Archives: Artists

Jim Warren creates ethereal paintings that transport viewers to dreamlike worlds. Born in 1949 in Long Beach, California, Warren began drawing at age two and decided to pursue art professionally in 1967. Working primarily in surrealistic fantasy since 1969, he uses traditional oil paint on stretched canvas and is largely self-taught. Though inspired by masters like Dali, Rockwell and Rembrandt, Warren famously advises aspiring artists to paint what they like rather than follow rigid rules.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Warren built an impressive career creating album covers, movie posters, book covers and magazine illustrations for stars including Prince, Alice Cooper and Bob Seger. In 1981, he won a GRAMMY Award for his cover art for Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” album, which topped the Billboard 200. His environmental painting “Earth – Love It or Lose It” became an iconic visual for the global environmental movement during the 1990s.

Warren has also created personalized paintings incorporating celebrities like Juliette Lewis and John Stamos, collaborated with Disney on fine art prints since 2004, and painted portraits for the Fame-Wall project in New York and Hollywood. Represented by Park West Gallery, Warren continues expanding his artistic vision from his studios in Florida and Oregon.

David Le Batard, known professionally as Lebo, was born in New York City in 1972 to Cuban immigrant parents and raised in South Florida, where Cuban art profoundly influenced his creative vision. From childhood, he was captivated by cartoons and dedicated himself to mastering archaic brush techniques, ancient calligraphy, and classic cartoon drawing. After graduating from Florida International University in 1995, he took residency at the International Museum of Cartoon Art in Boca Raton, Florida, where he lectured on illustration techniques.

Lebo’s breakthrough came in 1996 with his first public exhibit at Johnson & Wales University. He calls his distinctive approach Postmodern Cartoon Expressionism, blending abstract imagery, cartoon drawing, bold colors, and calligraphy into narrative compositions that convey emotion and story. Inspired by ancient storytelling, comic strips, and 1970s street art, he weaves together historic and cross-cultural symbols to show how culture connects through time. His work is characterized by gestural lines, condensed color fields, and themes of inner peace and spiritual enlightenment.

In 2003, Lebo created the official artwork for the Latin Grammy Awards. He has painted alongside The Beastie Boys and created murals in Wynwood, Florida, Calle Ocho, the American Airlines Arena, Hart Plaza in Detroit, Orleans Parish Juvenile Courthouse, and Hotel des Artes in San Francisco. He was commissioned to paint the hull artwork for the cruise ship Norwegian Getaway in 2014 and created a mural for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final Draw. Lebo is represented by Park West Gallery.

Donovan Fitzgerald is an emerging representational painter whose portraits, figurative paintings, and frescoes have captivated collectors across the United States. From an early age, he excelled in the arts and found himself drawn to the great classical western art movements, studying the European masters including Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Bouguereau. He describes his distinctive style as a convergence of classical themes and techniques with an eye for contemporary aesthetics.

Today, Fitzgerald’s work adorns the walls and ceilings of private and public collections throughout the country. His impressive list of patrons includes Celine Dion, Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium, Steve Aoki, SONY, Shea Theodore of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, Rockhouse at Venetian Resort and Casino, and Firefly Las Vegas, among many others. His work also appears in the collections of ArtRage, Wacom, and numerous distinguished private collectors.

Fitzgerald is represented by Park West Gallery, where collectors can discover his compelling blend of classical mastery and modern vision.

Ken Flanagan is a self-taught painter originally from New York who now lives in Las Vegas. His wryly clever and technically impressive work earned him recognition as a Top 10 Finalist in Park West Gallery’s Made in Vegas artist competition two years running, in 2021 and 2022, selected from hundreds of applicants.

Flanagan’s signature Iconography series began as black and white studies of famous sports figures. As the series evolved, he realized we often don’t see celebrities as everyday people, so he added color to humanize them. He now uses specific colors and hues to highlight various traits with humor and wit. His other ongoing series include Syndicate, farcical paintings depicting gangland characters as animals, and Refresh, large-scale works showing how even iconic masterpieces may need cleaning and touch-ups over time.

Beyond these recurring themes, Flanagan creates deeply personal portraits honoring his late father’s military service, his sons, and his sister-in-law who passed away from COVID-19. His unique style has developed over several years and continues to evolve. Flanagan is represented by Park West Gallery, where collectors can explore his growing body of work that blends technical skill with thoughtful commentary on fame, history, and personal memory.

King Redd is a self-taught artist who bridges past and present, believing that older images and stories hold powerful resonance when conveying modern messages through art. Born in St. Croix in 1984, he moved to Miami in the late 1980s, where he still lives today with his wife and children. Raised by a single mother alongside five siblings, Redd discovered his artistic talent in second grade, initially drawing comic characters and superheroes before connecting with Miami’s graffiti scene and eventually exploring tattooing.

