Kia Vue of St. Paul sports long nails at the Minnesota Hmong New Year celebration Saturday, November 29, 2014, at the Saint Paul RiverCentre in St. Paul, MN. The annual Minnesota Hmong New Year celebration will be held at the Saint Paul RiverCentre November 28–30. Hmong New Year has a deep cultural significance to the Hmong community. It is a celebration of accomplishments during the past year and a time to welcome a new beginning. (Photo by David Joles/Star Tribune)

Born in Hanoi, 1979, a member of the Young Painter Association of Vietnam, Trang is an emerging young artist whose mind has been engraved with images of the city and the Northern villages. She brings these vivid memories of the villagers and their life to her paintings. She paints scenes of landscapes in thick textural impasto with bright colours of red, orange, yellow, and blue, making the genre of landscape her own. Her paintings depict her passion to showcase the radiance and freshness of the landscapes in Vietnam. For every stroke of brush reflects her burning desire to bring out a world of complications to simple living and a deep appreciation of nature’s blessing and beauty.

Italian pencil artist Marco Mazzoni‘s work goes far beyond technical perfection. His representation of historical healing women is enigmatic and sublime. Often leaving the eyes blank or covered with an abundance of birds, butterflies and flowers, he gives the impression of a deeper inward focused sight, as well as obscuring the identity of the individual. Many female healers in the past – both medicine woman and midwives – were brutally persecuted by religion, some even burnt as witches… Mazzoni’s work captures their deep connection with nature and their innate power and femininity with delicacy and beautiful detail.

Laszlo Koday was born in Hungary in 1945. In 1970 he began as a self-tought painter. The life and work of Henri Rousseau made a deep impression on him. His pictures are fairy tales expressed by pictorial means, human, animal and nature are equally important in them. There are bright, with unmixed pure colours, compositions wich spread calmness and gaiety. Kaday's works are know not only in Hungary but in many countries and are included in many private and public collections. His paintings can be found in galleries abroad, for example the GINA Gallery.

“Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puʻuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Women fire fighters directing a hose after the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour (Pearl Harbor). (Photo by Three Lions)

Baka pygmies in their forest home preparing food in, Sangha Forest, Central African Republic, February 2016. Here, in their forest home, traditional life continues in the face of multiplying challenges ranging from poachers, to ill health. Deep in the rainforests of central Africa lives one of the world’s most mysterious tribes. (Photo by Susan Schulman/Barcroft Images)

Pedestrians look at the wreckage of a vehicle lodged in a storm drain on a street in Abidjan on June 19, 2018, in which a man was reportedly found dead after floodwaters receded following an overnight downpour in the city. Fifteen people have died in Abidjan, Ivory Coast' s economic capital, during flooding caused by torrential rain overnight, Interior Minister Sidiki Diakite said. Rain poured down overnight on June 19, causing flash floods up to 2.5 metres (more than eight feet) deep, he said. (Photo by Sia Kambou/AFP Photo)

Wide-angle category winner. Part of the Illusion by Marcus Blatchford (UK). Location: National Dive & Activity Centre, Chepstow, Wales. “This is the deepest inland dive centre in the UK. The dive plan was to explore the deep end, but this time I dived ‘unplugged’ (without my strobes). With the exception of this change to my camera technique, there were no planned shots I wanted to achieve – just a fun dive with ad-hoc photos along the way. Shortly after this photo was captured, in 6C water and two hours of decompression ahead of us, we turned and started the long ascent back to the surface”. (Photo by Marcus Blatchford/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2016)