Meet The Team

Danijela Krha Purssey is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, an Australian-based international contemporary art publication she established with Richard Purssey in 2013. What began as a small online space for sharing her love of figurative art has developed into an influential creative platform spanning quarterly print and digital publishing, long-form arts journalism, curated exhibitions, an artist directory, the annual Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, and a social media community of more than two million followers. Across this body of work, Danijela has distinguished herself not simply as an editor or publisher, but as a cultural architect – building vital new pathways for artists whose practices sit outside traditional institutional definitions.

She is deeply committed to championing Australian artists internationally, helping local practitioners overcome geographic isolation and reach global audiences, collectors and curators. By positioning Australian creatives alongside leading international peers, she strengthens Australia’s cultural presence in the contemporary art market and creates practical opportunities for local creatives to develop international recognition.

Danijela’s work responds to a clear gap in the visual arts ecosystem: many technically accomplished, emotionally resonant and visually distinctive artists lacked the visibility, context and professional support needed to build sustainable careers. Through Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, she has created a bridge from discovery to opportunity – helping artists gain credibility, secure representation, increase sales and commissions, connect with industry networks, and feel validated in developing distinctive practices that expand the language of contemporary art.

Curatorial Vision, Editorial Leadership and Cultural Advocacy
Danijela’s creative talent lies in recognising artistic excellence ahead of wider institutional consensus and translating that recognition into serious public visibility. Her curatorial eye is both discerning and expansive: Beautiful Bizarre Magazine champions artists across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, digital art and other static mediums, while embracing realism, imaginative realism, hyperrealism, surrealism, pop surrealism, superflat and lowbrow. In doing so, she has broadened the conversation about what contemporary art can include, asserting that beauty, figuration, craft, accessibility and emotional immediacy can be intellectually rigorous and culturally significant.

Under her leadership, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine has grown from an online art-appreciation community into a recognised international arts publication and platform. Today, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine has published more than 50 print issues and thousands of web articles, built a social media community exceeding two million, developed a curatorial program of local and international commercial gallery and museum exhibitions, and established the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize as a significant international platform for artist recognition, funding and career development.

Danijela’s talent is also evident in the self-sustaining ecosystem she has created. Beautiful Bizarre Magazine connects artists, collectors, curators, audiences and media so each group’s success reinforces the others: artists gain visibility, validation, sales, commissions, representation and confidence; galleries discover high-calibre representational artists already resonating with a global audience; collectors encounter vetted work with depth, context and long-term potential; and audiences engage with figurative and representational art as accessible, human-centred and essential. Through editorial features, social media promotion, retail and gallery magazine distribution, curated exhibitions, the Artist Directory and the international Art Prize, Danijela has built practical infrastructure for artistic visibility, market connection, community trust and long-term career development.

Creative Courage and Cultural Infrastructure
Danijela’s courage is creative, curatorial and strategic: it is expressed through her decision to challenge narrow art-world hierarchies and build a platform for practices that had often been dismissed, marginalised or treated as peripheral to contemporary fine art. At a time when many representational artists struggled for validation within commercial galleries, museums and mainstream art media, she chose to make their work central rather than marginal. This was a bold curatorial and editorial position: it asserted that technical mastery, imagination, narrative, emotion and figuration could be contemporary, challenging and serious.

Danijela has further demonstrated this courage by translating conviction into lasting cultural infrastructure. Rather than simply advocating for greater recognition of representational artists, she has created the editorial, curatorial and professional channels through which that recognition can occur. Her exhibitions have extended this impact beyond digital and print publishing, bringing artists into respected gallery and museum contexts in Australia, Japan, Europe and the United States.
Through Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Danijela has created a vital bridge between the margins and the mainstream, an editorial record of a major contemporary representational movement, and a community and safe space through which artists, collectors, galleries, writers and audiences could find one another. Her work has helped shift this field from scattered visibility to shared legitimacy.

For many artists, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine has provided more than exposure; it has offered confidence, legitimacy and a sense of belonging. It has helped artists trust that their visual language matters, that audiences exist for their work, and that careers can be built without diluting the qualities that make the work distinctive.

The 2018 launch of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize further demonstrates this creative courage. The Art Prize was conceived as an annual, non-acquisitive international award celebrating diversity and excellence in representational visual arts across static mediums. Its purpose is not only to reward artists financially, but to provide validation, global exposure and career development, particularly for artists who may find it difficult to gain representation in traditional gallery and museum frameworks. By establishing a prize that treats representational art as a field worthy of serious international adjudication, Danijela created a mechanism for changing how artistic merit is recognised.

