Ten Hot Artists: Time to Refresh Your Walls? Here Are Ten ‘Hot’ Artists for You to Follow
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by Benjamin Genocchio
Spring heralds a season not just of cleaning and decluttering but the opportunity to refresh your interior. What better way to do so than to redecorate your walls with artworks that speak to your personality — who you are, or want to be now? Incollect asked 10 of our prominent art dealers for their predictions of artists who, in their view, are ‘hot’ right now and worth keeping an eye on. So who are dealers betting will succeed among the artists working today? Who will rise from ‘emerging artist’ to ‘established artist’ status? Whose artwork will increase in value over time, and who will be remembered in the future for the work they are making today? Read on to find out.
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Iconica Fine Art Artist: Tim Holmstrom |
“I’m betting on Tim Holmstrom,” says the longtime Connecticut art advisor and dealer Isabella Garrucho, owner of Iconica Fine Art. “He is a talented newcomer who has had an incredible life and that is fueling some even more incredible artwork.” Holmstrom is a photojournalist and adventure photographer who took up painting later in life, drawing on travels and the natural curiosity of a journalist to craft wistful, mystical oil on canvas and ink and oil on watercolor paper paintings that hover between pure abstraction and expressionist landscapes.
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Left: Celestial Singularity 11, 2024. Oil, ink, and charcoal dust on Arches Aquarelle watercolor paper mounted on plywood, 44.5 x 44.5 inches. Right: Dust and Shadow, 2024. Mixed media, oil on canvas, charcoal dust, and photograph, 48 x 60 inches. |
Holmstrom’s subject matter is the passing of time, memory, loss, and the vast unpredictable forces of nature, all conveyed with a poignant and finely balanced sentimentalism. “When I first saw Holmstrom’s paintings at a friend’s house I felt like I had been struck by lightning,” Garrucho explains. “Holmstrom’s work doesn’t need explanation or embellishment — and that is what I love about it. His canvases and works on paper powerfully convey that art finds form and strength through simplicity and intention,” Garrucho says.
Holmstrom’s black-and-white paintings remind Garrucho of Robert Motherwell’s Spanish Elegy series; the moodiness, the emotion, the way the artist uses the color black to symbolize the darkest parts of our lives, while the color white signifies hope — a belief that the best is yet to come. “Those qualities, combined with the strength of each painting, demonstrate he has all it takes to thrive in the art world.”
Trimper Gallery Artist: Arlo Sinclair |
Arlo Sinclair is a computer programmer turned painter whose wry and witty paintings fuse the languages of art, coding, and gaming with nostalgia for bygone tech eras. His hyper-realistic oil on canvas paintings depict obsolete technology from the 1980s and 1990s with the loving reverence of religious icons. “In a world where technology and culture intersect like never before, Sinclair’s ability to distill this dynamic into compelling and thought-provoking imagery ensures his continued importance and ascension in the art world,” says Alex Trimper, owner of Trimper Gallery in Greenwich, CT.
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Left: Donkey Kong, Nature's Revenge - NES, 2023. Oil on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 inches. Right: GI Joe: Real American Hero, 2022. Oil on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 inches. |
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Space Invaders: Bounderies, 2023. Oil on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 inches. |
On the one hand, his paintings are a kind of straight-up homage to the functional beauty of these immediately recognizable and loveable technological relics, like the floppy disk, early gaming consoles, or the first video games like Donkey Kong — a fact making them fun and attractive to collectors. But he also carefully incorporates alterations into his depictions, something that Trimper says “infuses” them with something deeper, providing commentary on contemporary themes like our increasingly digital future, the ethics of artificial intelligence, or the commodification of history and culture in cyberspace.
“His art serves as a bridge between nostalgia for the technological past and a forward-looking critique of our digital future, making it uniquely positioned to capture the attention of diverse audiences and investors,” Trimper says, noting that for several years already his work has struck a chord with computer enthusiasts. “For this reason acquiring his artwork now could be a prescient decision for a collector, providing both aesthetic fulfillment and a smart investment in an artist poised for enduring long-term cultural impact.”
M Fine Arts Galerie Artist: Wendy Westlake |
“I start my paintings by marking up the canvas with pencils, crayons, and splatters of paint,” says painter Wendy Westlake, who has a new show on view through February 15 at M Fine Arts Galerie in Boston. “I’m waging war with the plain starkness of that innocuous, untouched canvas, in a sense, aging it. My intention is that these first marks add character and interest to all that follows.”
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Music Surrounds Us, 2024. Acrylic, crayon and medium on raw canvas, 105 x 80 inches. |
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Suitable for the Occasion, 2024. Crayon and acrylic on raw canvas, 48 x 48 inches. |
Westlake celebrates the process of painting in paintings, specifically the underpainting, which is the first step in the process of creating an image. It is why her works have depth and resonance, with every mark not only visible but meaningful, a push and pull of surface shapes and forms in harmonious colors that form an unstable whole.
