Malcolm T. Liepke is a well known and widely respected contemporary painter who works primarily in figurative and informal portrait subjects. (By “informal portraits”, I mean that his subjects are models posing for the benefit of the artist as opposed to the subject of commissioned portraits.)

Liepke has been tremendously influential on a number of other contemporary gallery artists, and quite a few illustrators. Liepke himself had a very successful career as an illustrator, eventually transitioning into gallery painting.

His subjects are most often women, sometimes pensive, sometimes subtly emotional or sensual or flirtatious. They inhabit a world that may be of a different era, or may be just a preference for another time expressed in contemporary surroundings. Some of his work is overtly sexual (NSFW).

Liepke draws his own inspiration from the portrait masters of the late 19th century, but imbues his work with a contemporary verve. His canvasses are richly textural with bravura brushwork and a beautiful mix of intense and subdued colors.

As far as I can determine, Liepke doesn’t maintain a web presence of his own, relying instead on the galleries in which he is represented. Foremost of these is Arcadia Fine Arts in New York, which showcases an extensive selection of the artist’s work. (For best viewing use the “Full Screen Toggle” at upper right.)

Arcadia is offering a large volume of the artist’s work, Malcolm T. Liepke – A Retrospective (see the link at the bottom of the gallery’s page on Liepke.)

The landscape in the Netherlands, particularly in the lowlands, is largely sky.

This seems to suit contemporary Dutch plein air painter Roos (pronounced like “Rose”) Schuring just fine.

She loves to portray cloud filled skies of all kinds. Though she paints in all weather and conditions, she finds particular magic in the dramatic skies just before and after storms.

This is evident in her recent seascapes, in which the coast of the Netherlands seems to readily accommodate her preference for skies full of roiling clouds, rich with subtle colors and value changes.

Looking back through her blog, you will also find subjects like rows of farmed flowers, fields, livestock and streams.

In particular, she returns often to the same water meadow and paints it in different light and atmospheric conditions, a practice favored by Monet and Pissarro, and one I particularly enjoy. You can also see the tradition of cloud studies from sources like Constable’s oil sketches, and of course, the great Dutch landscape painters.

Schuring lets her thick, textural brushstrokes add a physical dimension to her portrayal of cloud forms, and her “gray” skies have a wonderful variety of depth and color.

There are a few videos of Schuring painting on location. Though they are unfortunately not professionally filmed they still show her working methods and give a closer view of her painting’s surface than the smaller images on her blog.

Schuring has a website in addition to her blog, but it serves mainly as a source of links to her other sites. Most of the images of her work are on her blog. There are additional images on her Facebook page, and in galleries on the Daily Paintworks site and the Fine Art America site.

She teaches workshops specifically in seascaping in The Netherlands.

It seems that many contemporary plein air painters are disappointed when the skies are overcast or threaten rain, but for Roos Shruring, that’s ideal painting weather.