Richard Purssey is the Co-Founder and Technical Director of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine.

He is also an ICT Director who is also a lifelong collector and appreciator of modern art. During the life of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Richard has interviewed some of the finest contemporary realist artists from around the world, and been intimately involved in the creation of Beautiful Bizarre as a leading voice in the world of figurative art in all mediums. He has also been closely involved with the fine arts during his time as CIO of one of Australia’s most prestigious public galleries, the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Based in the UK, Natalia Joruk has worked closely with the Editor-in-Chief since 2014, supporting with the integral design and growth of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine into a recognised international arts publication and platform. She has been involved with multiple parts of the business; beginning as a volunteer writer, she has worked her way through numerous roles including P.A. to the Editor-in-Chief, Customer Support, Distribution Manager and Deputy Editor, before settling into her current position as Director of Art Prize & Exhibitions.

Natalia cultivates and manages partnerships and communication with international art-focussed brands, art patrons and art communities to further support the ever-growing community of Beautiful Bizarre artists. She focuses on the growth of the annual Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize to ensure it continues to be a significant platform, directly supporting artists’ careers to grow through substantial monetary and product prizes, and increased global exposure. Additionally, she manages and oversees the Beautiful Bizarre curated exhibitions which bring together hundreds of artists annually under the roofs of prestigious partner galleries.

If you would like to learn more about Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize sponsorship opportunities, Natalia is always happy to chat!

I am the Finance Director of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine and feel incredibly lucky to have been part of this amazing journey from the second issue in 2013. As a lover of all things creative and artistic, with my body being my canvas, it is wonderful to see how art touches the lives of so many in such a positive way through Beautiful Bizarre.  When not punching numbers, you’ll find me out in the paddock with my horses or knee deep in the garden in the wine region of South Australia.

Bella Harris is an internationally exhibited artist and creator of Wooden Ophelia. She is not only the Online Editor at Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, she also oversees all staff writers and helps support website functionality and development. As a contributing writer for the website, active copy editor, and editorial photographer, she plays a vital role in the growth of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine while working closely with advertisers and artists.

Bella Harris is a self-taught artist whose first experience with the paintbrush came when she realized turpentine wasn’t her Grandmother’s Chanel N°5. Working with a variety of mediums, the St. Louis native explores the fragility, whimsicality, and unguarded emotional expression between realism and pop surrealism. With an emphasis on off-kilter portraiture, her emotionally driven works convey a sense of vulnerability and haunting individuality. Through her growing body of art and photography, she continues to render interpretatively subtle message of self-awareness and personal reflection alongside the many characteristics of a slightly stranger beauty. Her vision presents a wide spectrum of dark detailed lines juxtaposing light minimalism while other works capture a true range of color. Thriving deep in a collective vein driven by fragments of self-perceptions, the reservations in which one’s own criticisms have the ability to cripple distinctiveness are shed. Bringing to life new techniques and evolving styles, each piece embodies personal attachments of the artist’s creative voice and aims to embrace the viewer while delivering a nearly tangible variance of emotional communication. With consistent study, she methodically incorporates a variety of styles to convey the journey of her deeply personal vision.

She is the original creator of Wooden Ophelia, a contemporary collection of original moon designs, handmade woodwork, artwork furnishings, and sacred crystals… all to enchant your home.

Andrea Kovacic is a fourth-year Law and Creative Writing student studying in Sydney, Australia. Andrea has also studied Literature and History abroad at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy. In addition to her studies, Andrea works as a freelance writer for a number of publications, whilst working on literary manuscripts. She is interested in the more dreamy and whimsical creations of the moody artistic world.

Chrysa Podioti is the Designer of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine and a freelance graphic artist.

Now based in Greece and with 20 years of commercial experience in London UK, Chrysa has worked on various kinds of design work, from logos and branding identity, advertising, promotional graphics and editorial materials to book & magazine layout, web layout and illustration commissions.

Graduated from the University of the Arts (London College of Communication), her work is focused on editorial graphic design, experimental typography, illustration and printmaking. Studies also include freehand & architectural drawing.

Chrysa has also been a resident teaching artist at The Green School for girls and having taken several illustration commissions, has exhibited extensively in and outside London, in venues such as the ICA.

