Pickman's Apprentice Live Art Competition
Pickman's Apprentice Live Art Competition makes its come-back with three titans of Weird Art, Liv Rainey-Smith, Nick Gucker, and Dave Correia! They will have 90 minutes to create a masterpiece that incorporates a location and a monster suggested by the audience! These one of a kind original art pieces will be silent auctioned, and the piece garnering the highest bid wins the coveted title of PIckman's Apprentice!
Liv Rainey-Smith's original art is created through xylography, the practice of carving and printing wood. Rainey-Smith draws upon both European and Japanese techniques to create her work and favors working with natural materials as much as possible. She finds inspiration in early European prints, esoteric traditions, folklore, weird fiction, and the natural world. She won the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 2025. Rainey-Smith's woodcut art illustrates The Starry Wisdom Library Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time, and accompanies her story in The Dagon Collection.
When not occupied whispering to insects and cataloging esoteric ephemera, Nick Gucker is typically perched at his art table conjuring up nightmare visions and freakish delights out of ink, charcoal and acrylic media. His art has frequently appeared in the pages of Strange Aeons Magazine, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Dark Discoveries and online publications including theLovecraft eZine. His illustrations embellished the innards of works by authors Cody Goodfellow, David Conyers and a few projects with Spectral Press in the UK. His paintings have been used for covers of books from Blysster Press, Sinister Grin, and others. Nick was the winner of the 2012 Pickman’s Apprentice Iron Artist challenge at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland and has had the honor of creating multiple pieces of artwork for the HP Lovecraft Film Festival posters and T-shirts. Nick has also designed images for Skurvy Ink T-Shirts, honoring the works of various genre authors. Nick was featured in a gallery group show in Ketchikan, AK in Oct. of 2012 and his Lovecraftian pieces were on display in the Providence, RI Art Club in conjunction with NecronomiCon 2013. Recent gallery appearances include group shows at Krab Jab Studio and Cloud Gallery in Seattle curated by Yvette Endrijautzki. In addition to his published work, Nick’s unique, one-of-a-kind custom commission pieces grace the walls and limbs of various and sundry patrons of the arts from near and far.
Born in New Orleans and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dave Correia has been drawing his entire life. Fascinated by comic books, horror films, and video games as a child, the subjects of Dave’s earliest artistic endeavors were often strange, demonic creatures. Disturbing, yet grotesquely appealing, these characters and their fictional worlds fueled his imagination and had a strong, significant influence on Dave’s creative style today. Dave’s illustrations have appeared in commercials, magazines, print ads, and posters across the United States and Europe. His work was widely seen on billboards and vehicle wraps for Scion’s 2007 XD “Little Deviant” advertising campaign and his art graces the album cover of Swedish metal band In Flames’ certified-gold record, Sounds of a Playground Fading. Aside from his freelance artwork, Dave also self-publishes and exhibits his personal work at various comic shows and art galleries across the country.