X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist. Who or what has inspired you and your artwork and why?

AW: I have always had a fascination with the natural world, from the graceful beauty of birds and the spectacle of insects to the alien forms of nautical creatures.

X-RAY MAG: Please tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

MH: I was born with a passion to learn, an insatiable curiosity, and the ninth of eleven children. When I was nine months old, my mother found me running across the mantlepiece. I was born to explore. This energy sustains, inspires and fuels me.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist as well as how you got into diving and later, technical diving.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

OL: From a young age, I found it easier to explore the world and my ideas through images rather than words. After graduating with a fine arts degree, I found my interest and concern for the natural world finding its way into the drawings I made.

Entering one of my drawings into a local art competition was the catalyst to an unexpected career, and this year, I count myself very fortunate to mark 10 years as a full-time artist.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

 

PF: As a small child, a relatively difficult start to life ensured that I became somewhat introverted in my early life, so solo activities became favourites. Reading and drawing allowed me to pass hours in my own company, and when I was adopted into a wonderful family in a suburb of South London at the age of five, they encouraged me in these pursuits, buying me books and taking me on regular trips to the local library.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

TF: We are all born with different gifts, mine is art. I was born and grew up in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). At six years old, my parents gave me plasticine, so modelling and sculpting became my favourite pastime. I studied art and went into the commercial world of graphics for the printing industry doing lithography and photography. I have enjoyed almost every form of art: painting, drawing, architecture, sculpting in different mediums, and photography.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

MK: I was born and raised in Japan. Where I grew up in a 400-year-old temple, I was always surrounded by the beauty of nature. As a child, I spent a lot of time outside, especially in the temple’s graveyard, playing with dirt, insects, plants, etc. I was pretty much a nature girl. I was always making things with whatever materials were available, such as my mother’s fabrics, paper and plants. I also drew. I have always had a creative inclination.

X-Ray Mag interviewed the artist to find out more about her creative process, unique photographic style and perspectives.

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself and how you became an underwater photographer.

Born in Yokohama in the ‘50s, Setsuo Hamanaka started out as a news photographer for the local daily newspaper. When he eventually became a freelance photojournalist, he began drawing illustrations for publications and soon created illustrations on commission for books and magazines. He then gravitated toward drawing illustrations for nature books and some fishing magazines, where he worked as a journalist.