Cover Photos: Courtesy of David Chidgey

Ask a roomful of art critics and art historians “Who are the world’s most innovative mosaic artists today?” and you’ll stumble upon dozens of different answers. Visual art is too subjective, thus, there is no single standard to appraise the most creative mosaicist or painter today. Although trying to choose who is the best mosaicist of all time, is close to impossible, but again, 10 selected mosaicists from over a 100 nominees, have been dedicated to creating the most unusual and influential visions in the field.

Iliya Iliev

One of the pioneers of mosaic art! An artist who mastered what Rembrandt, Escher, Klee and VanGogh knew about the use of geometry in creating great works of art. Unsurprisingly, Iliya dominated the ranking for one of the world’s most inventive and passionate mosaicists today.

Iliya, is an international award-winning mosaicist and a Chief Department of Mural Painting, Mosaics and Stained Glass at the Academy of Fine Arts Sofia, Bulgaria.

Copyrighted Credits to Iliya Iliev

David Chidgey

Is there the slightest doubt that David Chidgey is one of the most innovative mosaicists today? Inspired by his love of nature and the history and culture of indigenous people of the Americas and the Sami of Lapland, his mosaics of vibrant mandalas are among his most celebrated works and those for which he’s best known.

David is one of a tight-knit group of mosaicists who became associated with mosaic art, to emphasize the evolving experience of the art form.

Copyrighted Credits to David Chidgey

Jane Perkins

Jane Perkins is an environmentally friendly artist who exploits her vision with found materials that she collects from charity shops, boot sales, recycling centers. Whether she is reproducing classics or creating innovative mosaics, Jane merges art with the element of the unexpected.

Jane made plastic relevant in the last decade with her “Plastic Classics” style gourd mosaics at several international art fairs and exhibitions, Affordable Art Fair New York, Hong Kong, Singapore to name a few and most recently her recent creations were unveiled in Will’s Art Warehouse.

Copyrighted Credits to Jane Perkins

Julie Richey

Since her first Mosaic Arts International Juried Exhibition spanning her career from the early 2000s to the present, which a large audience of the art scene witnessed due to its timely conjunction with Desert Andamento the 6th Annual SAMA Conference, arriving at her extremely well-received Best 3-D Mosaic Award, Julie continues to be a major force in contemporary mosaic art.

Her mosaics and award-winning sculptures have been exhibited across the US, at the biennial Ravenna Mosaico festival and at the Orsoni Smalti Veneziani foundry in Venice as part of the Orsoni Grand Prize for Mosaic Art in 2009.

Copyrighted Credits to Julie Richey

Marie-Laure Besson

Marie-Laure Besson is something of an anomaly on this list. Like a bright, visual tonal dimension, this photo of Marie-Laure Besson’s “Croissance” has incredibly magnetized me when it appeared in my Instagram feed.

With a degree in fine art, the French artist elegantly balances commercial success with a practice that tackles and interacts with innovation and improvement to craft extraordinarily appealing contemporary mosaics.

Copyrighted Credits to Marie-Laure Besson

Jo Braun

A self-proclaimed Seattle-based creative artist who crafts visually uplifting artworks, incorporating transcendent mosaic art tiles with subtle designs resulting in the creation of beautiful masterpieces!

Following an extremely cerebral approach to her mosaics, she offers the viewers an outsized field to contemplate, and an opportunity to explore her cadenced assemblage.

Copyrighted Credits to Jo Braun

Rachel Sager

Stubborn, sensitive, honest and creative, Sager is inspired by everything: a fairy tale, a stroll on the beach, even her nightmare dreams. With her symbolic map-inspired mosaic collection, she wanted to highlight three-quarters of a million terms and epic fantasy.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she returned after her studies in Italy. Her mosaics have been featured internationally and in cities throughout the U.S where she has received several Best of Show Awards in juried exhibitions.

Copyrighted Credits to Rachel Sager

Sophie Drouin

Undoubtedly nature has always been a diachronic source of inspiration in mosaic art. Sophie Drouin is a renowned Canadian mosaicist who finds great joy and spiritual satisfaction in exploring beauty and innovation in the earth’s most basic components.

Over the past five years, the artist’s innovative mosaics, have been featured in a rash of major art exhibitions that gather the world’s most creative mosaic artworks.

Copyrighted Credits to Sophie Drouin

Ariane Blanquet

Ariane Blanquet creates inspirational mosaic artworks thanks to the use of the contemporary abstract style. Most of her mosaics portray her love for earth and nature. Her famous mosaic ”Moon” won second place in the 2014 Picassiette competition.

This year, was an especially momentous one for the artist, with major exhibitions at the Grand Palais, Paris, the Rennes Mosaic Biennale, and the International Biennale of Crafts and Creation.

Copyrighted Credits to Ariane Blanquet

Marian Shapiro

Last but certainly not least, Marian Shapiro, a multi-award winning Sydney-based visual artist, her mosaics are shown and collected both in Australia and internationally. Her materials and process are generally influenced by nature. In her art practice, she strives an ever-greater blending between process, content, medium and creative intent.

She crafts her mosaic artworks for both studios, public and private sectors. Most of her mosaics are created with an array mixture of glass and stones to give a contrasting yet coherent look to all her creations.

Copyrighted Credits to Marian Shapiro

If you liked this article, you may also want to read Mosaic Art: The Futuristic Tile Trend

At some point, we can all lose count of the number of artists who speak to our innermost selves with innovative art pieces.

So, do you think these are the world’s most innovative mosaicists? Let them know in the comment box below!

In case I missed any of your favorite mosaicists, you can always mention them in the comment box below. Who Knows? You might see them in future articles!