Roza Khamitova was born into a family of artists in Kazakhstan. After finishing design school in Manhattan, New York, she was working in fashion industry for about 8 years. As a visual artist Roza had always drawn most of her inspiration from the natural world around her in the mountains of Kazakhstan. In 2011 she launched Shovava, her personal line of women’s clothing based on her hand drawn paintings and prints of the animals, plants and patterns found in nature. Roza was enchanted by the beauty of wings, its structure and symbolism. First, she sketches big wide-spread wings on paper with a light pencil, adds black ink to create a three-dimensional feel and fills with stunning watercolors.

A group of tattooed women from the Muun tribe who inhabit the hills of the Arakan state. The design, known as the letter B-pattern, is common in the Mindat area. It is composed of dots, lines and occasionally circles, in February, 2015, in Myanmar, Burma. With spider webs, B-patterns and crossed lines painstakingly inked on their faces these stunning photographs show the tattooed women of Burma. French photographer Eric Lafforgue travelled to the Chin, Rakhine and Arakan states of northwestern Myanmar to capture the rare facial designs. (Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Barcroft Media)

Head of European Prints, Severine Nackers holds a celestial Map of the Southern Sky by Albrecht Durer, at Sotheby's Auction House on March 25, 2011 in London, England. The two woodcut maps depicting the Northern and Southern skies circa 1515, are the earliest printed star charts of their kind ever published in Europe, and are expected to fetch between Ј120,000-180,000 GBP when they go on sale at the “London sale of Old Master, Modern and Contemporary prints” at Sotheby's Auction house on March 30, 2011. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Light is the sole reason why life exists. It provides us with warmth; it allows us to see; it nourishes all the living things on this planet. Many painters, especially the masters of Old Renaissance Period, have recognized the importance of light and its intimate connection with nature and life itself. In their paintings they gave tribute to light, giving the impression that their paintings had a light source hidden within them. Al Hogue, the artist who created the paintings that you see before you, has studied their techniques for many years. As time went by, light permeated not only his paintings by also his life, becoming his sole philosophy.

“Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals – especially to birds of prey. The location of the sky burial preparation and place of execution are understood in the Vajrayana traditions as charnel grounds. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator, which literally means, «giving alms to the birds»”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A burial master chops bones of a body to feed vultures during a celestial burial ceremony on April 19, 2006 in Dari County of Guoluo Prefecture, Qinghai Province, northwest China. Celestial burial is a traditional funeral of Tibetan people, which began in the 7th century. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

A Buddhist monk uses a traditional needle to tattoo the body of a man at Wat Bang Phra in Nakhon Pathom province on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand, March 18, 2016. Believers from across Thailand travel to the monastery to have their bodies adorned with tattoos and to pay their respects to the temple's master tattooist. They believe the tattoos have mystical powers, ward off bad luck and protect them from harm. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

This photo taken on November 6, 2023 shows people posing for photos next to the statue of “Hachiko” in front of Shibuya station in central Tokyo, ahead of the 100th anniversary of the legendary dog's birth this month. A century since its birth, the tale of the loyal companion who had waited at the Shibuya train station for its master to come home – not knowing he had already died – continues to inspire the public, who have made the statue a singular landmark at a glitzy hub of Tokyo's street culture. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks/AFP Photo)