“I like bad-ass women,” Ari Fish said in a recent interview, “and I want to celebrate them. They just keep on going on, no matter what.” It may be more politic to say, “women who lean in” than bad-ass, but despite her blue-eyed blonde, angelic appearance, Fish does not dissemble. Bad-ass, for this woman artist, is strictly positive. It means someone like herself: doing what you have to do and doing what you want to do with no fear and no apologies.

All I’ve ever wanted to do is paint,” Mike Hartung said in a recent interview, “but I’ve never had any desire for self-glorification.” Which explains why, at age 72, the artist from Lindsborg, Kansas, is only now exhibiting his artworks for the first time to the public. In August the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery, the Salina Art Center and the Moss-Thorns Gallery at Fort Hays State University will simultaneously exhibit over 60 of Hartung’s works spanning more than four decades.

When Fernando Achucarro was six and attending school in Asuncion, Paraguay, he and his fellow students were given a book describing the fabulistic mythological creatures responsible for his country’s creation stories.