Painter profiles

Famous painters

Explore notable painters across fine art, contemporary, street art, and beyond, with profiles focused on their methods and materials.

Fine art painters

Explore painters working across major fine-art traditions, from Renaissance and Impressionism to modernism and other established studio movements.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter known for expressive color, energetic brushwork, and a highly visible paint surface.

Bob Ross

Bob Ross was an American painter, art instructor, and television host best known for The Joy of Painting and his approachable wet-on-wet oil-painting lessons.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish artist whose long career moved through many styles and media, from the Blue and Rose periods to Cubism, classicism, Surrealism, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a French Impressionist painter known for landscapes and repeated studies of changing light, color, and atmosphere.

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for self-portraits and paintings exploring identity, family, physical pain, relationships, and Mexican culture.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American Pop artist known for transforming consumer products, celebrities, and mass-media photographs into paintings and repeated screen-printed images.

Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli was a Florentine Renaissance painter known for linear compositions, religious paintings, portraits, and mythological works including The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock was an American Abstract Expressionist known for pouring, dripping, and flinging fluid paint across canvases laid on the floor.

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist known for vivid color, simplified forms, Fauvist painting, and the gouache-painted paper cut-outs of his later career.

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas was a French artist associated with the Impressionists, known for ballet dancers, horse racing, portraits, and scenes of modern Parisian life.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe was an American modernist known for close-up flowers, New Mexico landscapes, bones, architecture, and simplified natural forms.

J. M. W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner was a British Romantic artist known for landscapes, marine subjects, changing weather, and increasingly expressive treatments of light and color.

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian-born painter, teacher, and theorist known for abstract compositions exploring relationships among color, line, shape, and rhythm.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was an American Pop artist known for adapting comic-book and advertising imagery into paintings using bold outlines, flat color, and patterns inspired by commercial printing.

Joan Miró

Joan Miró was a Spanish artist associated with Surrealism, known for biomorphic forms, symbolic imagery, vivid color, and abstract compositions across painting and printmaking.

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was a Belarus-born French artist known for dreamlike scenes combining village memories, lovers, animals, folklore, religion, music, and vivid color.

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was an American realist known for city interiors, roadside buildings, coastal landscapes, and compositions shaped by strong light and geometric forms.

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German Renaissance artist known for precise watercolors, drawings, engravings, and woodcuts that combined close observation with detailed technique.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist and Bauhaus teacher whose highly experimental work combined color, geometry, symbols, humor, music, and observations of nature.

David Hockney

David Hockney was a British artist known for portraits, landscapes, California swimming-pool scenes, and work across painting, printmaking, photography, and digital drawing.

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American painter and illustrator known for scenes of the sea, coastal life, rural America, and people in demanding natural environments.

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth was an American painter known for closely observed landscapes, interiors, and people from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and coastal Maine.

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is an American artist known for paintings and objects based on familiar symbols such as flags, targets, numbers, and maps, often using encaustic and collage.

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was an American painter whose soak-stain technique helped reshape postwar abstraction by allowing thinned paint to soak directly into raw canvas.

George Tooker

George Tooker was an American painter known for egg tempera scenes of offices, subways, waiting rooms, and other modern spaces, often centered on isolation and social tension.

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was an American painter known for vivid narrative series about Black life and history, especially The Migration Series, created with quick-drying tempera on hardboard panels.

Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus was an American painter known for figurative paintings, social satire, sustained use of egg tempera, and casein, watercolor, and gouache studies on paper.

Reginald Marsh

Reginald Marsh was an American painter and illustrator known for scenes of New York City crowds, Coney Island, burlesque theaters, and street life.

Robert Vickrey

Robert Vickrey was an American painter and illustrator known for detailed egg tempera paintings combining realistic observation with symbolic imagery, alongside acrylic, watercolor, and gouache work.

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn was an American painter and graphic artist known for socially engaged imagery, expressive line, and paintings made with tempera, gouache, watercolor, and oil.

