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

I think my work has a simple message: Look at this creature. It is complex, beautiful and precious. It deserves our respect and many now need our protection.

— Nicolas Pain

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

EW: I can remember my first painting from when I was about four years old. All through my years, I can remember every single thing I ever created as a child.

I think corals are just some of the most beautiful things on earth. I am awe-inspired by the variety of different species. Even within each species, there are still so many variants!

— Emily Williams

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about your background and how you became a glass artist.

It’s a lifetime journey. I’ll understand them someday, maybe, but if I can capture the shape of a salmon’s mouth or the wiggle of the fish, it gets me excited, because I feel like I’ve captured a little bit of the essence of their world.

— Andy Nichols

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

TC: I have been painting for about 40 years. I started as a watercolorist and currently work in acrylic water media, which lends itself very well to images of the sea.

Coral reefs seem to me to be the treasure box of the ocean. I have only begun to explore the colors and textures there.

— Tina Christiansen

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

AG: I’m a mixed-media artist and mom of three sons (ages nine, eight and five) from West Hartford, Connecticut. I’m obsessed with paper and paint, color, patterns and texture. If I don’t keep my hands busy working, I feel my whole system gets kinked up. I have energy that I am somehow only able to release through my work. I found my way to my paper medium while studying for my master of fine arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design.

I love everything about the ocean. It is perfectly imperfect—the colors, patterns, layers, light, sounds, compositions, changes, life and energy.

— Amy Genser

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

I have always found the ocean to be an incredibly inspiring place. It is so alien and bizarrely beautiful down there. Everywhere you look there is something to see and discover.

— Meredith Woolnough

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

ACBE: I was born in Paris in 1971 to a French general practioner mother and a German neuropsychiatrist father. My brother and I grew up in Berlin and enjoyed a liberal education, always in company of animals.

Actually I wanted to have a career as an athlete. My discipline was the 800m. But I had to end this career due to a triple torn ligament. Though I continue to do intensive sports, it‘s not as a professional anymore.

"My pictures convey light or serious comedy. While they are entertaining, they also make us think, and even if the compositions are not real, they are always reflecting humor through the fish’s world."

— Anne-Catherine Becker-Echivard

"We inhabit this is incredibly beautiful planet and are slowly ruining it, but we still have an opportunity to safeguard its future, and that’s the message that I try to convey."

-- Jason deCaires Taylor

X-RAY MAG: How has your purpose or approach to underwater sculpture evolved and developed since the first sculptures you created in Grenada?

"In today’s world, we are constantly being bombarded by left brain activities, such as using a computer, cell phone, video games, etc. We need a little right brain creativity to keep us balanced."

-- Marionette Taboniar

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about your background. How did you become an artist, and how did you develope your artistic method or process?

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

EPJ: I grew up in Bojnice, which is an old city [in Slovakia] known for its tourist attractions, such as one of the most visited castles in Europe (first mentioned in 1113), the oldest zoo in Slovakia and one of the oldest spa resorts in Slovakia.

"I want to pay tribute to nature’s purity and hope that our civilization will learn to live in harmony with that."

— Erika Pochybova-Johnson