Wassily Kandinsky

Edvard Munch

Sigrid Holmwood- she is using color in such an effective way. I don't know what she is trying to say in her paintings, but they have a big impact on me, she is anachronistic, and I get really excited when I imagine myself someday painting this way.

David Hockney- These are somewhere in England, but the remind me so much of the mid west and where I've come from.

Nicholas Roerich- a very spiritual painter of landscapes and pagan life in Northern Europe and Asia. I think he worked mostly with Tempera on panel. He was also a set designer for the Ballets Russes, including Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. There is a pretty moody atmosphere in all of his scenes, I reminds me of how film makers use light and color to set the mood of an environment.

I am interested in expressionism, and I have lately been looking for paintings that make a more readable or immediate emotional statement. I want to see how artists use color to convey emotion, and to learn to do this myself. I am very drawn to primitive art and primitive ways of painting animals and nature, and I want to find a (perhaps primitive or naive) way of painting animals or agrarian life that people will feel is relevant to their life today. I would also love to see how contemporary painters are dealing with nature and the landscape in new ways. Here are some images that I have been admiring: