Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2026: Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award Finalists Announced

What a year it has been for the inaugural Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award category! Open to traditional mediums: painting, drawing or sculpture (with a special focus on imaginative realism), we have enjoyed a truly broad selection of entries.

Our Jury Panel – including esteemed Arts Champions Catherine K. Gyllerstrom, collector, Art Consultant, Owner & Art Director of BearWolf Books, and Patrick Wilshire of IX Arts and IX Gallery – have been going through the entries and making the incredibly difficult decisions. Once again, the overall quality of entries was exceptional; we are deeply honoured by our community’s interest in the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize.

We have received sculptures in many mediums including wood, marble, ceramics, resins, polymer clays, plaster, felt, glass, wire, textiles, jewellery, beads, found objects, doll parts, feathers, pearl white powder and even natural crystals grown directly onto the sculpture.

We have enjoyed painting artworks made using materials including: watercolours, acrylics, inks, Gouache, coloured pencils, gel pens, egg tempera, gold leaf, crayons, and even swarowski crystals and salt.

Drawing artworks included the use of: graphite, coloured pencils, pen, charcoal, ink, pastels, gold and silver lead, and even hydrangeas petals.

Digital artworks included the use of: Escape Motions Rebelle Pro, XPPen Artist Pro 16, Apple iPad, Wacom Cintiq Pro + 16, Wacom Intuos Pri, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Lightroom.

Additionally, Photography entries included the use of apparatus and software by: Canon, Sony, Mamyia, Leica, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, printing and development equipment, and even collage photographs.

The Prizes

Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award

The Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award 1st prize winner will receive:

• $3,000 USD cash, generously donated by Catherine K. Gyllerstrom, Collector, Art Consultant, Owner & Art Director of BearWolf Books, an independent publishing house that specialises in Illustrated Fantasy, Mythology, and Stories for Young Readers.
• A beautiful, specially commissioned glass art award trophy.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• 3 month social media advertising package (Beautiful Bizarre Magazine: 2 million+ followers across all social media platforms).
• Winning artwork printed in the December 2026 issue of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, as part of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize editorial.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites+ shared on social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

2nd prize winner will receive:

• $1,500 USD cash, generously donated by Black Dragon Press. Black Dragon Press is an independent print publisher based in London, UK.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

3rd prize winner will receive:

• $500 USD cash, generously donated by Catherine K. Gyllerstrom, Collector, Art Consultant, Owner & Art Director of BearWolf Books, an independent publishing house that specialises in Illustrated Fantasy, Mythology, and Stories for Young Readers.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

The Winners in each Award category and the Grand Prize Award Winner will be invited to participate in the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine curated exhibition ‘Glimmer’ at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, CA, United States later this year, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists!

A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger. Glimmers are small, everyday moments that make you feel joy, happiness, peace, or gratitude – which can help cue your nervous system to feel safe or calm. [The term was coined by Deb Dana.]

From the 200 Finalists across all Award categories, the Jury Panel will select the Grand Prize Award Winner.

The Grand Prize Award Winner of the 2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize will receive:

• $10,000 USD cash, donated by our Platinum sponsors Catherine K. Gyllerstrom, Bearwolf Books, INPRNT, RAYMAR, 33PA and MPB.
• A beautiful, specially commissioned glass art award trophy.
• The opportunity to exhibit in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, USA, alongside 100+ of the world’s best contemporary representational artists.
• Exposure to a successful commercial gallery’s collector base with the opportunity to sell their work.
• 10 page in-depth interview editorial published in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine December 2026 issue.
• Winning artwork printed in the December 2026 issue of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, as part of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize editorial.
• Exclusive in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine websites + shared across Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media.
• Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months. The go-to platform for artists, curators and collectors to discover exceptional artists and explore their work.
• 12 month social media advertising package (Beautiful Bizarre Magazine: 2 million+ followers across all social media platforms).
• A year’s worth of inspiration – a print subscription to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award

The Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award Winner will be selected by popular vote from the 200 Finalists. The Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award Winner will receive $1,000 USD cash, generously donated by Art & Fable Puzzle Company.

