25 Young Painters You Need To Know

By VJ GOLD EMPEROR - January 31, 2016

25 Young Painters You Need To Know.

David Choe

David Choe

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Making millions in Facebook stock turned Choe into a household name. However, his multitude of skills is what brought him to Zuckerberg's attention in the first place. Choe is an imaginative street artist—his works are equal parts beautiful and repulsive—with a distinct aesthetic and a personality to match. Needless to say, his back story is pretty intriguing too.

Os Gemeos

Os Gemeos

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These Brazilian twins brought traditional pixação art to the global mainstream, with a hip-hop twist. Murals all over the world solidified their stature among the most recognizable street artists around. They've shown in museums in both the United States and South America. Most recently they've held a well-received exhibition at PRISM LA. Of course, you knew all that already… these brothers have literally been everywhere over the last decade.

Rosson Crow

Rosson Crow

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Dallas-born Crow is an ambitious artist known for her large-scale history paintings. Big, bold, and fun are three easy words to describe her work. In the past, she's toyed with the legacy of the Downtown art scene and the allure of the American motorcycle. Mixing styles and presenting fresh American visions, Crow has carved out a solid niche.

Yoskay Yamamoto

Yoskay Yamamoto

A self-trained illustrator, Yoskay Yamamoto fuses elements of urban culture from his current home, California, with traditional Japanese themes. The mix has a nostalgic twist, and is all about balancing past (i.e. personal heritage) and the present.

Brendan Monroe

Brendan Monroe

Brendan Monroe likes science. From this base (and his home in Oakland), he interprets the world through painting and sculpture. He holds a B.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California, and has shown across Europe and the United States.

Aya Takano

Aya Takano

One of the artists represented by Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki, Aya Takano creates futuristic worlds with every painting. Not surprisingly, she's a prolific manga artist as well. When it comes to fine art, this side of her comes out in lively, female characters, who float in scenes inspired by everything from Italian religious painting of the 14th-century to current music videos on MTV.

Jose Parla

Jose Parla

Jose Parla does some pretty awesome stuff —for example, he recently hit Cuba with the brilliant street artist JR for a series of murals at the Havana Biennial. Parla was born in Miami to Cuban parents. His paintings incorporate calligraphy and build up to resemble distressed walls. Not surprisingly, Parla has a background in graffiti as well. As a teen, he hit Miami regularly using the name EASE.

James Jean

James Jean

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Born in Taiwan, James Jean studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York before settling in Los Angeles. Jean is perhaps most famous for his cover art for various DC Comics books. As Dana Jennings of The New York Times says, his work recalls that of Maxfield Parrish. There is a bit of romanticism, some lyricism, and above all, a totally unique voice in Jean's material.

Tauba Auerbach

Tauba Auerbach

Born in San Francisco, Auerbach now splits time between her hometown and New York City. You'll quickly discover that she is fascinated by letters and patterns. This makes for really exciting explorations of letters, words, and other intriguing concepts.

Antony Micallef

Antony Micallef

Claiming second prize in the BP Portrait Award competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Micallef burst onto the art scene in 2000. He mixes contemporary expressionism and political imagery to get deep into the cultural construct of the contemporary moment. In short, his work is all about the human form and life today.

Kaws

KAWS

We are all, of course, infinitely familiar with KAWS through his collaborations and famed street interventions. So why is he on this list? Simple. Over the past few years, Brian Donnelly's painting practice has increased in stature. Need proof? How about the magnificent KAWS: DOWN TIME exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum.

KAWS is currently showing at Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong. The Nature Of Needruns through June 30, 2012.

Masakatsu Sashie

Masakatsu Sashie

Masakatsu Sashie is amazing. His paintings present a post-apocalyptic world brought on by rampant consumer culture and the rapidity of postmodern life. When you don't want to get too cerebral…you can just admire the details of the compositions and think, "This is f'ing cool."

Adam Neate

Adam Neate

Adam Neate is known to get busy on the streets. On canvas, he blends cubism and New York-style graffiti in brilliant figurative works. Recently, the self-taught artist has experimented with dimensional-paintings aiming to push the boundaries of the medium and present a new type of painting.

Brett Amory

Brett Amory

Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia. He moved to the Bay Area to attend the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco, and now lives in Oakland, California. Amory began his Waiting series in 2001, depicting commuter subjects who appear detached from their fellow passengers and surrounding environments.

Amory is inspired by the introverted culture of public transit and inhabitants of the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Figures and places in Amory’s work are based on photographs the artist has taken of random people, who he simply observes but never interacts with. These stark images are all painted with oil on board, and have become Amory's distinct form of visual music.

Martin Wittfooth

Martin Wittfooth

Living and working in Brooklyn, Martin Wittfooth totally kills it with his fascinating paintings of animals. His narratives are often intense, but that is part of the fun. Nothing in the work is as it appears on the surface.

ROA

ROA

Belgian street artist ROA has been blanketing the world with his signature animals for the past few years. On outdoor walls, he wows with massive scale. Inside, he brilliantly employs found objects (doors, panels, etc.) to bring the texture of the streets into more managable gallery settings.

Mars 1

Mars 1

MARS-1 (Mario Martinez) has a signature style of abstract, space-like landscapes with crazy surreal distortions. There is an inherent interest in science. His canvases take a 3-D quality and beg exploration from the viewer. Pretty damn awesome.

Greg Simkins

Greg Simkins

Website

"Craola" Simpkins grew up day-dreaming and obsessed with Disney cartoons. Later, he developed a desire to form his own fantasy worlds, which is essentially what you find in his paintings. With no shortage of imagination, he continually produces works that celebrate the beauty of everywhere through homage to other lands.

Tony Curanaj

Tony Curanaj

Website

New York-born Tony Curanaj started his artistic career on the graffiti scene. In the 90s, he shifted focus to academic realism. His current portraits, skill life works, and tromp l'oeil are technically stunning and remarkably contemporary in subject matter.

Jeff Soto

Jeff Soto

Soto is all about bridging the gap between pop surrealism and street art. He hails from Fullerton, California and studied at the Art Center College of Design (which, you should note, has historically been churning out impressive characters). He's inspired by the nostalgia of his youth, in addition to universal themes of love, lust, and (sometimes) hope. As such, he's a brilliant story teller, and his canvases also reflect a graffiti-informed method in the creation of rich textural backdrops.

Tomokazu Matsuyama

Tomokazu Matsuyama

Working in acrylics (either on canvas or paper), Tomokazu Matsuyama creates a chaotic mix of cultures. Often, he pays homage to former art historical trends, but always incorporate his understanding of the global, urban world. Painting scale, too, is interesting in Matsuyama's work; he'll often produce things in strange shapes, which forces an immediate conversation with architecture.

He's currently showing at Frey Norris in San Francisco. The Future Is Always Brightcloses on June 30, 2012.

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