Michael John Novak Jr. was an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than forty books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982). In 1993 Novak was honored with an honorary doctorate at Universidad Francisco Marroquín due to his commitment to the idea of liberty. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which included a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace. He wrote books and articles focused on capitalism, religion, and the politics of democratization.
Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: "Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture."
Richard Whitney, is an American painter, author and educator. Town & Country magazine has named him one of the top dozen portrait painters in America. Fine Art Connoisseur has called him one of "the giants of the field" of figurative painting. Whitney's portraits and landscapes hang in over 800 public and private fine art collections worldwide. They include the Anchorage Museum of Art and History; the Anderson House Museum; the Newark Museum; the Pentagon; Harvard, Yale, and Stanford universities; and the Catholic University of Portugal. He has won over 40 regional and national awards as well as three grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation of Montreal. Whitney was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of New Hampshire in 2015.
Burton Silverman is an American artist.
Charles Joshua Chaplin was a French painter and printmaker who painted both landscapes and portraits. He worked in techniques such as pastels, lithography, watercolor, chalk, oil painting and etching. He was best known for his elegant portraits of young women.
Michael Shane Neal is an American portrait artist who currently serves as the chairman of the Portrait Society of America. In 2020, Neal's painting of Congressman John Lewis was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery as a part of their permanent exhibit entitled "The Struggle for Justice." Neal has created official portraits for the United States Capitol of U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, former Majority Leader and U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, 10th Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman, and over 400 works of art depicting various public figures. Commissions include Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law at Arizona State University, former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham for the Department of Energy, and U.S. Senator Arlen Specter for Yale Law School.
The Art Renewal Center (ARC) is a non-profit, educational organization, which hosts an online museum dedicated to realist art. The ARC was founded by New Jersey businessman, author, and art collector Fred Ross.
Bikash Bhattacharjee was an Indian painter from Kolkata in West Bengal. Through his paintings, he depicted the life of the average middle-class Bengali – their aspirations, superstitions, hypocrisy and corruption, and even the violence that is endemic to Kolkata. He worked in oils, acrylics, water-colours, conté and collage. In 2003, he was awarded the highest award of Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Arts, the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship.
Regis Francis Xavier Philbin was an American television presenter, talk show host, game show host, comedian, actor, and singer. Once called "the hardest working man in show business", he held the Guinness World Record for the most hours spent on U.S. television.
Michael Bell is an American portrait painter, muralist, screenwriter and author. He has painted portraits of John Gotti and actors from Mafia dramas The Sopranos, Goodfellas and A Bronx Tale. Bell is an anti-bullying and Autism activist. In June, 2017 Bell published his memoir "Dual Lives: from the Streets to the Studio".
Leokadia Makarska-Čermák or Lily Čermák, known in the US for painting US Senator Charles Schumer, New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, was born in Polanica-Zdrój, Poland. She received a merit-based full scholarship from the Ministry of Culture that allowed her to study the five-year program in interior design and wood technologies at the Technical University in Zvolen, Czechoslovakia. After graduation, Leokadia married Jiří Čermák and moved to Ostrov a town not far from Karlovy Vary. She worked in Karlovy Vary first as an interior and furniture designer and later, as a teacher at a technical high school.
John Nelson Shanks was an American artist and painter. His best known works include his portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, first shown at Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York City, April 24 to June 28, 1996 and the portrait of president Bill Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery.
Igor Petrovich Veselkin was a Russian Soviet realist painter, graphic artist, scenographer, stage designer, and art teacher, professor of the Repin Institute of Arts, who lived and worked in Saint Petersburg. He was a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists, and regarded as one of the representatives of the Leningrad school of painting.
Haroutin "Ariel" Pascale Agemian was an Armenian artist who worked predominantly in Italy, France, New York City and Brooklyn.
Stephanie Deshpande is a contemporary American painter, best known for her portraits and narrative paintings. She currently lives in northern New Jersey.
Fran Lew is an American master portrait artist. She is a contemporary realist, trained in academic classical realism. Lew's style of portraiture combines traditional techniques of the Old Masters with her own contemporary vision.
Judy Takács is a contemporary figurative painter, known for her realistic paintings from her ongoing, traveling portrait series, Chicks with Balls: Judy Takács paints unsung female heroes. “Takács is a figurative artist who tells stories about people who have something uplifting to share.” She is an elected member of, and past Social Media Chair for Allied Artists of America. She is past Social Media Chair and Literature Committee writer for the Cecilia Beaux Forum of the Portrait Society of America. In 2018, Takács was elected to membership in the Salmagundi Art Club and the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club in New York City. She holds Signature Status with American Women Artists and Akron Society of Artists. She lives and works in Solon, Ohio.
Cesar Santos is a contemporary Cuban-American artist and portrait painter. He is better known for his body of work "Syncretism", a term he uses to describe paintings where he presents two or more art tendencies in aesthetic balance. He has completed numerous commissions and his work is held in private as well as public collections around the world.
Brenda Zlamany is an American artist best known for portraiture that combines Old Master technique with a postmodern conceptual approach. She gained attention beginning in the 1990s, when critics such as Artforum's Barry Schwabsky, Donald Kuspit and John Yau identified her among a small group of figurative painters reviving the neglected legacies of portraiture and classical technique by introducing confrontational subject matter, psychological insight and social critique. Her early portraits of well-known male artists, such as Chuck Close and Leon Golub, reversed conventional artist/sitter gender and power dynamics; her later projects upend the traditionally "heroic" nature of portraiture by featuring underrepresented groups and everyday people. Zlamany has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, National Museum, Gdańsk, and New-York Historical Society. Her work has been recognized with a Fulbright Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, and commissions from Yale University, World Bank and The New York Times Magazine; it belongs to public collections such as the Neuberger Museum of Art and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Zlamany is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Joel Rea is an Australian artist known for his surreal, photorealistic oil on canvas works.
