American Realist Art

Artist Comments
A culinary-themed still life by artist Dwight Smith rendered in the realist tradition. He paints a luscious red apple resting inside a large shell. Light fall...

Artist Comments
In this provocative hyperrealist painting, artist David Shepherd uses honey and leaves as symbols of health, well-being and sexuality. "By only showing a part...

Artist Comments
A culinary-themed still life featuring a Honeycrisp apple and sewing thimbles. "The beautiful profession of farming requires many hours of pruning or mending ...

Artist Comments
Artist Emil Morhardt captures a sanderling scurrying along the edge of incoming surf. "In a second, he'll turn around and follow ...

Artist Comments
In this hyperrealistic painting of a close-up view of an eye framed by delicate white flowers, artist David Shepherd investigates taking people out of gender....

Artist Comments
Every summer, Jo goes down to the Coquitlam River near her home in British Columbia to enjoy the beautiful green surroundings glowing in the summer heat. "I couldn't resist how inviting this scenery was," she says. "Where I live, summer only lasts about three months, so I put this scene on canvas to enjoy it the whole year through."

About the Artist

Words that describe this painting: nature, water, trees, rocks, river, sunlight, woods, summer, forest, stream, riverbank, nature, realism, representational, oil painting, green

A Moment in Time...

Artist Comments
"In this painting, a cold winter storm rolls in from the Pacific," shares artist Jesse Aldana. "The icy blue water and sky are accented with warm notes of clo...

Artist Comments
Artist McGarren Flack paints a frosted snickerdoodle cookie on a solid white background. “Who doesn't like sweets?” asks McGarren. In his Sweets series, h...

Artist Comments
Artist Heather Foster encountered this inquisitive subject while painting en plein air. "This nosy California girl wanted to be front and center to see what t...

Artist Comments
This whimbrel was trying to tell me something as he was leaving. Whimbrels don't talk a lot, so this image is amusingly unusual. He's painted in browns and gr...

Artist Comments
"This is a view of the underside of Little Island, an artificial park designed by Thomas Heatherwick off the West Side of Manhattan," shares artist Nick Savid...

Artist Comments
"These raucous birds arrive at my Santa Barbara feeder in flocks," shares artist Emil Morhardt. "They shoo away sparrows and hous...

Artist Comments
Artist Emil Morhardt depicts an Elegant Tern and a Forster’s Tern hanging together in the winter shallows of the Santa Barbara beach in California. Their evening reflections ripple above the water highlighted in gold, silver, and copper leaf. "While the Elegant Terns show up in huge flocks, the much smaller Forester’s tern is uncommon in Santa Barbara, and so a treat to see."

About the Artist
Emil Morhardt is an acrylic painter from Santa Barbara, California who expresses his passion for birds through realistic acrylic paintings. He paints at home in a studio room that has large windows and a north-facing view of the mountains. He observes the animals from this window, watching roadrunners, foxes, bobcats, deer, and coyote run by. Surrounded by this wildlife, Emil paints bird portraits reminiscent of those by artist John James Audubon. He bases his paintings off hundreds of photographs he takes of birds in the wild and at wildlife recovery centers. Emil captures the freedom and inquisitiveness that birds display in the natural world. Before painting birds, he painted landscapes of San Francisco and the Eastern Sierra. Emil was raised in the high desert of California and learned to paint from his father, who was one of the early California watercolorists...

Artist Comments
A refreshing basket of juicy red apples after a rainstorm. Raindrops slowly dry under the warm sun as leaves rustle in the cool wind. Artist Nikolay Rizhankov...