01/26/09 (A snow day) Here are my 5 favorite master painters- of all time... and some honorable mentions...

My artistic taste is typically drawn towards compositions that are psychologically charged with emotion through a gaze or gesture or, when not focused on a figure, through formal qualities of color, contrast, and surface. I gravitate to works where the artist skillfully renders an emotionally charged area and leaves outlying sections basically constructed or suggestive of space. I like compositions that utilize abstract qualities to refer to the subject and underlying meaning (esp. patterns). I suppose you could say that the expressionists, surrealists, art nouvea, and Dutch masters all catch my attention.

This is in no particular order as I can never seem to pinpoint a favorite (Pay attention to the honorable mentions- they could have made this list if I were in a different mood today).

Egon Schiele

Gustave Klimt

Frida Kahlo

Hieronymous Bosch

Caravaggio

Honorable mentions include:

Henri Toulouse Lautrec:

Alphonse Mucha:
Johannes Vermeer:

Rene Magritte:

and Hokusai:

(I will post some of my favorites photographers, authors, and contemporary artists very soon)!