When you visit mixed media artist Linda Paris’ website or East Sacramento home studio, you’ll find a treasure trove of work, from collages and paintings to dioramas of found objects. What you won’t find is the artist’s biography.

“My philosophy is I like people to interact with the work. I don’t want a provenance or bio to interfere with that,” Paris says. “It’s the piece that we’re selling, not me.”

Interacting with Paris’ work is like jumping down the rabbit hole into another world.

One lesson Christie Martinez’s mom instilled at an early age was “there’s always a way.”

That idea stuck with Martinez as she embarked on a new career path as a digital artist who specializes in pet portraits to raise money for animal rescue organizations.

“It all starts with the thought process of giving,” says Martinez, a Sacramento native who lives in Fair Oaks with her husband and 12-year-old son. “You see all these animals in the shelters. I feel so bad for them, I wish I could take them all home. I thought, if I’m doing pet portraits, how cool would it be to partner with these organizations and donate? It’s a win-win everywhere.”

A moody blue dreamscape punctuated by floating golden crescents and shadowy orbs hangs on the wall. Next to it, a small placard with text.

“Golden Moons,” it reads. “There seems to be a price for living with full intention, awake and alive to the possibilities of the world. You two watch me take the risks. Holding light in a dark corner no one wants to look at. And it scares me to see you pivot away from me and on to your own path with the same luminosity. And that action, my golden moons, excites me and scares me. With audacity and flair, telling the world what you need to shine. Where did you learn this? Did I teach you or did you teach me?”

Starting over is never easy. Artist Lin Fei Fei has done it four times.

First as a student in her native China earning her stripes as an artist. Then six years ago when she immigrated to the U.S. Then last September when she co-founded “a space in between,” a multifunctional gallery and street art exhibit space housed in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Mansion Flats.

And finally this summer when she closed the physical gallery and moved fully online to be more flexible.

“Before I moved to America, I had become a little bit established,” says Lin, a native of Dalian, China, who earned her master’s degree in oil painting at Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts and who was named one of 10 Contemporary Chinese Artists of the Future by the Wang Shi and Kuo Art Foundation in Beijing in 2016.

Susan Tonkin Riegel’s biggest tip for fellow artists is simple: “Do the work, keep working and don’t do something that doesn’t feel like you.”

Riegel has crafted an impressive art career by being herself. Her mixed-media works are arresting for their playful, abstract and figurative compositions and intricacy. Riegel loves to experiment with materials, from two-dimensional mixed media and oil paint to clay, fabric, batik, papier-mache, wood and, most recently, raw canvas that she paints and sews.

“I get tired of cranking the same thing out, so I switch media,” the longtime Granite Bay resident says. “My style is always changing.”

Few painters can make you feel like you’re really there. But stare at one of Tom Sorensen’s landscapes and you can almost feel the Santa Cruz wind ruffling your hair, smell the damp earth after a rain in Montgomery Woods, hear the surf crash against the shore below Pigeon Point.

Sorensen, hiker and outdoorsman, enjoys capturing beautiful places he visits. Oil paint and canvas are how he documents “grand views” from his travels.

“I’ve always been into hiking and enjoy being out in nature—it’s very restorative,” says the retired respiratory therapist. “Any time my mood is not good, if I get out and go for a hike, it makes me feel better.”