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

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about your background and how you developed your artistic process.

MF: I have been painting for over 35 years. I do not have a formal education in art. Some college and art workshops. I developed my artistic skills mainly from the study of an early American artist group of the mid-19th century known as the “Hudson River School”.

X-RAY MAG: What is your artistic mission or vision?

MF: My artistic vision is to use my imagination to its fullest extent.

"I hope my paintings make people aware of the beauty and importance of undersea life—not just the popular large whales and sharks but the smaller less known delicate wildlife of the deep."
-- Michael Frank

“The sea and its residents fascinate me in many ways,” said Rivard. “Each has a role to play in the scheme of things.”

 

Leaving his native Detroit in the late 70’s, Rivard came to live in Southern California and developed a love of the sea and its many creatures.

 

“The first time I saw reef fish, I was hooked,” he said. “I needed to understand how and why they were so colorful. So, I started to study marine biology and oceanography. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I soaked it up like a sponge.