Redd’s creative process begins with identifying the message he wants to share, then searching through vintage cartoons, retro visual art, and old photographs to find fragments from the past that can be reimagined into something new. His work incorporates graffiti influences and vintage photography, resulting in a colorful explosion of human emotion and vivid memories that defies easy categorization.

Inspired by beloved Park West Gallery artist LEBO, who passed away in 2023, and by Basquiat’s example of carving one’s own artistic path, Redd has flourished in recent years. He collaborated with LEBO on a mural for Art Basel Miami that was featured in Forbes Magazine, created work for HBO’s Pod Save America, and exhibited at Art/New York. He has also produced original art for the Florida Panthers’ Black History Night celebration. Redd is represented by Park West Gallery.

Autumn de Forest has been a professional artist for most of her life, beginning her remarkable career at age six. Born in 2001 to Doug, a musician, and Katherine, a former actress and model, she discovered her passion at age five when she wandered into the family garage and asked to paint with wood stain. Her father was astonished by the result, noting it resembled work by Mark Rothko. Her parents nurtured her talent by converting their music studio into an art space, and at age seven, she won Best in Show at an Art in the Park event in Nevada.

De Forest’s career soared quickly. At age eight, she sold more than $100,000 in paintings in just sixteen minutes during a 2010 auction. The Discovery Channel dubbed her an “artistic genius,” while Dr. Joanne Ruthsatz of Ohio State University recognized her as an “advanced child prodigy.” Though self-taught, she descends from a lineage of recognized American painters including Roy de Forest, Lockwood de Forest, and George de Forest Brush.

The Las Vegas-based artist has developed innovative techniques including “pull painting,” which involves dragging paint across canvas with wire, and “wind painting,” using an air compressor with diluted acrylic paint. Drawing inspiration from masters like Warhol, Picasso, and O’Keeffe, she creates narrative works that often reimagine famous pieces with her unique perspective. De Forest is represented by Park West Gallery and dedicates her time and talent to numerous charitable causes.

Miguel Paredes is a quintessential New Yorker whose high-energy art combines the spirit of Broadway with influences from Tokyo’s Ginza, Seoul’s Gangnam style, Miami’s South Beach and the Vegas strip. Born and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he graduated from the high school that inspired the movie Fame. Like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paredes emerged from New York’s graffiti culture as a protégé of Andy Warhol’s studio collaborator Ronnie Cutrone. He has captivated a global collector base stretching from Manhattan to Tokyo with his storytelling across painting, sculpture, murals including 3D murals, fashion, NFTs and an animated TV series.

Paredes established himself as a Pop artist with an eye-catching graphic style featuring sexy characters and action figures in vibrant colors and crisp outlines. He is best known for his take on the Japanese anime aesthetic, including voluptuous girls and martial arts fighters. His irresistible characters include Pulgha, a magical flea, and her friends, who have been turned into a branded animated sitcom series. His New York Stories series pioneered a style he calls Urban Realism.

Now Miami-based with his wife and five children, Paredes works in the prestigious Wynwood Arts District. He was the first Miami-Dade resident honored by proclamations from the City of Miami Beach and Village of Pinecrest for supporting the Miami Design Preservation League’s Art Deco Welcome Center. His work has been featured every year at Art Basel Miami Beach since 2001, and he is represented by Park West Gallery.

Celeste Reiter creates dazzling fluid abstract paintings through the chemical reactions of polymers, metallics, pearlescent pigments, and various mediums on composite fine art substrates and canvas. She made history as the first female artist represented by Park West Gallery to sell out both her first and second shows.

Raised in rural Ohio, Reiter grew up in a blue-collar community where she was surrounded by beautiful landscapes and vibrant colors. Her mother taught tole painting, a structured folk art form involving decorative painting on tin and wooden objects, but Reiter always gravitated toward abstract works, often using black paint or crayons. Even as a child, she recognized the power of a black background behind vivid colors. One birthday gift, a spin art machine, foreshadowed the spinning apparatus she uses today to create her artwork.

As a young adult in Cincinnati, Reiter discovered her passion for color while painting and repainting her apartment walls, noticing how profoundly wall colors affected her mood. Self-taught, she immersed herself in art books to learn about paint, mediums, and different styles. She remains mesmerized by how paint moves and responds to manipulation. Her work has been sold at fine art shows across the country, including Artexpo New York and American Craft Baltimore, and in 2021 she was named top selling artist by Touch of Modern. Reiter and her husband, Park West Gallery artist Nicholas Yust, reside in Cincinnati.