“Her innovative use of color, texture, and form,” is what we really love about her artwork, say Mitch Plotkin and Madison Maushart from M Fine Arts Galerie, who represents the artist in the Northeast. “I saw her work on Instagram, three years ago,” Plotkin says, “there was something about it that kept me looking and I knew then she was special.”
Partly it’s her color palette, he says, and the way the work seems to reference different periods, and styles in modern art history (Surrealism, collage, abstraction) and at the same time remain fresh and new. “She is definitely influenced by Surrealist collage, which is why the images have sculptural qualities in my view,” Plotkin says, adding “The gallery does very well with her work. The paintings are beautiful but the scale and price point are also very approachable.”
Zenith Gallery Artist: Bradley Stevens |
“When Bradley Stevens was an undergraduate in Washington, D.C. he copied 500 paintings at the National Gallery to teach himself to paint like an Old Master, which is why he is so good as a realist painter,” says Margery Goldberg, owner of Zenith Gallery in Washington, D.C., and an art dealer for over four decades. “Bradley is one of the best painters I have come across. He understands light in a painting — I love the way light falls on whatever he is depicting. It’s extremely natural and real.”
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Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, 2009. Oil on linen, 48 x 72 inches. |
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You’re Not Alone, 2018. Oil on linen 38 × 48 inches. |
Stevens has forged a reputation as one of America’s leading realist painters. His painting style is contemporary realism, or naturalism — rooted in classical art training, yet boldly expressive. He paints portraiture, landscapes, and figurative urban scenes, making him somewhat unique among his contemporaries. “Most artists just stick with one of these difficult genres, maybe two at best,” Goldberg says. “He has painted all three of them in a career spanning decades.”
“He is consistently my best-selling artist hands-down,” Goldberg says. In addition to regular gallery exhibitions, he has done many commissioned portraits for important people as well as public and private spaces. “He has painted the portraits of leaders in the fields of education, business, medicine, law, science, philanthropy, and politics including Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., the family of Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV, Glenn L. Martin, co-founder of Martin Marietta, Dr. Robert Heyssel, President of Johns Hopkins University Hospital and more,” Goldberg says.
Spanierman Modern Artist: Susan Grossman |
“The quality of execution in Susan Grossman’s work is reminiscent of the great Impressionist landscape painters such as John Singer Sargent or William Merritt Chase, without feeling at all old-fashioned or out of date,” says Gavin Spanierman, owner of Spanierman Modern in New York. “I also think her decision to use a very limited and minimalistic palette makes her drawings feel current and contemporary,” he says.
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Gaze, 2024. Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on board, 46 x 50 inches. |
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Formation, 2023. Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on board, 31 x 34 inches. |
“People are always awestruck when they learn that they are charcoal and pastel drawings and not paintings because they have so much weight and depth to them,” Spanierman says. He also admires the way the artist uses the atmospheric nuances of cloud formations, a ripple in water, the curl of a crashing wave, or the sheen on a sidewalk to convey the passage of time and movement. “It makes one feel as though the artist has captured a fleeting moment.”
Grossman begins with reference photographs of her subjects and locations. Returning to the studio, she draws directly from the source imagery before “allowing the artistic process to take over and create her own narrative world,” Spanierman explains. Elements of original locations are repositioned, invented, or eliminated to create a sense of mystery, even strangeness. “Her open and non-specific narratives leave the viewer with a sense of unease as it is clear that much of what is happening here is only implied throughout the image. The viewer walks away without any sense of resolution,” he says.
Madison Gallery Artist: Max Frintrop |
Max Frintrop is a young German abstract painter to watch according to Lorna York, the experienced California art dealer and founder of Madison Gallery. York started to represent him exclusively in the U.S. and in late 2024 staged a show of his work at the gallery, alongside Donald Martiny. “Max studied under the German painter Albert Oehlen in Düsseldorf and his work is much sought after already by European museums and collectors — he is part of the next generation of abstract artists in Europe, following Gerhard Richter and Albert Oehlen,” York says.
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Untitled (Effulgent Information), 2022. Ink, acrylic, pigments on canvas, 330 x 200 cm. Photo: Alexander Romey |
The subject of his paintings is painting itself — the work is about art materials and techniques and relationships between arrangements of forms and colors on canvas. “The networks of brightly colored lines that dominate his paintings operate like conduits of energy, shuttling the eye back and forth across the painting’s surface, invoking for me a relationship to the Constructivist painting tradition,” York explains.
She attributes much of the success and allure of the work to Frintrop’s idiosyncratic painting technique. “His paintings took a huge leap forward when he developed the innovative technique of spraying and spreading ink through a broom-like device, often requiring him to work quickly and skillfully since every decision he makes with the quick-drying ink immediately sets in stone and cannot be undone,” York says. “The results are complex, difficult visual masterpieces.”
