The Affordable Art Series is a thorough exploration of the flourishing local art community, offering avid collectors and interested newbies a peek at the current mindset in urban painting.

Alec Huxley is a painter based in San Francisco. His work, primarily representational, is filled with contrast. Simultaneously stark and colorful, it focuses on landscapes of the American West Coast. Cinematic scenes serve as imperfect records of place, time and architecture for space travellers and wild animals. A self taught artist, his background includes studies in business, graphic design, photography, as well as a career in printing before committing to fine art full-time in 2009.

Chris Stokes uses mixed media to interlace and layer unassuming combinations of color, lines and found materials. Elements from literature, cultural symbols, and architecture meld together to become art that equals more than the sum of its parts. Born in Philadelphia, the long-time San Francisco resident’s recent work is a reflection of his travels, his ever-evolving perspective of the world, and an interest in science fiction. The resulting pieces represent new landscapes and structures that seem barely possible.

Damon Soule was born in Atlanta, GA but spent the majority of his childhood in New Orleans LA. In 1993, Soule moved to San Francisco with a packed bag of clothes, a small box of art supplies, and $300. Inspired by physics, chemistry, music, and universal knowledge, his work incorporates a bold use of saturation and composition, and is a visual manifestation of the intellectual quandaries he explores on a regular basis. He moved to New York and Portland before returning to San Francisco Bay Area in 2011.

Ivy Jacobsen, a California native, settled into the San Francisco Bay Area while studying art at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. She began her career as a full-time artist in 2005 and quickly emerged as a prolific fine artist with a unique process of incorporating magical realism into her whimsical landscapes. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California with her husband and two children, and works out of her studio in San Francisco.

Joshua Lawyer is a self-taught artist with a background in painting on walls that didn’t belong to him. He now depicts beautiful women juxtaposed against the gray industrial backgrounds that inspired him. He was born and raised, and still lives and works in the Bay Area.

MJ Lindo paints her dreams, fantasies, and nightmares in the expressions of the women in her pieces. They attempt to evoke emotion and wonder, yet also provide insight into the contemporary female story. Lindo was born in Nicaragua, raised in Canada, and now lives and works in the Bay Area.

Reuben Rude is the child of hippies who met in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. He grew up in the woods of Northern California and came back to San Francisco to study at the Academy of Art. He utilizes his expertise in drawing, painting, and illustration in both the creative and commercial realms, having shown in galleries, comic books, and magazines throughout the world. When he is not making art, he is working on his 100-year-old house.

Robert Bowen, a San Francisco self-taught artist, describes his work as a strange, swirling brew of colorful contradiction that is not easy to define or even understand. He takes familiar imagery – most recently sea creatures, insects, and machinery -- and reinterprets it with his own brand of humor and painting.

Sarah Coleman was raised in towns in Texas, Minnesota, and California, and noticed that each landscape possessed a unique effect, mood, and sky. These environments and their cultures shaped Sarah's early life experience and began her interest in the emotional and intellectual impacts of atmosphere, weather, and illusion. She studied art at UC Santa Cruz.

t.w.five works with just one material — vinyl — and focuses largely on process. All shapes are hand-cut to size from large rolls of solid color vinyl, and then carefully applied to a surface of the work. Each work is made of up intricately repeating patterns, which require hours of rigorous work. The finished product is a labor of love, weaved and realized by two sets of skillful hands. Born and raised in Sweden and Brazil, respectively, t.w.five is an international art duo based in San Francisco, California. Each artist holds a Masters of Fine Art from San Jose State University and have enjoyed numerous solo exhibitions in the Bay Area and abroad.

Ursula Xanthe Young is a painter, illustrator, and graphic designer whose urban fairy tale images have become a trademark of street culture in San Francisco and beyond. She finds inspiration in the organic yet urban landscape of the city and its surroundings, and is also highly influenced by her travels and the variety of beings that she encounters along the way. She holds a degree from Parsons School of Design in Illustration.