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In ‘Cognitive Dissonance,’ Seonna Hong depicts tender moments of compassion and community amid desolation.
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Kiefer’s compositions depict meadows dotted with fires, pensive figures, and natural phenomena seemingly detached from reality.
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Sebastian Foster’s Fall Print Set is the perfect spot to shop for the next piece to add to your collection or meaningful holiday gifts.
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Jeremy Miranda, “February.” All images courtesy of Sebestian Foster, shared with permission
Sebastian Foster Releases 20 New Prints for the Holidays
November 24, 2025
ArtSponsor
Sebastian Foster
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Sebastian Foster is thrilled to present its 2025 Fall Print Set, marking the 13th anniversary of the collection since publishing the first set in 2012. The new release features 20 works by well-established illustrators, printmakers, and painters from around the world.
The prints in this set have all been published as relatively small editions, hand-signed, and numbered by the artists. Encompassing an eclectic array of mediums and themes, the collection showcases work from artists previously featured on Colossal, including Jeremy Miranda’s dreamy oil paintings, Kenny Harris’s delicately rendered moka pots, and Grant Haffner’s trippy landscapes in bold color palettes.
Daniel Freaker, “Abode of Promise”
Based in Austin but operating solely online, Sebastian Foster shifted focus from a traditional brick-and-mortar gallery handling original work to working with artists to make their paintings into limited print editions, publishing more than 1,000 editions since opening in the late 2000s.
Whether you’re looking for the next piece to add to your collection or for meaningful holiday gifts, head to the gallery’s site to shop the 2025 Fall Print Set today.
Grant Haffner, “Goodnight”
Michael McGrath, “Bird Repellent”
Hiroki Kawanabe, “Night Drive”
Graham Franciose, “Well Shit”
Mia Bergeron, “Constellation”
Kenny Harris, “Moka With Lemons”
Matte Stephens, “New York”
Susan Abbott, “Blue House in Summer”
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Landscape painting is “re-envisioned through a hallucinatory, technicolor lens.”
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Pastoral Landscapes Brim with Patterns in Luminous Paintings by David Brian Smith appeared first on Colossal. More
“And nature smiled” (2025), oil on herringbone linen, 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches. All photos by Ben Deakin. Images courtesy of the artist and Ross + Kramer Gallery, shared with permission
Pastoral Landscapes Brim with Patterns in Luminous Paintings by David Brian Smith
November 19, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Easter egg-like clouds, glowing sunrise gradients, and myriad vibrant patterns are just a few of the elements comprising David Brian Smith’s otherworldly landscapes.
Smith grew up in rural Shropshire, England, and his ancestral ties to the region’s agricultural traditions became a major influence on his work after he relocated to London. His works evoke British landscape painting of the likes of the Norwich School of painters, a group of self-taught, working-class artists who self-organized an art society in the early 19th century.
“All around the Wrekin” (2025), oil on linen, 78 3/4 x 70 7/8 inches
Smith departs from historically more academic styles of oil painting to create works “re-envisioned through a hallucinatory, technicolor lens,” says Ross + Kramer Gallery, which presents the artist’s solo exhibition, All around the Wrekin. In his starkly contrasted rolling hills, farm buildings, and bulbous trees, Smith also evokes the bucolic yet faintly uncanny paintings of American Regionalist artist Grant Wood (1891-1942).
“Rooted in the English pastoral tradition yet boldly contemporary in vision, Smith’s paintings explore ideas of place, belonging, and time through radiant color, intricate brushwork, and layered symbolism,” the gallery says. The title of the show references the name of a hill in Shropshire called the Wrekin, distinctive for its conical shape and a popular place to take walks.
Within the sky, fields, rivers, and forests, hundreds of little hatch marks, flowers, starbursts, and other thematic motifs dance across the surface. He also often incorporates gold and silver leaf to add an even further ethereality to the large-scale, luminous canvases, tapping into the power of color and light to evoke nostalgia and a kind of psychedelic utopianism.
