palette knife. The layering effect of brush strokes and the palette knife bring an “impasto” style to her paintings.

If you have ever experienced in the delights of a box of 64 crayons, magenta is particularly considered a top five pick. This month’s cover artist, Ashvin Harrison, of northern Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, incorporates one of his favorite pastimes of bike riding and the color, magenta, into his artwork “Quintessential Cycle.” Yes, magenta is one of Ashvin’s favorite colors, too.

But life hasn’t always been magenta and bike riding for Ashvin. He started what he calls his “mixed bag of lollies” vocations working in fast food, cabinet making and cleaning. Moving on to job titles such as gardener, website builder and musician, he was able to build upon his work ethic with each career. After college it was Google Maps Street View, a job he credits as an amazing experience in “seeing the great diversity in nature and people.” 

Hülya Ozdemir loves to focus her artworks on vibrant women. She says she does this “to express their inner worlds.” Each unique feminine subject is brought to brilliant life with a palate of enriched color and pattern.

Over several emails, we asked Hülya, whose village home is near Bodrum, Turkey, to share some of her life’s work and aspirations: “I intentionally use different patterns by design. In my portraits, I believe the woman and the pattern work are inseparable. My women are all strong, even though some seem weak at times.

Growing up in Placerville, a small northern California town, as a child Kelly Simpson Hagen learned to paint on weekend visits with her paternal grandmother. And, she has been creating art ever since.  
Moving to Portland, Oregon, after college graduation, Kelly started her first grade teaching career at the same time she started a self-described unhealthy romantic relationship. “It turned my world upside down, and after years of stress my body shut down, literally. At this time, I thought my teaching career and ability to paint were over. When I had a flare up, it affected my entire right side, rendering me unable to walk or move, so painting wasn’t an option, which made it that much more frustrating.”

Brazilian born and raised, Rio de Janeiro artist Georgia Lôbo is comfortably in tune with the natural world she gently expresses through her art. At age 55, she looks as if she could still be majoring in her chosen field of industrial design, “I graduated in 1987 but never worked with it.”  

Georgia always loved drawing and color, “but I had many relationship problems with my mother, so during a long time, the only thing I hoped for was to run away from my house. I started as a flight attendant with Varig Airlines in 1989, not liking the career but staying 10 years.”

Ladies, raise your wine glasses in salute to Jill Haney Neal, our June issue Cover Artist who’s whimsical, bodacious babes have graced a variety of artworks including paintings, wine labels, coffee mugs and Pink and Paisley’s October 2016 magazine covers: Welcome back, Jill!

Jill believes women were created in God’s image with a universal spirit and are equally loved regardless of size, ethnicity, or background. “There is an edginess to my art and from what I’ve been told, I’m still breaking barriers. When you get women together, they are funny and sexy, it’s just part of our essence.” 

About the Cover Artist
Ellen Brenneman

Ellen Brenneman For as long as she can remember, Ellen Brenneman of South Bend, Indiana has been in love with nature. As a child, Ellen could be found doodling and drawing animals under the cherry tree in her backyard, while carrying on lengthy conversations with the squirrels and birds. Her doodling turned into a vast love of art, which continued through her teen years and into college where she studied graphic design in Muncie, Indiana at Ball State University.

Artist Carolee Clark’s passion for what she creates is so profound it is invariably translated in one-of-a-kind pieces that are her own treasures. Born with a paintbrush in her hand, Carolee’s mother was her inspiration to become an artist from very early on.

“My mother always enjoyed painting and she would encourage me and my sisters to draw while she set up her easel. I’ve been drawing as far back as I can remember, but when I was 20, my mother gave me a small set of watercolors, and I was hooked. They unlocked a world of color for me,” she said.

Trish Biddle

Trish Biddle grew up in Minnesota in the world of art, alongside her mother, who enrolled her in every art class and contest, in which she would usually come in second place. This made her work even harder. On her own, she moved to Dallas fresh out of high school, ultimately graduating from the Dallas Institute of Art.

Pursuing her artistic dream, Trish secured a job as a textile designer and a fashion illustrator for a clothing manufacturer. She later moved to the J.C. Penney home office in the design department. After several years in the corporate world, she decided it wasn’t for her, so she went to work as a freelance artist. She was signed by a textile agent in New York City and continued to freelance for several years. 

Ilene Robinette

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Ilene Robinette loved her Barbie dolls. “I especially adored the inside catalog small illustrations I found packaged with Barbie’s outfits. I wanted her glamorous city life, too, which was a far cry from my little girl life in Wisconsin!”

By age 10, Ilene knew she wanted a career as a fashion illustrator. Always drawing women figures and models, at age 18, she chose the Ray Vogue Art School in Chicago, where she learned to draw fashion. After graduation, in the mid-1970s Ilene worked in department store retail advertising in the Chicago Loop. “It was a good place to start as I got to draw all fashion ads.” Next in 1974, she landed a fashion illustrator position at Chas A. Stevens & Sons, a well-known women’s clothing store. “My ads were featured in the Chicago Tribune, various magazines and other publications. It was a big deal for me, and I loved that job.” As an apprentice illustrator she drew from models. Ilene also gained expertise with art forms other illustrators had no desire to draw. “I drew accessories such as jewelry, shoes, scarves, cosmetic bottles and sunglasses, so I became good at that, too!” This led her to becoming head illustrator. She worked until 1981 in Stevens visual merchandising department and fashion office developing the right “look and attitude” for garments and ads.

Lanier Bradberry

Originally born in Dunwoody, GA, moving about every nine months, and attending more than 14 schools, Lanier Bradberry was used to an ever changing life on the go. With so much change it was hard to grasp on to a hometown, or a steady friend group, but Lanier found her outlet—art.

“Art has always been a constant for me. I started painting when I was six, and I’ve never stopped,” Lanier expressed. One of her first memories of painting was in an old barn in Georgia when she was 6 years old. Lanier has lived on Hilton Head Island, the place she officially calls home, for the past seven years with her parents and four sisters. She graduated from Hilton Head Island High School in 2018 and now attends Technical College of the Lowcountry. She is working toward her associates degree in the arts and looking forward to possibly continuing her education in the study of psychology to become a therapist.

Amine Badr

Artist Amine Badr moved to America with the intention of making a living doing what he loves—painting. It was his Uncle Aziz Kadmiri, a successful Atlanta-based artist and two-time Pink Magazine cover artist, who encouraged Amine to leave Europe to pursue art full time. It is harder in Europe where new artists still compete with the residual elite art mentality that remains virtually governed by the era of world-renown masters such as Picasso and Monet.

Like her art, Donna Barnako is a multi-faceted lady. Her abstract style, filled with a menagerie of color palettes, is a direct reflection of the artist, herself. She is both serious and whimsical, gentle and tough, experienced and innocent. Being a former French translator in Brussels and having a big career as a health care lobbyist in DC afforded Donna many things, but a creative, artistic outlet wasn’t one of them. Nonetheless, she did that on her own, and with a full head of knowledge turned her craft into business, as well.

She owned a yarn shop for 15 years to share her love of knitting and fine, exotic yarns with those who shared her passion. “I took groups on knitting tours around the world. We could be in Ireland or somewhere in the world and all be on the tour bus knitting as we traveled to our next stop.”