Shawn Huckins

Shawn Huckins is exploring the new American Frontier: the internet. Taking historical photographs and paintings, he replicates the images and then applies modern day slang and the language of text messages.

He explores the idea of communication and how it is constantly changing. Information that would once have taken weeks to reach their recipient via letter or telegram now takes mere seconds. Would the settlers have tweeted "wtf?!" as they explored the Mid-West?

Sean Cheetham

Sean Cheetham is recognised as one of the most acclaimed young figurative painters working today. In 2005 he exhibited in the Portrait Award, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and was included in American Artist Magazine as one of their 25 Artists Of Tomorrow.

Below is a collection of his looser portrait work. You can feel a real connection to the painters of the late 19th century, too, like Delacroix, Corot or Courbet, or even further back than that. And that's what makes them so appealing to me: the continuation of an important way of creating art that has been largely ignored since the beginning of impressionism.

Vincent van Gogh

"I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly."

- Vincent van Gogh

Kim Cogan

Kim Cogan paints San Francisco in a way that is rarely seen but always recognisable. He captures the city with it's distinctive characteristics without having to show the Golden Gate bridge, trolley cars or Alcatraz in the background. All the icons have been removed.

His paintings have soul. The sunlight reflects off buildings in a cool haze and the night scenes glow and hum with neon light. There are no people and no cars; just silence and atmosphere.

  

Edward Hopper's summer paintings

Edward Hopper is well known for his urban scenes depicting isolated figures in diners and hotel rooms which came to encapsulate modern American life in the mid-twentieth century. He and his wife Jo would escape the city and summer in South Truro on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they would take trips out to find new material to paint.

The paintings he produced in the New England region showed another side of his work. There really is fresh air in these paintings. And the sunlight is glorious.

"Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

- Edward Hopper

Jeremy Geddes

Perhaps best known for his Cosmonaut series depicting figures peacefully floating in zero gravity, Melbourne-based artist Jeremy Geddes’ photorealist works have a haunting stillness to them. Even when depicting women bursting through windows or walls, there is still silence.

His muted colour palette, coupled with his ability to capture a certain light, create an incredible atmosphere with an immense depth to them. Using surrealist imagery and urban settings, Geddes’ intent is to leave the narrative ambiguous and open to interpretation.

Françoise Gilot: Artist

Françoise Gilot (b.1921) is well known for being the lover and muse of Pablo Picasso from 1944 to 1953, and the mother of his children, Claude and Paloma. However, fewer people realise that she is also an artist in her own right.

The work below shows her development from cubism through to her own style of abstract painting, a visually cleaner and brighter collection of work when compared to Picasso. Currently living in New York City and Paris, she continues to exhibit her work internationally, having exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery as recently as May 2012.