Her very first solo exhibition last May was extended due to popular demand, and since then, Carla Soares’ art has gone into overdrive.

In a few whirlwind months she has taken part in a variety of collective exhibitions (including Arte Algarve’s Open V11), been approached by galleries in Lisbon and is now working hard on new paintings for shows in Barcelona and Cascais.

Bernado Mota of Setubal is to be honoured as Winner of the Worldwide Illustrating Contest.

Twelve winning writers and twelve illustrators from around the globe—including Bernardo Mota of Setubal—will be honored during the 30th Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards at the famed Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Hollywood, on Sunday, April 13th, 2014 beginning at 6:30 pm. This year also marks the silver anniversary for the Illustrators of the Future Contest where its first 25 years will be celebrated.

For many of the world’s cultures the sound of a popping cork is synonymous with good food, good times and good company. But we seldom give a thought to where that cork came from or how it was made. The members of the Rotary Club Estoi Palace International recently visited the cork processing factory, Novacortiça, near Sao Brás to discover the answers.

We were welcomed to the factory by our guide Gianluca Pereyra who gave us a short presentation before we toured the factory floor. Ginaluca told us that cork is the outer bark of the cork oak tree (Quercus suber) which flourishes around the Mediterranean basin in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

Brigitte von Humboldt’s world starts through a decorative wrought-iron garden gate set back from the sea. It leads down a winding path through rampant foliage and trees, and opens up into a light-filled studio.

This is just the perfect setting for an artist. We find her among her paint pots and canvases, working intently on a huge explosion of colour, the sound of music in the background.

She’s had a life that reads like something out of a storybook. There was even a stint as a Hong Kong celebrity running an upmarket disco in the ’60s. But you won’t hear much of it ‘from the horse’s mouth’, as BJ Boulter, in spite of her energy and focus, is an intensely private person. She doesn’t brag and she’s economical with the facts when they apply to her own successes. All one can really tell is that she’s been pretty damn good at everything she’s done. These days the busy career she pursued as a “fixer”/ line producer for commercials and freelance films has taken a temporary backseat in favour of her special brand of art.

Antonia Williams is a mistress of understatement. When we met her on the recommendation of our website friend and champion Paul Rees of the Algarve Daily News, we were simply told she did “fun things with portraits, which she runs first through an App”. We were given no inkling as to the lady artist’s other talents – which include the enviable ability to “do a Monet in about a week”. She’s good with Turner, too. Brueghel, Vermeer, in fact almost any Old Master or contemporary giant you could care to mention, with the exception perhaps of Jackson Pollock. “I wouldn’t be able to get the spontaneity”…

To say she is a ceramic artist would be to define her by only one of the creative activities she excels at. She is also a painter, a writer, a journalist, a cook, a photography buff, a dab hand with computers and very possibly just about anything else you could care to mention.

The Carvoeiro home she shares with her husband of 55 years is a wonderful opening into the world of Birte Pröttel. From the minute you push through the gate into the garden, you are aware of the many examples that makes this bright-eyed enthusiastic mother and grandmother stand out in a crowd.

Sculptures are grouped under trees, in flower beds; some sit on benches, others hide among the undergrowth.

Now for something completely different. Today we bring you the exceptional story of a very unusual artist. You could say he is an arts equivalent of the proverbial shooting star – someone whose irrepressible energy and philosophy for life can be taken as a recipe for escape from these troubled times…

Meet Beau McClellan, singer-songwriter, sculptor, blacksmith, stage manager/ set-builder, art director, lighting designer and lead movie “baddie”.

How did a man on the right side of 50 even manage all those achievements – let alone to an undeniable level of excellence? (“And I haven’t even got started yet”, he laughs.)