Masters of paint: our pick of top contemporary painters

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Ged Quinn

 

UK: born 1963

Ged Quinn gave up an early - and promising - career in popular music to concentrate on art, completing studies at the Ruskin, the Slade, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and Amsterdam's Rijksakademie.

The rigour and influence of Quinn's academic training is highly evident in works that expertly evoke the style and traditions of late 18th century European landscape painting, particularly that of Claude Lorrain.

Despite their appearance, however, Quinn's canvases are loaded with juxtapositions, additions and twists that usurp the idyllic and create sinister scenarios: a stark contrast to the Arcadian conventions of his chosen painterly idiom.

Artists Anonymous

 

Various nationalities, mainly German / UK: founded 2001

Arguably one of the most successful artistic collectives of recent years, the various members of Artists Anonymous are largely based in Berlin where they collaborate on the production of artworks across a wide range of disciplines.

The group's paintings are marked by dizzying detail and colour, as well as a championing of new and experimental styles influenced by image-editing computer software.

A favourite technique, for instance, is colour reversal, a chromatic inversion of natural tones; many of the group's other characteristic effects similarly involve digital manipulation translated into paint.

In keeping with the collective's collaborative and clandestine nature, individual members are never discussed or officially revealed and all works signed with the Artists Anonymous name.

 

Rose Wylie

 

UK: born 1934

One of the most senior painters featured here, Wylie is also one of the most individual and vibrant.

She completed a Fine Art BA in 1956 before eventually taking an MA at London's Royal College of Art from 1979 - 1981.

Her whimsical reflections on life are boldly rendered in a faux-naive style that belies their worldliness and often impish wit. Very much an original voice, at seventy-five years of age Wylie provides a dynamic and intriguing new name in British painting.

 

 

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