1. Ivan Kramskoy
Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoi (June 8th May 27) was a Russian painter and art
critic. He was an intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement in
1860-1880. Influenced by the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats, Kramskoi
asserted the high public duty of the artist, principles of realism, and the moral
substance and nationality of art. He became one of the main founders and ideologists
of the Company of Itinerant Art Exhibitions.

2. Jacob Collins
Jacob Collins (born 1964) is an American realist painter working in New York, NY. He is a
leading figure of the contemporary classical art revival. He founded the Water Street Atelier,
the Grand Central Academy of Art and the Hudson River Fellowship. From a young age,
Collins knew that he wanted to be an artist, although his interest and skill lay in a classical
style that was out of favour in the late 20th century. Moving away from Modernism, he
identified instead with works of 15th–19th century masters and their techniques and
aesthetics.

3. Adrian Gottlieb
Naturalist painter and portraitist, Adrian Gottlieb, was born in north-
eastern Vermont. He currently lives and paints from a studio in Southern
California. While he has expanded his themes to include varied subject
matter, Gottlieb’s passion remains cantered on figurative compositions. It
is in this genre that Gottlieb excels, infusing the two-dimensional surface
with a luminous and quality that conveys the illusion of life-force.

4. David Kassan
David Jon Kassan (born 1977) is a contemporary American painter best known
for his life-size realist portraits. The paintings combine figurative subjects with
abstract backgrounds or “tromp l’oeil texture studies,”[reportedly inspired by
Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg. Of this dual representation strategy
Kassan notes, “my effort to constantly learn to document reality with a
naturalistic, representational painting technique allows for pieces to be inherent
contradictions; paintings that are both real and abstract.

5. Erik M. Gist
E.M. Gist began his formal study of art with Jeff Watts in 1996, three years later he began to teach and
has done so for the last seven years. Gist has been a working professional artist since 1998, he began his
career designing video games for Gratuitous Games. When the opportunity to teach at the school where he
was trained presented itself, he took it. This allowed him the spare time to follow his dream of becoming a
storyteller, that the rigors of a video game career did not. To date he has painted numerous illustrations for
book covers and games, including work on Forgotten Realms Dungeon's series of novels and the revival of
Raven loft. Erik's clients include TOR, Wizards of the Coast, Upper deck Entertainment, DC Comics, Boom!
Studios, Palladium Books, Blizzard Entertainment, Viking Children's Books, Monkey Brain Books, Quarto
Publishing, and Chiat-Day.