HongNian Zhang, 1947 | Realist painter

HongNian Zhang 张红年 is an Chinese painter🎨, who works in the Western academic tradition. Works by this gifted artist have been exhibited and acquired by museums, galleries, corporations and private collectors across the globe.

Growing up in China, Mr. Zhang became accomplished in art at a young age. He was one of the top students at the highly selective and prestigious Central Art Academy’s Affiliated High School in Beijing.

The instruction there was rigorous, paving the road for his future success. Unfortunately, the Cultural Revolution broke out and temporarily forestalled his art career. In 1970, Zhang and his classmates were sent to a forced labor camp in the remote countryside. He labored there for 4 years and creating art was prohibited.

Beatriz Martin Vidal, 1973 | Surrealist illustrator

Beatriz Martin Vidal was born in Valladolid, Spain.

After studying law for a time and then Fine Arts and Illustration in Bologna, Italy, she now works in her home city as a prize-winning fine artist and illustrator.

She has had several exhibitions of painting and has recently illustrated Ovid s Metamorphoses and a book of classic Russian tales, published in Spain.

Gernot Rasenberger, 1943 | Cityscape painter

Gernot Rasenberger was born in Frankfurt Germany, the grandson of the great 19th Century painter Alfred Rasenberger. Gernot studied at the Fine Art Academy in Dusseldorf where he graduated with honors.

He painted in the traditional “Dusseldorfer” school, a style that his grandfather was one of the founders.

Rasenberger traveled extensively throughout Europe and America and has had many exhibitions throughout the world.

He is well known in Europe for his paintings of Landscapes and river scenes. Today the artist lives with his family on the island of Majorca off the coast of Spain.

Felix Vallotton (1865-1925) | Nabi Painter

Félix Vallotton was a Franco-Swiss painter of portraits, figures, interiors and landscapes, wood-engraver, lithographer, sculptor and writer.

Born in Lausanne. Went to Paris in 1882 and studied at the Académie Julian under J. Lefebvre. Repaired and copied Old Master paintings; admired Holbein, Poussin and Ingres.

Concentrated mainly on wood-engraving 1891-1897, primarily portraits and scenes from everyday life treated with sardonic humour.

Kate Powell, 1995 | Symbolist painter / Illustrator

Kate Louise Powell is an illustrator and animal rights activist originally from Halifax, West Yorkshire, currently based in Glasgow.

After drawing recreationally her whole life, Kate started to take her artistic career more seriously in 2012 and produced a number of popular illustrations with the reoccurring motifs of flowers and butterflies.

Since then she has experimented with photography, mixed media and paint, but still works mostly in pencil/coloured pencil and black ink.

Paul Signac | Art Quotes

"Of the three primary colors, the three binary ones are formed.

If you add to one of these the primary tone that is its opposite, it cancels it out. This means that you produce the required half-tone.

Therefore, adding black is not adding a half-tone, it is soiling the tone whose true half-tone resides in this opposite me have just described. Hence the green shadows found in red.

The heads of the two little peasants. The yellow one had purple shadows; the redder and more sanguine one had green ones".

Van Gogh | Fishing in spring the Pont de Clichy (Asnieres), 1887

In this canvas, Vincent uses pointillist like dabs and his own developing thick dashes of yellows, lavender and greens to portray a locale commonly chosen by the impressionists, the Seine around Asnieres. A fisherman with blue pants, yellow brown shirt and black hat with pole resting in his right hand on his black outlined leg is fishing in the Seine below with the Pont de Clichy in the background.

The Seine is depicted in lateral strokes of blue from cobalt to sky blue in the foreground and lighter blues to white beyond the fisherman. The lavender and prussian blue strokes are repeated in the foreground water, the fisherman’s pants and the under arch of the bridge.

Reflections of the river’s bank are accomplished with multihued vertical strokes coming at the viewer with lavender and cobalt at top left and then greens and peach and blue vertical strokes at center right.

The green, yellow and blue boats are moored between brown vertically stroked wavy poles driven into the river bottom and look like man’s humble use of the carefully constructed tree trunk Vincent depicts at left.

Two trunks have been cut and we can see the bare trunk tops in yellow while the red and green and black dots and horizontal dashes give the tree detail and character and a life-like emotion as it lends a comforting shade to the pastoral scene. While vague figures cross the bridge in the distance and the green and yellow flashes of the leaves frame our fisherman, he is in a quiet and tranquil harbor and is peacefully awaiting his catch.

The painting hangs at the Art Institute in Chicago, here are some of their words on the work:

“In technique, Fishing in Spring is a testament to Vincent van Gogh’s friendship with Paul Signac**. Van Gogh had seen works by Signac and George Seurat** in the spring of 1886 at the final Impressionist exhibition. Signac was an eloquent spokesman for Seurat’s pioneering Neo-Impressionism**, explaining it as a natural development of Impressionism. Under Signac’s influence, Van Gogh’s palette brightened, his brushstrokes became more varied, and his subject matter expanded. The setting of this work is the Seine River at the Pont de Clichy, near Asnières, where Van Gogh and Signac painted together on several occasions”.

Vincent would later help to have Seurat and Signac**’s paintings exhibited at Le Tambourin alongside his own and all three were allowed to show at the XXX in January of 1887 in an entry salon. This painting is not mentioned in any of Vincent or Theo’s letters so we cannot know what Vincent thought of it precisely.

Though the bridge has changed, the location of Vincent’s perspective for this work can be found today.  It is just off the Quai de Clichy across the Seine from Asnieres.

Oil on Canvas,
Art Institute of Chicago,
Spring 1887

Frøydis Aarseths, 1986 | Figurative painter

Frøydis Aarseth is a full time artist and runs her own school of figurative art in Bergen, Norway. Frøydis Aarseth was born in Norway in 1986. She has always known what she wanted in life and that is to live life as a figurative artist – not only to paint paintings that are beautiful to look at, but also to convey a deeper importance that will give the viewer something more than only aesthetics.

She began her studies at The Florence Academy of Art🎨 in Italy in 2006 and graduated from the academy in 2009. After this she continued her studies in Paris, France under the direction of the figurative master Odd Nerdrum🎨.