Contemporary Painters / Image Dump III

For as I am guilty of the "Golden-Age" fallacy (especially in regards to music and painting), I have to admit that the 21st century has a number of amazing contemporary aesthetes. As a painter, I am especially critical of the conceptual mumbo-jumbo that has proliferated many art galleries, and actually, most of the art community. However, I have to realize that there are many stellar painters who still work and study today. Granted, it's an uphill battle for us, and we nearly deify people like Rembrandt, Velasquez, and --ohmygosh-- Sargent.  Despite the sometimes nullifying sense of artistic freedom given to contemporary artists, that same sense of freedom does give us (the living) something more than what the dead ancients had: freedom. And just that. Our paintings won't be burned if the figures have disproportional fingers. We won't be laughed out of the city if our colors aren't completely real. Looking back, we can not only draw from the technical genius of the painting masters, but also pick up the color theory of the Impressionists, the compositions of the Modernists, the brush quality of the Russian Social Realists, etc. We can really make anything that we want. I'm aware that this post just screams 'postmodernism," but whatever. It is what it is. For a painting class I had to do some digging around on a few art gallery websites and here are some of my new favorites: