John Singer Sargent: "The thicker you paint, the more it flows"

• "Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina".

• "Impressionismo" è il nome che è stato dato ad una certa forma di osservazione quando Monet, non contento di usare gli occhi per vedere le cose o il loro aspetto come tutti gli altri avevano fatto prima di lui, ha posto la sua attenzione su ciò che accadeva nella sua retina, così come un oculista avrebbe esaminato la propria vista".

Ginette Beaulieu, 1954 | Magical realism painter

Ginette Beaulieu was always passionate about drawing and in particular, was drawn to the techniques of the Renaissance masters, of which she completed formal training from 1979-1980.

Beaulieu is educated in art restoration and in ancient painting techniques. She defines herself as a hyperrealist painter and uses oil, pastel and pencil in her work.

Her work is distinguished by the use of mediums that she develops from decanted oils and natural pigments.

Dan Beck, 1955

Dan Beck is an American🎨 Impressionist painter, Oil Painters of America (OPA) signature member - American Impressionist Society (AIS) signature member - Plein-Air Painters of the SouthEast (PAPSE) member .

Wanderlust was Dan's primary motivation in the decade following his graduation from high school.

Dan took to the road, working jobs that included ranch hand in Arizona, construction on the beach of Florida, refinishing furniture in Louisiana and four years in the infantry, including a two year tour in Germany.

Bryce Cameron Liston, 1965

Born in a small town in Utah, Bryce Cameron Liston believes his first desire to be an artist was formed at a very young age when he would go out with his mother while she painted the Utah landscape.

Later in school, drawing was a comfort zone for Liston.

"It was a subject that excited me - I always had energy and interest for it".

It was here that Liston found his love of the human form.

Viktor Sheleg, 1962

Victor Sheleg is an Russian self-taught artist, known for working in Abstract style. His creativity is based on his personal worldview, which earned him a solid reputation of an independent artist.

Sheleg developed his style and aesthetic preference in a country isolated from the rest of the world and known for its climate of conformity.

David Hettinger, 1946 | Pittore figurativo

David Hettinger è nato ad Aurora, nell'Illinois. Hettinger iniziò ad imparare a dipingere all'età di 8 anni.

All'età di 13 anni, un artista locale di nome Mike Spencer gli ha dato una serie di colori ad olio e così ebbe inizio la sua carriera di pittura ad olio.

Si trasferì a New York con un solo desiderio, quello di "imparare cosa fosse essere un vero artista".

Joseph Welna, proprietario della Welna Gallery di Chicago, iniziò a mostrare il lavoro di Hettinger mentre il giovane artista frequentava ancora l'American Academy of Art, a Chicago.

Welna indirizzò Hettinger a studiare con David Leffel e Richard Schmid e lo aiutò a capire come guadagnarsi da vivere come artista sin dal primo giorno.

Rumi: Ben oltre le idee di giusto e sbagliato c'è un campo. Laggiù ti aspetterò!

Jules-Joseph Lefebvre🎨 (French painter, 1836-1912) Graziella

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

and rightdoing there is a field.

I'll meet you there..

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about"!

René Magritte (1898-1967)

René Magritte, in full René-François Ghislain Magritte, Belgian Surrealist artist, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters, whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy and mystery.

His works were characterized by particular symbols - the female torso, the bourgeois “little man”, the bowler hat, the castle, the rock, the window, and others.

Two museums in Brussels celebrate Magritte: the René Magritte Museum, largely a biographical museum, is located in the house occupied by the artist and his wife between 1930-1954; and the Magritte Museum, featuring some 250 of the artist’s works, opened in 2009 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

Milan Kundera | Quotes / Aforismi

Rene Magritte (Belgian Surrealist painter, 1898-1967) | Les Amants / The Lovers

• "..No one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it".

• "Contro i sentimenti siamo disarmati, poiché esistono e basta - e sfuggono a qualunque censura. Possiamo rimproverarci un gesto, una frase, ma non un sentimento: su di esso non abbiamo alcun potere".

Bertha Wegmann (1847-1926)

Ritrattista Danese di origini Tedesche, Bertha Wegmann è stata la prima donna a detenere una cattedra presso l'Accademia reale Danese di belle arti.

All'età di cinque anni, la sua famiglia si trasferì a Copenaghen, dove suo padre divenne un commerciante.

Era un amante dell'arte e ha trascorso gran parte del suo tempo libero a dipingere.