Koo Schadler

Koo Schadler is an American painter known for contemporary egg tempera paintings, metalpoint drawings, works on prepared paper and rigid panels, and teaching traditional painting methods.

James Gurney

James Gurney is an American painter, illustrator, and author known for imaginative realism, outdoor sketching, and work in casein, gouache, watercolor, oil, and acrylic.

Tony Scherman

Tony Scherman is a Canadian painter known for figurative and historical paintings made with encaustic, along with documented work in oil and acrylic.

Betsy Eby is an American painter and musician known for abstract encaustic paintings that connect layered wax, gestural line, color, rhythm, and musical structure, with works also using oil and acrylic paint.

Devon Rodriguez

Devon Rodriguez is an American portrait painter from the South Bronx known for realistic paintings and drawings of New York City subway riders and social-media portrait videos.

Ashley Longshore

Ashley Longshore is an American contemporary painter, sculptor, and entrepreneur known for Pop-inspired work combining celebrity imagery, fashion, text, humor, and consumer culture.

Sophie Tea

Sophie Tea is a contemporary painter known for vivid color, drips and splats, abstract work, body-focused subjects, and a career developed largely through social media.

Édouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard was a French painter known for intimate interiors, gardens, patterned surfaces, and decorative compositions in distemper, oil, watercolor, and gouache.

Bernard Perlin

Bernard Perlin was an American painter and illustrator whose figurative work included casein, tempera, gouache, and oil paintings as well as wartime and editorial art.

Josephine Halvorson

Josephine Halvorson is an American painter known for observational paintings made on location using fast-drying acrylic gouache on absorbent grounds, with spray paint also documented in her site-responsive work.

Chéri Samba

Chéri Samba is a Congolese painter known for narrative scenes combining figures, written text, autobiography, humor, social commentary, and varied paint media, with early paintings made on sacking cloth.

Dia al-Azzawi

Dia al-Azzawi is an Iraqi artist known for modern painting and drawing rooted in Iraqi art and literature, including Gilgamesh imagery and works incorporating metallic paint, gouache, watercolor, acrylic, and oil.

Contemporary artists

Explore contemporary painters working across abstraction, figuration, mixed media, industrial materials, and unconventional painting processes.

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama was a Japanese contemporary artist known for repeated dots and nets, immersive installations, mirrored environments, and recurring themes of infinity and self-obliteration.

Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan was an Australian painter known for using fast-drying commercial enamel paint, especially Ripolin, in figurative works and Australian landscapes.

Frank Stella

Frank Stella was an American artist known for abstract painting and extensive use of industrial coatings, including metallic, alkyd, epoxy, urethane, fluorescent, and antifouling paints, alongside acrylic, watercolor, and gouache work.

Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley is a British painter known for abstract compositions that create optical movement through repeated lines, curves, shapes, and structured color relationships.

Peter Halley

Peter Halley is an American painter known for geometric images of cells, prisons, and conduits built from fluorescent Day-Glo acrylic color, metallic paint, and deliberately artificial commercial textures.

Sarah Kraning

Sarah Kraning is an American painter with auditory-visual synesthesia known for abstract works developed from music, live performance, color, texture, and movement.

Mark Tobey

Mark Tobey was an American painter known for abstract compositions built from dense networks of gestural marks and for working in casein, tempera, gouache, watercolor, and other media.

Martin Kline

Martin Kline is an American painter known for abstract works built from encaustic and pigmented wax on rigid wood panels, often creating pronounced layered relief.

Billy Al Bengston

Billy Al Bengston was an American painter associated with postwar Los Angeles who adapted automotive lacquer, enamel, metallic paint, aluminum, and high-gloss finishing methods to fine-art painting.

Ushio Shinohara

Ushio Shinohara is a Japanese artist known for action-based painting, Neo-Dada and Pop experimentation, and works using fluorescent Day-Glo color, lacquer, oil, enamel, acrylic, and unconventional materials.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung is an American painter known for abstract works combining latex house paint, enamel, spray paint, acrylic, watercolor, cut and sewn fabrics including silk and leather, paper, and other studio materials.

Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool is an American painter known for black enamel paintings, especially works on white aluminum panels made with stencils, patterned rollers, screens, and spray paint.

Mohamed Melehi

Mohamed Melehi was a Moroccan painter known for hard-edge abstraction and recurring wave forms, including works made with industrial lacquer applied by spray gun, alkyd, acrylic, and oil paint.

Thornton Dial

Thornton Dial was an American self-taught artist whose work ranged from large painted assemblages combining found objects with house paint, enamel, spray paint, and oil to works on paper using watercolor and gouache.

Alicia McCarthy

Alicia McCarthy is an American painter associated with San Francisco's Mission School whose work often uses house paint, spray paint, gouache, colored pencil, wood, canvas, and paper.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly was an American painter known for gestural works that often combined oil-based house paint with crayon, pencil, and other drawing materials.

Mary Corse

Mary Corse is an American painter known for white acrylic paintings incorporating reflective glass microspheres that change in appearance with light and the viewer's position.

Konrad Lueg

Konrad Lueg was a German painter who experimented with popular imagery, repeated patterns, and phosphorescent color that allowed viewers to cast temporary shadows onto luminous canvases.

Jacqueline Humphries

Jacqueline Humphries is an American abstract painter known for reflective silver surfaces and fluorescent black-light paintings that shift with movement and light, combining metallic, oil, acrylic, and enamel paint with layered, scraped, and gestural marks.

Suzanne McClelland

Suzanne McClelland is a New York-based artist known for abstract paintings built from language, numbers, gesture, and shifting surface effects that include iridescent paint.

Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham is an American painter whose work has moved between abstraction and cartoon-like figuration while using materials that include synthetic polymer paint, casein, acrylic, oil, emulsion, vinyl, and urethane paint.

Tom Holland

Tom Holland is an American painter and sculptor known for works combining painting with shaped aluminum or fiberglass, often finished with epoxy paint, as well as works in acrylic, watercolor, and other media.

Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons is an American artist known for drawing on chalkboard-like painted grounds and then smearing or erasing the image to create blurred, partially removed forms.

Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor known for rough surfaces, unconventional materials, figurative imagery, and a long-running interest in Art Brut.

Raqib Shaw

Raqib Shaw is an Indian painter known for densely detailed scenes made with industrial enamel, metallic paint, and raised acrylic liner, often incorporating references to Old Master compositions.

Kristoffer Ardeña

Kristoffer Ardeña is a Filipino artist known for Ghost Paintings that combine repurposed printed surfaces, tropical materials, and coatings including elastomeric, latex, and acrylic paint.

Martand Khosla

Martand Khosla is an Indian artist and architect known for work on construction, demolition, memory, and urban change using architectural materials such as intumescent paint.

Tschabalala Self

Tschabalala Self is an American artist known for layered figurative paintings combining painted and sewn materials, including acrylic, Flashe, milk paint, oil, watercolor, spray paint, fabric, and other mixed media.

Sarah Crowner

Sarah Crowner is an artist known for paintings assembled from painted and sewn fabric, including linen and cotton works, works on paper, and architecturally scaled glazed-tile projects that connect abstract painting with installation and performance.

Linn Meyers

Linn Meyers is an American artist known for drawings and site-specific installations built from closely spaced lines, including works made with paint markers as well as acrylic and Flashe on rigid painting board.

Yuval Gur

Yuval Gur is an Israeli composer and artist known for interactive paintings that combine self-made conductive paint, oil paint, proximity sensing, and pre-composed music.

Davide D'Elia

Davide D'Elia is an Italian artist known for installations and found objects partially covered with antifouling paint, as well as works using acrylic and fluorescent acrylic on supports including fabric and Plexiglass, to explore time, material change, and preservation.