Voting will open on 2 September [AEDT, Australian Eastern Daylight Time]. To ensure you don’t miss your chance to vote, please join our email mailing list here.

Additionally, the Art & Fable Puzzle Company People’s Choice Award Winner will enjoy a year’s worth of social media advertising through the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine to ensure they are able to connect with the right audience, raise their profile, and of course to grow their social media following. They will also enjoy a Profile listing [including artwork gallery] on the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory for 12 months, a 12 month Beautiful Bizarre Magazine print subscription, and an in-depth interview published on the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine and Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize websites, giving readers an insight into their vision and practice!

In addition, the major sponsors will choose one outstanding work from their award category to receive an Honourable Mention. Stay tuned to learn more!

The RAYMAR Painting Award Finalists will be announced later this week. See the BearWolf Books Emerging Artist Finalists here, the Sculpture Award Finalists here, the MPB Photography Award Finalists here, the INPRNT Digital Art Award Finalists here, and the 33PA Drawing Award Finalists here.

So without further ado we are proud to announce the 2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award…

Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Imaginative Realism Award Finalists

2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize

This is a particularly personal piece. The Barn Owl is walking amongst the magical glowing mushrooms in the lush forest. Sadly, he can only focus on the weight of the chains on his ankle. The Tufted Titmice flies down, bearing the key to secure his release. We each contain complex inner lives. The good, the bad, the complicated. “The Purest Light” is about how those big feelings can hinder us from seeing the beauty that is always surrounding us. Bark flaking from a Sycamore Tree. The changing of the seasons. The gentle glide of a sparrow. Life is so complex. If we are lucky, we have our communities and our friends who call us on a Monday afternoon asking how we are doing.

As an homage to Bosch’s earthly paradise, this work witnesses the playful evolution of a world untouched by humanity. Here, the traditional triad of Adam, Eve, and God is replaced by a sacred geometry of Animal, Mineral, and Vegetable principles. It is an intimate myth of non-creation—a silent space where forms disperse and blend, dancing and crystallizing into new states of being. Originally commissioned for a child’s bedroom, the artwork secretly conceals the child’s name within its intricate details.

I want my images to grab you and drag you if not willingly, then kicking and screaming into my picture. I’m inspired and interested in imaginative storytelling pictures that evoke an emotional response. I am inspired by paintings from the golden age of illustration as well as many artists of the past realms of fantasy, drama and horror as well as classical illustration and realism.

As bionic and organic structures merge, the boundary of life blurs. This work explores the essence of existence: can an artificial being possess a soul once physical and sensory differences vanish? Dreams are the ultimate proof of self-awareness. By depicting a bionic shark dreaming of a cyborg, I explore the inner spiritual world of artificial life. This mirror relationship represents a profound moment of self-recognition—the shark identifies its own status as a “replica” by observing another. In this dream, it moves beyond mere biological response to find the true weight of its existence.

“Looksmaxing” describes the optimising of one’s appearance to increase the perceived value as a man and, inside the manosphere, where the term was invented, men rank each other from 0 to 10 and “coach” on the maximization of their looks through different practices from diet and gym to bone smashing and other self-harming extremes. This is a practice that girls and women went through for centuries in order to survive a system built around male economic power. And it is an accepted fact of life. But when migrating to the young male population it became a sign of societal collapse where one’s value is not given by accumulated skills or the result of the educational system.

The labyrinth of the mind is a complication, a mystery of our own creation. It is the mythological dream that arises from the depths of the collective unconscious in response to the breath of life that is the whisper of thousands of voices on the wind; the whisper of millennia, the breath of life; our call to adventure and centering belief.

