Every week, Art to Collect by ArtDependence brings together an exceptional curation of works that reflect the pulse of contemporary art today, offering collectors, new and seasoned alike, a window into some of the most compelling creative practices around the world.
Collecting art is never simply about acquiring objects; it is about embracing stories, ideas, and sensibilities that deepen one’s way of seeing the world. For many collectors, the most rewarding works are those that combine craftsmanship with narrative depth and art that lingers in memory and transforms a room into a space of reflection.
On ‘Art to Collect’, a platform committed to presenting the most exciting voices in contemporary art, we are highlighting artists whose works straddle personal history, cultural resonance, and sheer visual allure.
Akshita Lad, Midnight Glow, Acrylic on Linen 2025
Akshita Lad is an award-winning artist based in Dubai, celebrated for her emotionally resonant and timeless works. Drawing from Renaissance classicism and Impressionist luminosity, she blends traditional techniques with a contemporary emotional appeal. Akshita’s work invites viewers to rediscover the silent, sacred spaces within themselves.
Her paintings have been exhibited internationally at prestigious venues such as the Louvre Museum (Paris), MEAM Museum (Barcelona), Saatchi Gallery (London), and in exhibitions during the Venice Biennale.
In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the arts, Akshita Lad was awarded the UAE Golden Visa for Arts and Culture — one of the most prestigious honors granted by the UAE Ministry of Culture. This highly selective visa is the cultural equivalent of the U.S. Extraordinary Ability (O-1) Talent Visa, granted only to a small number of artists whose work demonstrates exceptional merit and impact. It marks a major milestone in an artist’s career, acknowledging both international recognition and long-term value to the cultural landscape of the UAE.
Akshita Lad: " My art is a celebration of emotional well-being—an offering of peace, serenity, and joy. I believe deeply in the transformative power of art, and I invite viewers to experience my work as a source of inspiration and light in a world that can often feel clouded by negativity.
My paintings reflect a fusion of classical aesthetics, inspired by Greek, Roman, and Impressionist masters, with a contemporary touch. Each piece emerges from a place of emotional freedom, balancing the precision of classical technique with the spontaneity of expression. Through a sensitive interplay of color and texture, I create harmonious works that explore the spectrum of human emotions, inviting others to step into the stories woven within.
I strive for my art to be more than visual—it is a journey of the soul. My art is a tribute to our shared humanity and our deep connection with nature. I create works that invite
stillness, reflection, and emotional resonance. Each painting is a reminder that beneath our differences, we are bound by the same threads of beauty, compassion, and wonder—a quiet affirmation of the ties that unite us all."
Jehan Legac, Healing Waters, Oil on canvas 2024
Jehan Legac explores the woman as a vessel of presence, sensuality, and mystery. His work navigates the tension between intimacy and strength, delicacy and power, tradition and experimentation. Each portrait, each figure, is an encounter—an invitation to confront beauty, desire, and the unseen energy that connects us.
Jehan Legac: "Through painting, I seek not merely to represent, but to evoke: emotions, memories, and reflections that endure beyond the canvas. My art becomes a dialogue where sensuality and spirituality intertwine, offering the viewer an intimate experience with the timeless and ever-evolving nature of the feminine."
Daphne Verheijke, Light me Up, Beeswax, tempera, oil on canvas 2025
Daphne Verheijke's paintings are often evocative, she is concerned with capturing feeling, intention, and color. Verheijke wants to capture beautiful water features, beautiful shades of light, and the spaciousness of a landscape while painting. Contrasts of warm and cold colors fascinates her endlessly. It's the simplicity that holds the power, being absorbed into the space where, for a moment, nothing else matters.
Dorothea Dejonckheere, Het gaat niet altijd even vlot, Acryl on canvas 2025
The core of Dorothea Dejonckheere’s work lies in making the invisible visible: emotions, thoughts, and inner processes take shape through abstract lines, planes, and textures. Her works are not merely images, but rather mirrors of the soul – moments where the viewer pauses and recognizes their own emotions within the simplicity and silence of the composition.
Instead of direct narratives or figurative imagery, she chooses organic forms that remain open to interpretation. This allows each person to project their own experience onto the work. The underlying idea is that art can create a space of stillness and awareness, offering a momentary escape from the noise and speed of daily life.
With her motto “Less is more”, she emphasizes that simplicity and restraint enable greater depth: by leaving things out, space is created for essence, and the viewer is invited to add their own meaning.
Hanz Human, Entwined Paths, Brush Painting 2024
Hanz Human is a passionate South African artist currently based in the Philippines. His acrylic paintings are deeply inspired by nature, spirituality, and the emotional connections we share with the world around us. Guided by mentors like Nancy Reyner and Donelli DiMaria, Hanz Human brings each brushstroke to life—creating landscapes, abstracts, and spiritually inspired works that convey joy, hope, and resilience.
Art has been part of his life since his youth, and in recent years, it has reignited within him in a powerful way. Hanz uses his art to express himself, tell stories, and shed light on the overlooked aspects of life and the challenges people face. Many of his works also reflect his own personal journey, making each piece both unique and heartfelt.
Tobias Wyrzykowski, Green/Blue, Gouache on Canvas 2024
Tobias Wyrzykowski was born in 1987 in Würzburg and studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. He has presented numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany.
His awards and prizes include the “Auf geht’s!” grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the debut grant from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and the Arts, the annual award from the Hugo and Elly Goetz Foundation, a scholarship from the Cusanuswerk, and the Art Promotion Prize of the City of Lauf; he also participated in the Positions Berlin Art Fair.
The artist lives and works in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. In February 2023, Wyrzykowski was featured as Artist of the Month in the German edition of LE MONDE diplomatique.
Since he began making art, Wyrzykowski has been fascinated by painting. He considers himself a highly productive artist. Since his studies in 2008, he has created a wide range of works in both large and small formats. His focus lies in experimenting with the subject of landscape and its intersection with abstraction, employing alchemical and unconventional painting techniques. It is important to him to approach color and format in his compositions without taboos.
His visual worlds are often intangible, ambiguous, or attempt to capture dream images. They emerge intuitively and quickly, depending on mood, at times absent-mindedly or inspired by dream fragments. Recurring motifs include the four elements, the cosmos, seascapes and horizons, as well as snow and ice, forests and meadows—sometimes interwoven with references to figures from art history.
Traces of human presence are almost entirely absent from his oil paintings, which may contribute to the sense of calm conveyed by strong colors and gestural brushwork. In his most recent works, Tobias Wyrzykowski uses gouache on black-primed canvas, creating multi-dimensional pictorial spaces through a slow, layered process involving long drying times, revisions, reworking, and the deliberate re-pouring of paint. The paintings do not depict a concrete scene but instead offer a vague, washed-out, fragmented impression of landscape, into which horizons, stones, walls, and layers of earth appear to “drift.” This results in a controlled oscillation between mastery and release, between precision and chance, until each painting settles into its own rhythm. At the heart of his practice is the act of painting itself—color on canvas, inspired by nature but not bound to it.
On “Art to Collect”, these voices stand as reminders that art is most powerful when it carries stories worth holding onto. To live with a piece by Lad, Legac, Verheijke, Dejonckheere, Human and Wyrzykowski is to live with a fragment of the human condition translated into line, colour, and form. For the discerning art lover, that is the kind of art that endures.
Main Image: Akshita Lad, Spring's Awakening, Acrylic on Linen 2025