Lucia Di Luciano

Lucia Di Luciano is an Italian artist associated with Arte Programmata and mathematically structured geometric abstraction, including works made with household emulsion, acrylic, and tempera paint.

Justen Ladda

Justen Ladda is a German artist known for work crossing painting, assemblage, and installation, including the use of latex, vinyl, and synthetic polymer paints on unconventional supports.

Maceptaw Bogun

Maceptaw Bogun was a self-taught artist known for using phosphorescent paint to create images that change in appearance between normal light and darkness.

Street & mural artists

Explore artists known for graffiti, murals, public painting, and large-scale outdoor work using spray paint, masonry coatings, and other materials.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist known for paintings combining color, handwritten text, anatomy, crowns, cultural references, music, and history.

Keith Haring

Keith Haring was an American artist known for outlined figures, public murals, subway drawings, vivid color, and recurring imagery addressing social and political themes.

David Alfaro Siqueiros

David Alfaro Siqueiros was a Mexican painter and muralist known for using industrial materials and methods, including lacquer, enamel, pyroxylin, and automotive coatings.

Slawn

Slawn, born Olaolu Akeredolu-Ale, is a Nigerian-born contemporary artist known for graphic paintings combining recurring caricatured faces, Yoruba identity, humor, and social commentary.

Kiptoe

Kiptoe, also known as Matt Dean, is an American mural artist, painter, and filmmaker known for large-scale walls, character-driven visual storytelling, and videos documenting public-art projects.

RUN

RUN is a street artist and muralist known for large-scale figurative work, often developed from watercolor studies and executed with masonry paint and other mural materials.

Patricio Forrester

Patricio Forrester is an artist and muralist known for participatory public art, including floor works and murals that use materials such as anti-slip paint on prepared outdoor surfaces.

Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson

Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson is a Berlin-based visual artist known for site-specific text murals and public interventions, including temporary works made with lime paint.

Abraham Joel Tobias

Abraham Joel Tobias was an American painter, muralist, and educator known for experiments with durable materials, including ethyl silicate paint for outdoor murals.

Decorative & specialty painters

Explore painters and makers working across furniture, ceramics, glass, footwear, and specialty finishes, with an emphasis on materials and technique.

Annie Sloan

Annie Sloan is a British-based artist, decorative painter, designer, and author known for developing Chalk Paint and using it across furniture, interiors, and decorative painting.

Kurt Weiser

Kurt Weiser is an American ceramic artist known for painted porcelain vessels featuring botanical and narrative imagery made with china-painting techniques.

Judith Schaechter

Judith Schaechter is an American artist known for stained-glass works combining layered flash glass, engraving, sandblasting, vitreous paint, and silver stain.

Enzo H. Kim

Enzo H. Kim is an American artist and sneaker customizer known for painted footwear using flexible leather-paint systems and layered finishing techniques.

Katarina Hernandez

Katarina Hernandez is a furniture artist and painting educator known for painted furniture using layered color, decorative effects, gilding, and refined surface finishes.

Christina Muscari

Christina Muscari is a furniture painter, refinisher, and video educator known for projects using chalk paint, enamel-style finishes, milk paint, acrylic paint, spray paint, stain, and protective topcoats.

Jonathon Marc Mendes

Jonathon Marc Mendes is a British furniture artist and painting educator known for decorative furniture work, custom color mixes, hand-painted details, and chalk-paint techniques.

Lauren Hull

Lauren Hull is a furniture flipper and painting educator known for tutorials on repairing, painting, refinishing, and reselling used furniture.

Charlotte Allen

Charlotte Allen is a British painter, decorator, and content creator known for practical decorating instruction on preparation, interior painting, woodwork, and finishing methods.

Joanne Hay

Joanne Hay is a British painter, decorator, and content creator known for practical instruction on preparation, cutting in, repairs, paint application, and professional decorating.

Trade painters

Explore professional painters known for architectural coatings, cabinet finishing, restoration, spraying, surface preparation, and trade education.