The Artists
Melody Emrani is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work explores the principles of essentialism in visual art.
Drawing inspiration from Mid-Century colors, her paintings focus on distilling subjects to their most essential forms. By honing in on a singular subject and stripping away excess detail, Melody's work emphasizes the core of the subject's identity, allowing the viewer to experience the power of simplicity and clarity. Each piece is meticulously composed to project only the amount of information necessary to recognize and appreciate the form, inviting a deeper connection to both the subject and the viewer’s perception.
Los Angeles, CAMelody Emrani
Paola Luther
Los Angeles, CAPaola Luther is an award-winning fine artist whose work centers on narrative, figurative oil paintings filled with light, atmosphere, and emotional resonance. A professional artist with over twenty years of experience. Her artistic foundation was shaped through rigorous atelier training in the Washington, DC area and Los Angeles, further enriched by workshops with accomplished painters around the world. Paola has also led international painting workshops and served as a juror for major art competitions. Her work has been featured in international art magazines.
Based in Los Angeles, Paola paints daily in her studio, continually refining her narrative and figurative work. Alongside her studio practice, she maintains an active online presence with nearly one million followers across Instagram and Facebook, where she shares her process and promotes artistic engagement within a global creative community.
Mark Lesser is a painter with over 30 years of experience whose work sits at the intersection of the emotional and the conceptual. Working primarily in oil and cold wax on large-scale canvas, his practice is built on a layered, risk-taking process, one that embraces accumulation, erasure, and the tension between structure and dissolution.
The grid is a recurring presence in his work, not as rigid architecture but as a field of relationships, something to push through, hide beneath, or let fall away entirely.
His career has taken him across disciplines and continents. He completed an artist residency in Morocco, a country whose light, color, and complexity have left a lasting mark on his sensibility, and has exhibited internationally.
In 2026, Mark and his wife Shellie co-founded Stephens Collective, a curated gallery based in Thousand Oaks, California, dedicated to making original art accessible to a new generation of collectors through monthly exhibitions and auctions.
Thousand Oaks, CAMark Lesser
Wencke Uhl
Bonn, GermanyWencke Uhl is a contemporary figurative artist based in Germany whose work celebrates the female form with bold color, lush pattern, and a fashion-forward eye. Her paintings capture moments of independence and self-possession, freed of the male gaze and steeped in the energy of pop culture. Working in acrylics, oil, and decoupage, she brings graphic precision and rich texture to subjects who defy objectification and radiate quiet power. Her work is collected internationally and was featured on Architectural Digest's Open Door with Maude Apatow. Artsper named her one of their Top 25 Artists to Collect in 2025.