5 Artists We're Obsessed With Pt. II

By: Xavier Hardison

April 11, 2025

We're back with another spotlight celebrating our favorite artists! Time to update your optics with the incredible accomplishments happening within the arts community. Below you'll find our guide to discover 5 truly remarkable artists whose multidisciplinary practices range from sparkly accessories to airbrush paintings and striking apparel. Without further ado, lets get to it!

1) Cindy Cheng

Some things simply take your breathe away. These whimsical bubble rings made by Cindy Cheng are certainly one of those things. Owning one of these pieces is like having an enchanted, magical object wrapped around your finger. Cheng's practice is as eclectic as her background, and the astonishing impact of her work can seemingly be attributed to her ability to pull from a diverse range of life experiences. This Hong Kong born, well-traveled creative gives accessories the star-power they truly deserve. With a daringly inquisitive approach to art making, we'd be remiss not to shine light on this true gem of a person and artist.

2) Julia Gould

MICA alumni Julia Gould is one of the best painters in the region. Her pieces are staged with calculated lighting affects to achieve picturesque spatial depth. Julia then heightens her initial observations by incorporating imaginary and photographic references, which serve to further accentuate these stunning works. This featured painting titled, Sphinx Vase II, is a strong example of her gorgeous tonal range and signature forms inspired by the dazzling flora throughout her studio. Gould's remarkable ability to manipulate transparency gives her work a poignant, realistic quality. Her paintings breathe with life, and confidently remind viewers to stop and smell the roses.

3) Graham Martini

Who doesn't love a puzzling mystery? The shifting forms and semi-transparent layers casted by mixed-media painter Graham Martini are definetly some sort of wizardry. This process of continuous veiling and unveiling displayed in the piece "A river that loops" creates an awesome air of ambiguity, allowing viewers to travel through space. Anchoring his practice in a dazzling display of abstract mark-making ironically captures a fleeting ephemerality. He brings a very peculiar eye to every canvas, which allows him explore realms beyond the typically concrete, secular worlds of modern pictorial representation.

4) Amir Barnett

Artist & Design Engineer, Amir Barnett, has a true creative touch. The ath-leisure garments, original paintings, and exclusive prints produced by his studio, 3irdEye, seem to come straight out of a wonderful fantasy world. The sure standout also produces large-scale public murals in metropolitan areas often embodying lifestyle thematics, eloquently merging athletic activities with urban fashion & culture. His community-oriented outlook is noteworthy and significant to his practice. Barnett emphasises that his aim for the work isn't merely to represent the culture but also to live and exist within the community, as part of its DNA.

5) Graham Martini

Making his second appearance in a single post is a testament to Graham's range of creative ability. He can effortlessly go from non-representational explorations of space to life-like dystopian figures without hesitation. This airbrush painting has a silent, eerie quality reminiscent of the Promethean humanoids or Bladerunner androids. The expertly modeled surfaces of flesh are further defined by a glowing artificial light which add to their cold, somewhat artificial demeanor. The built-up surface, achieved by working from dark to light, is executed with a limited range of aerosol pigments, which helps create a uniform range of tonal values. In an age where artificial intelligence is more involved in our daily lives than ever before, this work is a true representation of the unknown, obscure future we find ourselves wandering into...

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope this has inspired you to learn more about these artists and their incredible work. Whether they challenge form, emotion, or convention, each one is shaping the visual language of today. We'll keep wathcing, collecting, and getting inspired, and we hope you'll join us in doing the same. If their work sparks something in you, follow that impulse and learn more about their work by visiting the links attached to their names or by clicking on the images! You'll find echoes of that same curiousity in the ongoing presence of X-Artifacts: quiet, shifting, and always waiting to be discovered.