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Works by Max Frintrop (left) and Donald Martiny (right) in the 2024 exhibition UNCHARTED at Madison Gallery. |
Emporium Brazil Design Gallery Artist: Carlos Cesar Alves |
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ALEGRIMAIA, 2020. Mixed media on wood, 48 inches x 48 inches. |
“Carlos Alves is a Brazilian-born painter based in Florida interested in visual perception,” says Carolina Dubois Alves from Emporium Brazil Design Gallery. “Though self-taught as a painter he has nonetheless mastered artistic styles as diverse as Surrealism, Cubism, and Pop art and today works exclusively in his own unique abstract geometric style influenced by Brazilian Concrete art of the 1950s and Latin America optical art of the 1960s and 1970s.”
His interest in perceptual issues is partly inspired by his own visual limitations — the artist cannot see color, the world for him is only in shades of black, white, and gray. “His paintings oscillate between stark black-and-white works and strikingly color-saturated creations,” says Alves, who recently staged an exhibition of his works at their gallery in Miami. “He invites viewers to explore the boundaries between perception and reality, encouraging a reevaluation of how we interpret visual stimuli,” she says. “His ability to transcend personal limitations and transform them into creative strengths underscores his significance in the global art market.”
Peter Blake Gallery Artist: Stephanie Bachiero |
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Stephanie Bachiero, installation view of her solo exhibition in 2019 at Peter Blake Gallery. |
“Thirty-plus years in the business have taught me that one should collect art that one loves and wants to live with and pass on to the next generation to enjoy. I have always loved Stephanie’s work and live with it,” says Peter Blake, an art and design dealer from Laguna Beach, CA. “It’s a hybrid of minimalist and organic sensibilities conveying sensuality. It’s rare to have all three of those attributes. I also love how all her works start in porcelain and re-emerge in different materials and scales that transcend their origins.”
Bachiero’s sleek sculptures balance strength and fragility, geometry, and organicity. “She manipulates the clay to form elegant, seemingly undulating minimalist sculptures,” Blake says. “Twisting and turning, her graceful abstractions have the appearance of weightlessness, grounding themselves through components of negative space and solid architectural structure.” Her works sell well to national and international collectors, he says, and in 2024 one of her large-scale sculptures was acquired for the US Embassy in Sri Lanka.
Anderson Contemporary Artist: Andrei Petrov |
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Playdate Redux, 2024. Oil on canvas, 60 x 30 inches. |
“Petrov is doing something different from what the Abstract Expressionists did. He’s adding nature to abstraction, not taking a tree and abstracting it; for him, abstraction is the starting point,” says art critic Anthony Haden-Guest about the work of Andrei Petrov, a New York-based painter with a dedicated collector following.
“While his name may not yet carry the same widespread recognition as some of the giants in American abstract art, Andrei has carved out a distinctive niche for himself through his thought-provoking works,” says New York art dealer Ronni Anderson. “His unique ability to blend emotional intensity with color and brushstroke precision has attracted both collectors and critics across the United States. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Andrei for many years now and I’m a huge fan of both his work and the person he is — that’s important to me, as it goes to the integrity of the art that is being made.”
Anderson especially admires what she describes as “the seamless way Petrov balances emotional depth with structural clarity.” His use of color and brushwork allows him to translate emotions directly into the language of abstraction, she explains. “Colors convey mood or atmosphere, while the spatial arrangement and brushstrokes add a layer of biomorphic order, grounding the pieces with energy. It’s this ability to combine expressive, emotive power with visual harmony that makes his abstract paintings so compelling and timeless.”
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Outside The Box, 2024. Oil on canvas 40 x 48 inches. |
Leila Heller Gallery Artist: Melis Buyruk |
Melis Buyruk is an emerging Turkish ceramist whose work “everyone needs to know about,” says Leila Heller, one of the world’s foremost dealers of art from the Middle East region. “Her unique approach to ceramics merges intricate craftsmanship with Surrealist and organic forms, pushing the boundaries of traditional ceramics and sculpture,” Heller explains. “Her works explore the intersection of nature and humanity, often blending botanical and anatomical forms to create provocative sculptures. This conceptual depth, combined with her technical mastery, has made her a standout artist in our gallery.”
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Left: Blooming Snake, 2024. Porcelain, stoneware, 27 x 26.5 x 15 cm. Right: Blooming Pearl, 2024. Porcelain, fiberglass, brass, 50 x 40 x 25 cm. |
Heller has exhibited Buyruk’s effusively floral ceramic sculptures internationally, including at prominent art fairs such as Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art. Her works have been bought by collectors and museums internationally — one of her more meticulous pieces, titled “Kalila Wa Dimna,” 2020, made of porcelain and gold, was acquired for the permanent collection of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a milestone for a Middle Eastern artist. “She is the only contemporary Turkish artist in the Louvre’s collection,” Heller says.