In this cave, I see an allegory of the inner world and the connection to the soul—encompassing various states of consciousness (dreaming, intoxication, trance) and the solace to be found there. The thread, meanwhile, seeks to link these states, in which time passes differently. My work centers on the theme of an inner quest, distinct from a material one. How do the unconscious and our dreams weave their patterns in relation to our waking life, and how can we marry these two opposing aspects within ourselves?

The title for this piece was inspired by Susanna Clarke, one of my favourite writers. The spell described in her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, places the moon at your eyes, allowing you to see the truth. Sometimes, the dreams we dream at night help us see true, even if what they are trying to tell us takes cryptic and confusing shapes. The image speaks to the subconscious world we each carry within, wherever we go; an inner realm where things, places and beings that seem strange and incompatible, coexist naturally and harmoniously.

The world around them is breaking—time flickers, gravity bends, and nothing holds its place. A train hangs in the sky, pages drift without reason, and beneath their feet, the ground has dissolved into water. Nothing makes sense anymore. And yet, across this quiet chaos, they remain—drawn into a moment that feels weightless, like love itself. The kind of love that turns everything upside down, where you lose your footing, your logic, your certainty… and find only each other. But this is more than the glitch. Because they are not falling—they are staying. This painting is about the rare, powerful truth of commitment: that even when life fractures and reality shifts, love is the choice to remain. To sit across from one another and say, even here, where nothing makes sense… I still choose you.

This painting is part of a series that explore the question of the origin of inspiration and how it manifest itself. In this painting, the muse coalesces from the fire, water, mist and earth – the vestigial curled form near the bottom, drawing from the water on the left and the stones on the right, begins to transform into the form above, an active, vital part of the creative process.

From the Ancient Greek play by Euripides: the wrath and grief of Medea, betrayed by her husband Jason. After enacting her terrible revenge, she exits the play in a flying chariot drawn by dragons. The billowing shawl and golden sun behind her supplies her divine blood, of the line of Helios. The painting is created with many translucent glazes of oil paint, laid carefully over and around the hand-gilded disc of the sun. 22k gold was chosen carefully for its slightly cooler and yellower tone than 24k, to harmonize with the yellow dragons that are based directly on ancient Greek artwork.

Commissioned painting representing making it through hard times and surviving.

From the Greek Fates measuring lifespans to the red thread of Eastern legends, threads have always represented destiny. This artwork reexamines that connection. Here, her crown resembles both a silkworm’s cocoon and a needle cushion. With needles in hand, she quietly weaves the passing of time. The thread of life is complex—sometimes smooth, and sometimes tangled. Unraveling it may be a task for the gods, or simply the lifelong work of being human.

This painting is an example of my independent body of work that I have titled “Cryptid Visions.” CRYPTID is a term used to describe creatures whose existence has been suggested but not scientifically documented. It is a fitting lens through which to view this body of work, since the paintings depict animals in both familiar and unexpected ways. Drawing frequently from folklore, I will distort scale relationships, environments, or the animals themselves to create images that feel both otherworldly and grounded, honoring the inherent physical traits and behaviors of my subjects even as I reimagine them.

Roots & Wings Series She rises from the earth like an exotic flower, unfolding through the body as dance. Rooted and luminous, she carries the nature of an orchid: mysterious, graceful, delicate in form, yet quietly powerful. This piece is connected to the energy of the solar plexus: the center of will, confidence, and personal power awakening from within. Strength here is not force. It is radiance arriving through the body, a quiet bloom becoming undeniable. This piece arrived after my birthday as a genuine unfolding, not planned, but called forth through movement, sensation, and form.

This is a water gilded panel using traditional techniques, the raised areas of the gilding being created with layers of gesso that are then etched and carved before gilding with 24ct gold leaf. The portraits are painted in oil, the lower background in egg tempera, then glazed in oil. The figures look up to the stars. The celestial map behind them is inspired by Durer’s etchings of the night sky.

*Partum Navitas*- or “Creative Energy” emerged from the discourse surrounding domestic life, confinement, isolation, and the weariness they induced. Yet, it also highlights the massive waves of creativity that arose among people, demonstrating that this phenomenon was, in a way, a form of liberation for those who found themselves inevitably “prisoners” of their own inner worlds.