Ha mostrato interesse per il disegno in tenera età, ma non ha ricevuto istruzione formale fino a quando aveva diciannove anni, quando iniziò a prendere lezioni da Frederik Ferdinand Helsted, Heinrich Buntzen e Frederik Christian Lund.

Alexander Pushkin / Camille Claudel | I loved you / Ti amai..

Camille Claudel (1864-1943)🎨 | La Valse, 1883 | Musée Rodin, Paris

I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul

The former love has never gone away,

But let it not recall to you my dole;

I wish not sadden you in any way.

Peter McGowan | Flower paintings

Peter McGowan was born and raised in Yorkshire, England and still makes his home there.

He paints from his studio in the county that has inspired many great artists, including Henry Moore and David Hockney.

Light and its effects fascinate McGowan.

He works in several media, including oils, acrylics, watercolours and pastels, to translate this interest to paper and canvas.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) | Hope / La Speranza

Alex Venezia (American painter, 1993)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all

And sweetest in the Gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Albert André (1869-1954)

A Post-Impressionist artist and painter of 'intimiste' interiors, still lives and Parisian scenes, he was born in Lyon in 1869.

André spent his childhood vacations in Laudun where his family owned vineyards.

Aged 20, he left for Paris where he studied painting at the Académie Julian.

Dominic Davison, 1972

Dominic Davison è nato a Londra ed ora vive nel Buckinghamshire, nel Regno Unito, dove trae ispirazione per le sue scene idilliache e romantiche.

Si è specializzato nell'arte della creazione digitale e pubblica i suoi lavori su diverse testate specializzate.

L'aspetto tridimensionale dei suoi lavori richiama soggetti specifici, principalmente i cottage, inseriti in un mondo che sembra reale nonostante sia dipinto su una superficie con tecnica bidimensionale.

Ha creato arte per molti anni e in questo periodo ha costruito una fedele base di fan, che ora si estende in tutto il mondo.

Prima di entrare in MGL ha lavorato come artista freelance, pubblicando il suo lavoro su riviste come "3D Artist" e "Advanced Photoshop".

Carlo Salomoni, 1956 | Surrealist Painter / Illustrator

Carlo Salomoni is an Italian artist🎨 born in Ferrara, Italy. He is a graduate from the medical faculty with a degree in general surgery, but in 1992 decides to leave the medical activity and becomes a professional artist.

Carlo started his artist career producing art objects (small sculptures and decoration of pottery vases), some of them exposed in galleries in Ferrara and Bologna Italy. He also realized replicas of famous painters in different epoch times and styles from the year 600 to 900.

Juan Muñoz | Storyteller sculptor

Juan Muñoz (1953-2001)was a Spanish sculptor, working primarily in paper maché, resin and bronze.

He was also interested in the auditory arts and created compositions for the radio. He was a self-described "storyteller".

In 2000, Muñoz was awarded Spain's major Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes in recognition of his work; he died shortly after, in 2001.

His first exhibition was in 1984 in the Fernando Vijande gallery of Madrid. Since then, his works have been frequently exhibited in Europe and other parts of the world.

Ben Hammond, 1977 | Figurative sculptor

Ben Hammond was raised in the rural town of Pingree, Idaho, where his love for art was nurtured from the time he was a small boy.

He studied art at Ricks College graduating with a degree in Illustration.

While at college, he found himself dedicating more and more of his time to sculpting. He also gained a great appreciation for traditional art and decided to devote his time to sculpting the human figure. His passion for the beauty of the human figure is exemplified in his art.

Gustave Courbet | Quotes / Aforismi

• "Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it".
• "La bellezza, come la verità, è relativa al tempo in cui si vive ed all'individuo che può afferrarla".
• "Fine art is knowledge made visible".
• "L'arte è la conoscenza resa visibile".
• "I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients".
• "Non sono uno che è nato sotto la custodia della saggezza; Sono uno che ama i tempi antichi e intenso nella ricerca della sacra conoscenza degli antichi".

James McNeill Whistler | Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St Mark's, Venice, 1880

Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St Mark's, Venice is an 1880 painting by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (American Tonalist painter, 1834-1903), now in the National Museum of Wale.

Following his bankruptcy in 1879, Whistler spent a year in Venice where he concentrated on etchings and pastels.

Only three oil paintings, produced largely from memory in the evenings, survive from this visit.