All around the Wrekin continues through November 22 in San Francisco. Smith’s work is also on view as part of Inner and Outer Worlds, an exhibition of international contemporary painting that runs through April 12 at the Ju Ming Museum in Taiwan. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
Detail of “All around the Wrekin”
“Jackfield” (2025), oil and gold leaf on herringbone linen, 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches
Detail of “Jackfield”
“A Dragons Eye” (2025), oil and gold leaf on herringbone linen, 82 5/8 x 70 7/8 inches
Detail of “A Dragons Eye”
“A place of my heart” (2025), oil on linen, 78 3/4 x 70 7/8 inches
Detail of “All around the Wrekin”
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All images courtesy of Nano Ponto, shared with permission
Innumerable Dots Form Bright, Bold Gradients in Nano Ponto’s Entirely Handpoked Tattoos
October 2, 2025
ArtIllustration
Grace Ebert
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In the hands of Argentinian tattooer Nano Ponto, lush gradients and surreal compositions emerge from layers and layers of tiny dots. Entirely self-taught, Ponto never learned to use the machines typical for many artists working in the medium. He instead embarked on an experimental journey 13 years ago that has since produced a vibrant catalog of designs, from a grayscale eye crying primary colors or a vivid beam shooting from a flying saucer.
Ponto shares that while his process is typically slower than that of artists who utilize machines, his tools and approach are simple. “I just have to layer dots until I reach my desired saturation and look, which varies from skin to skin and the tattoo’s characteristics,” he says. “I use several kinds of needles to play with dot width, resolution, tattooing depth, ink saturation, and a few more variables to create my designs.”
While based in Buenos Aires, Ponto has spent the past few years moving between Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. Travel has been essential to his development from the beginning because most artists work with newer technologies and don’t share the same technical approaches. “Ten years ago, it was key for me to start traveling to meet other handpoked tattoo artists to share experience and knowledge, as there was no one in Argentina I could do this with,” he adds.
Ponto’s latest travels have brought him to Brooklyn, where he’s a guest resident this month at Atelier Eva. Find more about his availability and bold designs on Instagram.
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“In the Land of the Sage,” oil, 40 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Maxwell Alexander Gallery, shared with permission
Brett Allen Johnson Harnesses the Glow of the American Southwest in Dreamy Oil Paintings
August 27, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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As though seared into our collective consciousness, some images of the American Southwest seem to fully embody its inhospitable terrain, mercurial weather, and intense, challenging beauty. One of these would most certainly be Edward Curtis’ dramatic 1904 photograph of the sacred Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “deh-shay”) in Arizona, featuring a string of Navajo riders on horseback, silhouetted against towering rock formations behind them.
Both a record of the Indigenous inhabitants who called this land home for centuries, taken 40 years after the forced march known as the Long Walk, the photo is also a testament to a quickly evolving nation. And the drama of the region’s canyons, ridges, mountains, buttes, and mesas continue to enthrall us today. For Brett Allen Johnson, these timeless, arid landscapes inspire glowing oil paintings that draw upon the legacies of Western painters like Maynard Dixon and Georgia O’Keeffe.
“Two Worlds,” oil, 50 x 100 inches
A solo show of Johnson’s paintings, Two Worlds, opens next month at Maxwell Alexander Gallery. Most of the images shown here are included, like the mineralized, colorful outcrops of “Banded Cliffs, Fruita,” based on a historic location in Capitol Reef National Park. The exhibition also includes the show’s titular painting, “Two Worlds,” which shows an anonymous, completely uninhabited canyon rim from the opposite side.
Johnson’s forms are brushy and somewhat simplified, although not to the extent that they appear cartoonish. He smooths rocky ledges, gives clouds the weight of dense felt, and illuminates apertures in pueblos, mountains, and rainstorms. Through the interplay of light, shadow, and hue, he renders soaring buttes with fleshy folds and highlights unique patterns in nature.
“Technique, composition, color, and paint handling—they all say something even if we don’t intend them to,” Johnson says. “But the more I can get to the heart of it, the more I can simplify a painting into just the parts I find indispensable—the essence—those fundamentals become just tools in service of a vision.”