My sister wrapped her nude reclining body in a sheet while I made graphite sketches of her supine figure. Her image brought to my mind the idea of transformation. A chrysalis is a casing formed around a caterpillar after shedding its skin to prepare for emergence as a butterfly. This phenomenon has become a cultural icon symbolizing transformation. My painting represents human metamorphosis as a wrapped figure whose crowned head emerges from her chrysalis. The kneeling figure is participating in this transformation as a personification of the emotionally charged thoughts and feelings that arise with change and renewal, represented by a maple leaf and an oak leaf.

See also

QUICK Q & AARTREAD

What are the things you wish you knew when you started out as an artist?

Dave’s work is a celebration of human form in its potential for beauty and expressiveness. Obscured ephemeral glimpses of perfection fuel his search for subjects and paint marks. In his words, “God — and the devil — is in the details.”  Dave’s work often explores the human relationship to our world, in both a physical and spiritual sense. “I’m obsessed with our timeless ‘elemental’ connection to our world, and the alchemical way our minds form imperfect explanations and mythologies to rationalize it. My own sensibilities tend toward agnosticism and science, but our profound need as a species to make sense of ourselves is essential to our psyche. So, while our narratives are inherently fanciful, our need to explain our existence is certain.”

Sprung can be understood as an exploration of the subjects inner emotional world rather than a literal scene. Its dreamlike imagery suggests themes of introspection, transformation, vulnerability, and the unconscious mind, inviting the viewer to look beyond appearances.

The Creatrix, inspired by the Naga Yogini of Indian mythology—a being half-serpent and half-female mystic—embodies the life force as the divine feminine and the awakening of creative energy. Predominantly symbolized by the egg and spiral, this imagery represents the emergence of creative birth from the depths of the interior. The Creatrix ascends from the shadowy depths towards the radiant light of the celestial realm.

In my paintings I sometimes use family members as stand-ins for figures in an open narrative. My oldest daughter, 17, has danced classical ballet since age four, and it was she and her friends who helped me explore an inspiration from a night scene of the ballet Giselle, where spirits of women who died before their wedding day dance faithless men to death. That scene has always struck me as haunting as it is beautiful, and I suppose this painting grew out of watching my daughter’s generation of girls come of age in a world that’s still stacked against them. Why such delayed retribution? What if the these women’s faces were not serene, but openly wore predatory glee, hunger and judgement? The scene is unearthly, but tugs at the mind because it could nearly take place.

Dawn on the Shores of Creation is the visual culmination of the artist’s creative philosophy. Using the visual language of several cultures, religions, and spiritual groups, this painting connects a broad spectrum of allusions to explore the purpose of our creation and what it means to create. From the striding great herons, to the lapping ocean’s horizon, to the 10 arms bearing tools of creation – each element emanates outward from the glowing point in the center, as if the entire scene were birthed in a moment of creation, a big bang, the exposing of the artist’s soul.

In this oil painting, utopia is envisioned as a harmonious, perfect coexistence between humanity and the natural world. Created with a palette of bright, hopeful colours, this piece offers a vision of restoration, imagining an ocean where our coral reefs are once again healthy, thriving, and teeming with vibrant life. The central figure stands as a peaceful guardian of the deep, a living embodiment of the sea’s resilience. By blending classical figurative realism with narrative fantasy, this work invites viewers into a tranquil, submerged sanctuary. It serves as a visual promise of a world healed, preserved, and thriving in undisturbed beauty.

This painting was inspired by a dream where a small bird I was caring for died but was reborn as a jeweled hummingbird when I took it outside. It seemed like a many layered thing, the bird a symbol of the self and of everything at once, and from it came various visions… overlays of birds, faces, tears and questions of what meaningful dreams non-humans might have.

The 2026 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize is proudly sponsored by:

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