In no particular order. These artists represent some of the best anywhere, in any media. There is a tendency for link rot on the web so sometimes these links will be broken, or take you to some god awful domain for sale page, I'll update them often and run a link checker on a regular basis. As to the artist's work, enjoy!

: : Peter de Séve's work has always entertained and amused, I first saw his illustration in the New Yorker. I hesitate to classify his style, since it is in fact so unique but falls into the classic realm starting with Hogarth and extending through to Doré. I'd call him a cartoonist if that didn't diminish his accomplishment as an illustrator in some way.
     Look at X-Files - the soundtrack. The confluence of New York, art song, and Hollywood mixed here with a sadness and a tired smoky night jazz scene just fills the page from edge to edge. This image reveals his strength in capturing the moment.
      Caricaturist does partially describe his work, yet leaves something out as well. It's obvious that it's all more than the sum of its parts and works on many level of art and emotion. His work is living proof that "cartoons" are art work. That the skills that are brought to bear in this work are as fulsome as in painting. I'd go to a gallery show featuring his work any day.

: : I.J. Rose. This is the kind of painting that is fraught with aesthetic danger. On the one hand it can often be merely a pale copy of something from ABCville, a retro 80s New York throw back, or it can be simply disposable. Unlike those sometimes whining complaints, Lisa's painting is powerful, it commands a presence that approaches the deliciously and monolithic. Some of the works are the size that De Kooning worked in, a human dimension, rich with color, and a painterly surface that make these abstract and figurative and expressionist paintings rich and full. In fact there are faint echos of De Kooning's figurative work here in the manipulation of the paint, yet it is reserved where economy of means achieves more than simply throwing on the painterly passion. She is very much in control with her well thought out work. Make no mistake about it, I love these paintings, they moved me quickly and excited me, they are well worth spending some time just looking. On top of that she writes and illustrates. See Purple Lettuce for the pleasure of word and image.

: : Stephen Dumayne Cardiff based artist and illustrator in the UK. the Catburgler series is representative of this artists sense of wry humor. His illustration style reminds one of some of the work of Ben Shawn's, slightly less painterly, and certainly more whimsical where Shawn was political. I like this artists work, pairing down to a simplified geometry compositionally so that the viewer can engage in meaning of each scene. This type of work is hard to carry off in painting, since it combines into one aesthetic both the painterly and the gently humorous, the art historical baggage that must be jettisoned for this type of work to succeed, is a good argument for this artists strengths. His web site's design is cleaver and simple allowing one the feel of a gallery show.

: : awholelottnothing represents a new way informal photography is changing and has changed the aesthetic face of the arts. First of all Matt does not make any claim to be an artist, but exposes his fine eye for photographic detail which goes beyond the run of the mill usual "home photos" along with a fine design sense he's revealed in his site. I spent a lot of time looking at images here, just simply enjoying looking. Much like discovering an excellent photo album on a couch in a welcoming home. The over quality of the photos are well worth the effort, they appear to have been made with an unusual relaxed ease,and have a certainty about them which I find refreshing. No apologies for being "sentimental" regarding some subject matter. They simply reveal the photographer's pleasure in his subject matter. Quite an accomplishment!

: : Steven Assael One look at Allison (Pencil on paper) tells you that you are in the presence of a master of drawing. Powerful graphic strength combined with an erotic delicacy of touch and control. There has been a lot of press about this figurative artist and he's had many shows under his belt since graduating and studying at Pratt in New York in 1979, from what I've read he deserves as much praise as a human can stand.
     His subject matter veers from what we would expect in a more mundane "fine art" realist and he has the ability to startle, look at Club Kids and you'll see what I mean. Here's a fine artist that crosses over into a hyper real world that exists in his imagination and wants to interject itself into ours without apology in much the same way someone like Brom shoves his work into our face demanding time and attention.
     There is an etheriality and fantastic quality to Steven's work that makes it hallucinatory and strange beyond what has become mere surrealism, so jaded are we by a constant bombardment of TV adds and MTV. More related to the vain of gold mined by Odd Nerdrum than anything else yet Steven is deeper psychologically in his analysis of the wonder of his subject matter.

: : Lisa Whiteman is a photographer, and web designer with a far above average portfolio of photographic images. One of my favorites? pottery in front of the grand canyon.There is a quietness surrounding her pictures that suffuses them in a small meditative aura. Perhaps it's the intimacy of her dark web pages which strikes the right note. Above that here is a strength in her images that comes through loud and clear, which I know sounds like a contradiction, sounds like? She says : " I like pictures (looking at them, taking them), getting new music, taking classes, and going new places. I'm 28, live in a building that used to be a mortuary, and have recently traded my car for a bike and a metro card. " Which sounds entirely too sensible and reasonable to me. If you want a look at a clear eyed and sensitive photographer, her site is well worth the effort and time.

: : Alessandro Bavari Here's an artist that just knocks you breathless with the level of the quality of work. Senza titolo or untitled is oil on wood and is an evocation of fantastic realism as well as being very traditional. Drawing on traditional, digital, and photographic means Bavari rakes the detritus of our civilization seeking to renew a mythic past and infuse the viewer with a sense of the mysteries that swirl in the subconscious and in the night sky. Another untitled oil on wood is of vegetables and a model. I think he succeeds brilliantly with a broad range of styles each powerfully rendered.

: : Ann Kullberg. Not a CG artist at all and hence a little unusual for a review here, althought iI have included illustrators her's is the first "serious" artist I've covered. Ann works in pencil, and graphite as I do. Her work is in a word magnificent, then other words come to mind sensitive, aware, immediate. That should do it. She has a way with pencil that defies the medium as far as I'm concerned, in that in looking at her work there is little evidence she is using pencil at all, very difficult to achieve, and the product of long hours and years developing a truly original style and technique. See Piano2 for the proof. She runs an online magazine as well helping with and teaching technique. Go there, be amazed, be very amazed. I love her style and her way with portraits. Her look at children is especially excellent, without the usual cloying smarmy romantic aura we usually see woven about them. Her people are just real, caught in moments of happiness or thought. I think she is a major talent, and deserves, as many do, wider exposure by the art press.