Two Worlds opens on September 6 in Pasadena. Explore more on Johnson’s Instagram.
“Glass Window,” oil, 30 x 34 inches
“Banded Cliffs, Fruita,” oil, 20 x 20 inches
“Chocolate Ripple,” oil, 16 x 40 inches
“Not Some Other Place,” oil, 44 x 40 inches
“Cottonwood Stand with Distant Rain,” oil, 18 x 26 inches
“Long Shadows,” oil, 18 x 30 inches
“Uinta Veil,” oil, 18 x 30 inches
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Hugh Hayden, “The End.” Photo by Thomas Clark. All images courtesy of the artists and The Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, shared with permission
Six Acclaimed Artists Interpret Ecology and the Landscape for ‘Ground/work 2025’
August 21, 2025
ArtNature
Kate Mothes
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Across the expansive 140-acre grounds of The Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, six contemporary artists have been invited to create site-specific works engaging with the property’s meadows, trails, and woods, while highlighting their individual practices.
Sculptures by Yō Akiyama, Laura Ellen Bacon, Aboubakar Fofana, Hugh Hayden, Milena Naef, and Javier Senosiain dot a variety of sites, from manicured parkland to open fields to groves of trees.
Laura Ellen Bacon, “Gathering My Thoughts.” Photo by Joe Aidonidis
Bacon, whose ethereal sculptures made of malleable twigs seem to move, has installed the nine-by-five-foot “Gathering My Thoughts” in a wooded area. Made from willow sourced from Ohio, the piece appears to writhe like a living, growing form.
Hayden has constructed a larger-than-life ribcage—species unknown—made of locally sourced hemlock punctuated by dozens of branches that poke out in every direction. Partly camouflaged amid the trees, the work invites us to consider themes of ecological vulnerability, extinction, and the climate crisis. Following the exhibition, the piece will be allowed to decompose on-site, mirroring the way animal remains also eventually vanish back into the earth.
Fofana’s installation of two botanical forms, titled “Bana Yiriw ni Shi Folow (Trees and Seeds of Life),” is the artist’s first public art piece. He draws upon his spiritual belief in the divinity of nature, incorporating rolls of African cotton dyed with indigo, representing seeds, into a curling metal frame.
Other works include Senosiain’s vibrant sea creature, installed in a pond, along with Akiyama’s conical monolith evocative of scorched wood and Naef’s marble slabs that merge with the negative spaces of a fallen tree.
Aboubakar Fofana, “Bana Yiriw ni Shi Folow (Trees and Seeds of Life).” Photo by Thomas Clark
Curated by independent scholar Glenn Adamson, the exhibition provides the opportunity to experience contemporary art in a natural setting. Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark Art Institute, says:
The Clark’s campus becomes an accomplice, of sorts, in helping us to see and appreciate each artist’s particular vision and the interconnection between art and nature. With this edition of Ground/work, our guest curator…has intentionally blurred the line that traditionally separates the consideration of art and craft, urging us to appreciate the art that is inherent in all forms of craft.
Ground/work 2025 continues through October 2026, with free access day or night, 24/7, on The Clark’s campus. Plan your visit on the museum’s website.
Hugh Hayden, “The End” (detail)
Javier Senosiain, “Coata III.” Photo by Thomas Clark
Yō Akiyama, “Oscillation: Vertical Garden.” Courtesy of the artist and Joan B Mirviss LTD. Photo by Thomas Clark
Laura Ellen Bacon, “Gathering My Thoughts” (detail). Photo by Joe Aidonidis
Aboubakar Fofana, “Bana Yiriw ni Shi Folow (Trees and Seeds of Life)” (detail). Photo by Thomas Clark
Milena Naef, “Three Times Spannin.” Photo by Thomas Clark
Yō Akiyama, “Oscillation: Vertical Garden” (detail). Courtesy of the artist and Joan B Mirviss LTD. Photo by Thomas Clark
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