Alright folks, today got me thinking about those big blank walls in my apartment again. Damn things stare back at you, right? So I decided it was high time to get some proper portraits up there, something modern, something cool. Started this mission dead simple: opened my laptop and typed into the search bar - "best modern portrait artists now". Clicked search. And bam, felt instantly overwhelmed.
First couple pages were useless. Mostly galleries pushing crazy expensive names I vaguely recognized from museums. Or worse, ads for those apps where you turn a selfie into a cartoon. Not what I meant at all. Felt like wading through mud. Scrolled past stuff about dead artists too – helpful for history class maybe, not for finding someone cool working today.
Got stubborn. Figured "modern" must mean artists actually alive and kicking, doing portraits right now. Refined my search: added "contemporary", "living artists". Still kinda messy. Saw articles listing "Top 20" this and "Influential 50" that. Read a few. Problem is, half the names mentioned, their work looked, well, honestly kinda boring or super weird to me. Guess art talk isn't my native language. Felt frustrated clicking links showing paintings that just looked like fuzzy photographs or people with three eyes. Not my scene.
Alright, plan shift. Forget the big fancy lists, forget what critics think. Time to look for artists real people actually like and talk about. Jumped over to Instagram. Figured visuals matter here. Started searching hashtags: stuff like #modernportraitartist, #contemporaryportraitpainting, #figurativeartnow. Scrolled. For a long time. Lots of crap, gotta be honest. But then… started seeing patterns. Certain artists kept popping up. People commenting with actual excitement, tagging their friends saying "You HAVE to see this!"
Clicking on artist profiles became the game changer. Instead of relying on some website's list, I went straight to the source. Looked at their feed. Read their captions. Looked at comments. Wasn't just about the painting, but how they talked about their work. Did they sound genuine? Passionate? Did their style grab me? Found some gems this way. Artists who weren't maybe in those top "critic" lists, but man, their work spoke.
Started building my own little hit list. Screenshotted profiles I liked, saved posts. Got smarter about it too. If I really liked Artist A, checked out who they were following. Artist communities talk to each other. That led me down rabbit holes to even cooler artists I wouldn't have found on my own. Discovered some fantastic painters working today, each with a unique take:
- One dude paints these incredibly detailed faces, but the backgrounds dissolve into these wild, dripping colors. Mesmerizing.
- A woman who captures street scenes in London, people on the tube, just amazing expressions caught in a split second.
- Another artist who uses thick layers of paint, almost sculptural, making portraits look super textured and alive.
The big lightbulb moment? The "best" artists depend TOTALLY on what you vibe with. There's no single answer. Screw the art world jargon and the super expensive gallery picks. Finding top talent right now means actually putting in the legwork, searching the places where artists show their real process, and trusting your own damn gut when something makes you stop scrolling.
Lesson learned? The best modern portrait artists aren't always hiding in some fancy magazine. They’re online, showing their work directly. You just gotta look. Real talent’s often way easier to find than those clickbait articles make it seem.
