Presenting Two Painters That Influenced Me

When I was in art school we covered a lot of interesting and thought provoking artists, both old and new. One of my most memorable exercises in painting class was:

Who are your painting "parents"? Choose two artists that most influenced you, either in style, material or otherwise, and create 6 fast paintings reminiscent of them, 3 for each. At the end of the class we’ll go over your work and see if we can recognize your influences.

More than a simple technique, this exercise really got me thinking about what I painted and why. It connected my inner world to that of other artists and so, to art history as a whole.

Since it has been my experience that most people who have not studied art are not that familiar with a large range of artists I thought it might be nice to introduce you to two artists that I feel really influenced me. Don’t worry, I’m not going to write long boring biographies. I’ll just give you a few words on why I found them inspiring and a lot of nice pictures.

Katsushika Hokusai

Hokusai is a famous Japanese artist. Most people actually do know of him due to his famous “Wave” painting.

A lot of people do not realize that for it’s time it was a very controversial painting. Mount Fuji is a sacred mountain. It was usually depicted above everything else. To show it as smaller and ‘lower’ compared to another element in the painting was almost sacrilege.

But that isn’t the only thing he did that was extraordinary. He also dabbled in Shunga, a type of erotic art. He played around with correct perspective in a time where most of his contemporaries still painted portraits only head on.

He spent almost all of his long life painting (he died at 86) and his work found its way to France, influencing a lot of artists at the beginning of the 19th century.

I love his nature scenes, not only for their delicacy of expression but for the emotion they can generate. He sought out the quiet, almost meditative, places and captured them for posterity. His work often deals with the place Man has in Nature and how the relations between people and between people and nature affect us all.

Here are a few other paintings I like from this great artist.

Caspar David Friedrich

Casper was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter. His work is often characterized by placing man against nature. He did a lot of monolithic, fantastical landscapes with the light being that of dawn or dusk.

One of his more well known works is depicted above - Wanderer above the Mist (1818).

I love his fantastical landscapes not only for the imagination he portrays but also for the contemplation they evoke. He makes me think about the place of man in the world and the nature of composition. He managed to bring the fantastical scenes he painted to hyper realistic presence.

A lot of his figures are presented from the back so that looking at his work one can easily equate oneself, the viewer, with the figures present in the painting.

Here are a few other favorites of mine by him:

What are some of your favorite artists and why? I’ll be happy to hear from you in the comments.
If you find my presentation interesting I may present some other artists or artistic movements through the lens of my perspective.

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