La Matadora Gallery

 Frau Sakra (aka Thea Saks) lives in Los Angeles. She is largely self-taught; but in her first life, when she worked in New York as a book and scientific journal editor, she took night classes at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design. Now her home library of illustration, design, architecture, and literature helps feed her head with ideas for art.

Frau Sakra's oil paintings and ink drawings tell dark, romantic, or otherwise provocative stories, revisit history, push the envelope, and hopefully make people want to learn more. History, biography, and folklore are often springboards for her work. There’s usually action in her art—something meaningful is happening, or someone is being taken by surprise or experiencing the consequences of their own or someone else’s actions. The art is rarely static. The subject matter is usually but not always dark.

Tony Buhagiar is a visual artist and musician living in the Mojave Desert town of Yucca Valley. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Tony developed an early love of comic books, horror & sci-fi movies, as well as hard rock and heavy metal music. An avid drawing fanatic since the age of 4, he was severely bitten by the rock and metal bug in his teens, leaving the visual arts behind to focus on playing music for many years.

In 2007, at the age of 37, Tony suffered an Aortic Dissection which nearly took his life and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Wheelchair-bound, he continued to perform in bands for many years while working through the many new challenges brought on by paralysis.

A move to the Mojave Desert in 2016, away from the frustrations of the music world, inspired him once again to pick up his pens. He has since been creating colorful, cosmic, cartoon-style surreal pictures infused with magickal symbolism, informed by the many extreme experiences in his life and beyond. 

 Aaron Sheppard was born in 1976, in York, Nebraska. Sheppard lives and works in Joshua Tree, California where he currently confronts disillusions concerning humanity and art.

Areas of Specialization: Painting, Performance, Sculpture, Drawing, Video, Installation, Writing, Tattoo.

"Fragmenting static ideas of sexuality and gender identity, he uses his own body and image as subject repeatedly. Aaron layers this syntax with motifs from diverse sources including 20th century art, erotica, literature, mythology, popular culture, folktales and religion. The oeuvre may be seen as delightfully exhibitionist because it is constantly seems engaged in the sexy theatrics of display. However, there is also a sense of extreme vulnerability and it is this profound fragility that makes Aaron’s work powerful."

-Rosa JH Berland