• Joseph Cornell - Collage (box assemblages), often with cosmic themes.

        

  To be a surrealist . . . means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been. - René Magritte (1898-1967)

• Leonardo da Vinci - A fellow lefty. And if I had Bill Gates' wealth, I would've bought the Codex Leicester too.
  
  

  "The forms of bodies would not show their particularities without shadow." -Leonardo da Vinci

  
  

• William Blake - Mystical poetry and watercolors.
• Francis Bacon - Ok, so I have a dark side.
• Edvard Munch - Gotta love that existential angst.
• Edward Hopper - No one conveys the desolation of modern life as keenly as Hopper.

  "And if you thought that the moon had somewhat of a light of its own, you would certainly err."
  -Leonardo da Vinci from the Codex Leicester

• Vincent van Gogh - Expressionism at its highest, van Gogh captures the spiritual underpinnings of the physical world in vibrant works like The Starry Night (above) and Road with Cypress and Star.
• Lucian Freud - Sigmund's grandson can paint!
• Jan van Eyck - The rich detail and symbolic content of 15th century works like The Arnolfini Marriage fascinate.
• Gustav Klimt - Art Nouveau that glitters.
• Maxfield Parrish - Transcendent lighting.

                  

• Jean Dubuffet - "Art Brut." Childlike renderings rich in texture, inspired by the art of primitives and the insane.
• Rene Magritte - "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." Magritte's admonition not to confuse a representation for the thing itself.

"This is not a pipe." -Rene Magritte




• Caravaggio - The key word is: chiaroscuro.
• Hildegard von Bingen - This 12th century German mystic, wracked by migrane headaches, illustrated a series of visions now known as the "Illuminations."

  "Omost brilliant gem and serene glory of the sun, you who the leaping fountain has been poured            into from the heart of God, the fountain is God's only Word through which God created the first material of the world which Eve threw into confusion; God formed the Word--a person--from you, and because of this you are that bright material through which this very Word breathed out all the virtues, just as God brought forth all the creatures           from the first material."                                         -Hildegard von Bingen from Ordo Virtutum

• John William Waterhouse - Call me a romantic.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
- from The Wasteland --T. S. Eliot