Samantha Dexter is a Manchester-based writer, musician, artist and photographer. Graduating with a degree in music journalism, she works as the Personal Assistant to the Deputy Editor, Advertising Accounts Manager, and staff writer for Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. Her passion for art and culture runs into every facet of her life. She possess a strong connection to all things weird and wonderful with a particular fondness for dark and pop surrealism, lowbrow, contemporary art and animation. In her free time, Samantha enjoys playing guitar, travelling, collecting art books and designer toys and learning more about the topics that fascinate her the most. Her biggest goal is to be able to share her passions with like-minded people through her work.

Ren Riley is an aspiring bounty hunter librarian, but until that job becomes a real thing, she works as a graphic designer, freelance writer, and marketing consultant. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Biology from Middle Tennessee State University and a Masters of Education Policy from the University of Washington. In her free time, she enjoys creating digital collages with a focus on futuristic elements and self-portraiture; her work has been shown at the Holy Art Gallery in London. She is the Editor of I, Enheduanna, a zine focused on up-and-coming feminine and non-binary creatives.

Athina is the Personal Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief and Artist Directory Manager. She loves to travel and learn about different cultures, and during her free time, she volunteers at a dog shelter. She’s been an assistant to various industries for 6 years and helped with the business’ growth. Her goal in life is to make a difference by inspiring others to see their potential and so enable future beings to live in a better society.

Whether she’s wearing her journalist, copywriter or content editor’s hat, Danai thrives on uncovering stories, sounds and spaces that inspire people to embrace new art, music and travel experiences.

Some of her favourite interviews and cover stories over the years have seen her talk black acetate with ex-Velvet Underground John Cale, trace the links between music and boxing with jazz storyteller Diana Krall, and ponder on the Old West with subversive filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.

Danai’s background includes publishing content in two languages as a writer and editor at Skyscanner Greece and Ireland travel blogs and serving as a full-time music editor at the long-standing Athens weekly Athinorama. Going freelance and moving to London over a decade ago, she has juggled various roles -including as an online author for the Beautiful Bizarre blog, interviewing artists and covering from dark and dadaist paintings to avant-garde fashions.

Lorena Kloosterboer is a Dutch-Argentine artist living in Antwerp who is best known for painting still lifes in acrylics. Highly inspired by the Dutch Golden Age, her compositions are based on symbolism through which she seeks to convey visual poetry. She’s the author of Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensable Guide. Three additional translations of this book have appeared under different titles and covers. She has written forewords for museum, gallery, and exhibition catalogues, including bilingual introductions for the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain. In 2023 she published Tempus ad Requiem, a book showing fifty of her still lifes with birds. She enjoys writing essays about art and artists which are published on Medium, and is happy to join the writers team at Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. Besides painting and writing, Lorena loves to read, travel, and spend time on the water.

Michele Vigorita is an Italian journalist and cultural critic whose work moves across contemporary art, photography, performance and cinema. With a background in theatre direction and filmmaking, he is particularly interested in the relationship between artistic intention, structure and effect — how images, bodies, spaces and narrative choices produce meaning. His criticism approaches artworks less as isolated objects than as systems, looking at the tensions, fractures and formal decisions that give them their particular force. Based in the Milan area, he contributes to publications across art, visual culture and film.

Lily is a former reconciliation officer and project manager specializing in art and heritage preservation programs. She has an unconventionally inquisitive mind and a unique style of writing that reveals untold stories, hidden identities, and erased memories.

She thrives in ambiguity, challenges echo chambers, and enjoys learning new ways to understand the world and the people in it.

She is a history buff with a particular interest in pre-Roman influences on mythology, folklore, and the occult across Asia and North Africa. Lily often draws inspiration from Mesopotamian deities and Assyrian mythology in her own art.

Beautiful Bizarre Magazine is her favourite art magazine, and she considers writing for it a pleasure and a privilege. Through her work, she gets to meet talented artists, see the world through their eyes, and tell the stories they paint on canvas.

Lily is a dash of poised rebellion, a bit of necessary chaos that invokes change for the better, and a whole lot of care and consideration for those who need it.

Anne Stephanie has spent her working life in the company of words. Her career has run through marketing and communications, writing for international brands, leading teams and campaigns, and learning how a message finds its way from a first draft to the people it was meant for. She has written features, press releases, speeches and books, and has found that good writing and good organisation ask the same thing of a person, which is to notice what others pass over.

She brings that attention to her work behind the scenes at Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, looking after the details that keep everything moving. A poet in her own time, Anne is drawn to all things beautiful: a painting, a sculpture, a photograph, a song that stays with her, a meal cooked with patience. She has come to believe that beauty is mostly a matter of attention, and that to look closely at something is already to love it.