Contemporary Figurative Artists

Lucien Freud ----He's the one of the oldest living and one of most influential figurative painters of the last century, and he has been alive most of it. Friends with Francis Bacon, he mastered opaque, Modernist painting. Books on Freud.

Odd Nerdrum ---Excellent skill, love of sentimentality & emotive content. "Mad Max" meets Rembrandt. Books on Nerdrum.

Justin Novak ---Amazing ceramic figurines in dark narratives; he's tops in my book!

Jenny Saville --- Big, thickly painted, opaque, paintings often of brutal, viceral, imagery such as post-surgery trauma

Antonio Lopez-Garcia ---Spain's Realist hero. Obsessive percetualism. Recently saw the show the the MFA, fantastic monograph!

Stephen Assael---Academy meets blacklight, club kids, and stays academic. Forum gallery link here.

Peter Doig----Link to the Tate show, quite extensive collection of images.

Lisa Yuskavage ---Got famous with paintings that look like 70s soft porn. Great color. Books on Yuskavage.

Loretta Lux ---Her digitally manipulated portrait photographs are informed by painting. Note the debt to Bronzino....

John Currin ---The afforementioned sarchastic painter. Very talented painter conducting an interesting dialogue with the past. Books on Currin.

Marko Djurdjevic, top new Marvel comic book Artist. Amazing rendering of materials like leather, vinal, and metal.

Will Cotton ---Sex and Candy --Chauvanistic Pop for the 00s

Mark Ryden ----Juxtapose-style, goth-surrealism. I admire his sentiment, but I absolutely I hate the big-eye trend.

Vincent Desiderio----A few images via Malborough. Very classical glaze technique.

Nelson Shanks ---Premier portraiturist, founder of Studio Incamminati, hyper-real colors and astounding techinique.

Bo Bartlett --- Vivid colors, strong drawing. A sincere American realist, with the allegories and morals that comes with.

Christian Vincent --- We seem to be independently doing similar things. I'll have to keep an eye on this guy.

Friends:

Michael Reedy, Anatomy-spired drawings & paintings---quickly approaching Mucha/God like status rendering.

Ling-Wen Tsai, Sculpture, Site-specfic Installation, Painting

Alex Rheault, Meca colleague, dynamo, and founder of the Drawing Room

Kristine Schramer, fellow IU alumni

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