: :  Brom. One glimpse at his painting and you know you are seeing the work of a master of the fantastic in fantasy art and illustration. The term Gothic Fetishism has been bandied about, I'm sure it suits the marketing suits in the high glass towers, but in reality, Brom's work takes one's breath away, as much as money does to them. If you are into this kind of literature and unfettered illustration of the imagination, it makes me remember fondly the first time my eyes landed on a book cover by Michael Whalen, or a Mad magazine back cover by Frank Frenzetta. Brom must have spent long hours pouring over comics on a poorly lit brown knobby carpeted isle in some nasty comic shop somewhere, just sucking in the breath of the American sensibility of the macabre mixed with cheap comic book paper and the smell of ink intermingled with a faint whiff of the curious eroticism that wafts from the French and Spanish. How did he get all that from a comic book?
    Paper Tiger has published his work. You've also seen his work from novels (Micheal Moorcock, Terry Brooks, R.A.Salvatore, E.R. Burroughs), Role-playing (TSR, White Wolf, FASA, WOTC), comics (DC, Chaos, Dark Horse), Games (Doom2, Diablo2, Heretic, Sega, Activision), and film (Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Galaxy Quest, Bless the Child, Ghosts of Mars, Scooby Doo.) Brom has been active in the 3d world as well with a line of Brom fetish toys from Fewture and a series of bronzes from the Franklin Mint. I want my fetish toy NOW!

: : Stephen Daniele is an illustrator with a long client list under his belt and lives in the Northwest. He is a perfect example of the truly modern artist with a vast skill set including oil and acrylic painting, pencil, pen and marker rendering, Photoshop 5.5, 3D Studio MAX 3.1, Poser 4, Painter 6, Quark Express and Adobe Illustrator. Clients who have employed his services include: Lucas Films Ltd., 20th Century Fox, Wizards of the Coast, Cadaco Toys, Harper Collins Publishing, Precedence Entertainment, and Sovereign Press.

: : James Browne online gallery. Owing a debt to Arthur Rackham somewhat in style, yet lighter and certainly more sure in execution and the technique of suffused delicacy , in a long line of European fantasy illustrators from the turn of the century on, James Browne excels at the mysterious lands just beyond the corner of the eye when one is 8 years old, or when you have just put down The Lord of The Rings, and taken a walk in a pale Autumn night under a full moon, and one can hear, just beyond the edge of hearing the laughter of creatures who owe no link to human kind, moving among the moon beams in a forest.

: : Christophe Vacher's portfolio site. You have seen his work innumerable times, in movie theaters, without realizing what you were looking at, that certain backgrounds and scenes were in fact painted on canvas prepared with two coats of gesso.
     " I do a pencil sketch on paper, then on the canvas before painting with oils and alkyds or acrylic. "
     Unlike matte painting which is done on glass or digitally, another whole art in itself, the painting of highly detailed backgrounds for major animations has to be another kind of meticulous work, it must withstand prolonged viewing, convey the illusion of depth, show a deep understanding of light and shadow, but also work in the context that certain lenses will be used, distortion effects have to be taken into account by the artist, and his work falls under the scrutiny of a production group.
     You may not have heard of Russian Gothic either, a dark brooding world of intense psychological fantasy, in which magic and terror are hand in hand.

: :  Trent Grove has a site called Sycophant. He's a Photoshop artist. To a person steeped in traditional art training from the schools of the pre-50's and slightly past the 80's such a thing is merely only slightly removed from mud daubing, worse it's done on computer. That means to the academic, university, art magazine axis it's free from the art historical baggage that demands faithful quiescence to weaving the aura of preciousness around the aesthetic object. Hey it's "only" digital, afteralll! To those kind of folk it's not Art. Little do they realize what they are missing. Now I don't do art like this, don't think like this, but neither of those things keeps me from admiring the skill and attention to detail, the suffusion of color and the care taken with the imaginative treatment of melancholy that this artist has taken on.

: : The Matte painter Yanick Dusseault. Senior Matte Painter on Lord of The Rings, among others. This is a case where his range of skills and vision, put to shame most traditional gallery artists, and recent graduates from the University Art factories where imagination is discouraged in favor of a bland desiccated easily digested forms requiring little or no understanding.

: : Rene Garcia's site Psychoform. Here the CG and graphics art is brought to a high level with great imagination and skill, related to and influenced by Japanese Anime, but going beyond Anime by pushing its design and graphic boundaries, essentially recreating a clichéd form and making it his own. He has pushed the detail level of the Mech and futuristic industrial design to photorealistic levels creating a science fiction vocabulary all his own without leaving the realm of the realistic, making some machines as worn and well used as an old favorite Dodge Dart.

: : "I'm 21 in Earth years and I live in Fremont, CA (the Black Hole). I'm a full-time student at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale (the Land of the Boring), home to about 4 females and many nerds allergic to sunlight..." This begins the comic and conceptual art portfolio site called Nethersphere of a rather surprising freelance artist named Stephanie Lostimolo. Surprising because of the level of craft and care in the work. Here is someone who clearly shows vision and skill, a great sense of humor, she can capture the gentle as well as the violent in her work with a strong clear graphic line. I think she has grasped with subtlety an understanding of fantasy and fairy, in an assured and spontaneous style. Her colors and shading are gorgious! Excellent! She is a freelancer and her contact email address is webmistress@nethersphere.com.