Ive recently gotten into painting and am looking for inspiration, so please hit me with your favorite artists. I’ve currently only done master copies and tutorials in the style of Van Gogh, but want to branch out. Unfortunately i didnt appreciate the required art appreciation class enough in college.
Caravaggio - an absolute master of contrast and light. He manages to balance a painterly hand with realism in such a pleasing way. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing some of his works in person, and they’re all just so impossibly smooth and polished.
DUDE!!! I spent forever looking at his works last time i saw them in person forgot his name though. Love how dark his paintings are.
Ooh, a subject I love!
Number one all-time, Mark Rothko, no hesitation.
From a more classic tradition, JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.
From the French impressionists, Paul Cézanne.
From the Renaissance, Giorgione of Venice.
From antiquity, the wooden tomb portraits of Fayum, Egypt.Goya, in his blue period, feels very relevant to us today
I love Goya, but for me his early portrait works. They just glow with life! Though I definitely discovered him vis his darker paintings, particularly Saturn.
Saturn Devouring His Son is actually so freaky. I can’t imagine what it was like for Goya to live in his house at the end of his life surrounded by all of his black paintings…
Holy Melencoly Batman, those paintings are so dark, i love them.
I put up a framed print of “sleep of reason” to keep it real
I discovered this guy on Reddit almost a decade ago. I have a couple prints from him, I love the style of the exploring astronauts. His name is Flooko
Damn it feels like modern surrealism mixed with post impressionism, super dope!
Probably Zdzisław Beksiński. Not because he paints nice things to look at but rather he paints things that some may call horrible in a very interesting way. I kind of think it makes me appreciated life in a way since it could be so much worse, but I’m not sure if this really describes why I like him. I think this is a collection of most of his paintings
Edit: For nice things to look at I recently took a closer look at Caspar David Friedrichs Landscape paintings.
Those are grotesquely interesting so cool.
H.R. Giger
For with him there would be no alien
I really love Dali, and the whole surrealist movement. Just saw two of his paintings over the weekend.
Love his works, they are just so refined and polished, dont think I’ll be able to copy and of his till my brushstrokes skills get good ha. What’s your favorite work of his?
The Madonna of Port Ligat
I really like Degas and Monet, and to a larger extent impressionism as a whole. To me their painting transcend vision only and I feel like I can hear the sound and smell the air of the scene depicted. By far my favourite art movement.
I also love Jan Van Eyck and how precise and tangible his paintings are. The Arnolfini portrait and Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele are what immediately come to mind. Fur, silk, wood, paint, metals, reflections and soft shadows, everything is just incredibly lifelike and three dimensional. The reflection in the mirror in the Arnolfini portrait is also pretty crazy considering the entire thing is about a square foot in size.
There’s plenty of others like Caravaggio and Rembrandt for their incredible use of chiaroscuro and depiction of emotions or Hieronymus Bosch with his wild scenes that often look like lsd infused fever dreams.
I didn’t get the Picasso until I saw some of his paintings in person. What’s even crazier is that he mastered realism by like 10yrs old and thought it was too easy.
I’ve always loved Edward Hopper. Some version of Nighthawks has been by desktop background for many years.
Brandon Bird, specifically his seminal masterpiece The Death of Jennifer Sisko and the Destruction of U.S.S. Saratoga at Wolf 359.
Gustav Klimt, so much to look at! Also Edward Lear, beautiful birds and landscapes.
I like Robert Delaunay, and also his wife, Sonia Delaunay. Their work involves a lot of bright, vibrant colors. It also was rather abstract or impressionistic, which I enjoyed. I think I like Piet Mondrian for similar reasons. Jan Sluyters would be another.
I also like JMW Turner a lot. I’m a sucker for lighting and dynamic skies in paintings, and his work features that very prominently. Frederic Edwin Church is another painter along these lines that I really enjoy.
A more contemporary passive that I like is Nina Tokhtaman Valetova. Her work also involves a lot of bold colors.
Ok I know he called himself an illustrator but I don’t care. To me Rockwell is the supreme. The way he could just tell a story with a single image. The way he could just tell you that story the way his target audience wanted to see it.
I got a book of his top paintings once and was looking through it, my wife came home from work and I showed her, then I had to go run an errand. On the way back it clicked in my head: she was going to leaf through the book and stop at the picture of the before and after of the family beach trip. When I get home the book will be on that page. Sure enough it was.
Many that I like are mentioned already here, so I’ll just add Mark Rothko. His paintings are very simple, but they have such depth and power, especially when you see them in person. They just look out at you, almost like they’re pulsing.
Ive never seen one of his in person, but i would love to stare at one while listening to an album by The Caretaker.
I’ve only seen a real one once, when I was in New York and visited MoMA. The circular room had slightly dimmed lights and 3 or 4 Rothkos around the walls. It was oppressive (but great!).
