Steven J. Levin is a contemporary American realist painter based in Minnesota.

The galleries on his website are divided into Figures & Interiors and Still Life, though within those topics he works in a variety of subjects and approaches. There are often repeated themes, however, of restaurant, museum and poolroom interiors and still life arrangements of hats, for example.

I particularly enjoy his room interiors in which he plays compositionally with pools of light, whether from lamps, windows, doors or other sources. He also creates De-Hooch like glimpses of rooms leading to rooms leading to rooms, often making each its own world of illumination.

There is also a gallery of Work in Progress that includes several composition sketches alongside the finished works.

His still life subjects, though precisely rendered with meticulous draftsmanship, are lively and often seem to have an attitude — as if there were a wink and a nod behind them.

You will also find more straightforward figurative works in the Figures and Interiors section, and on the sites of some of the galleries in which he is represented (listed below), along with other subjects.

Though it’s somewhat uncharacteristic of his still life subjects in general, the cartoonist in me was immediately drawn (if you’ll excuse the expression) to his still life of crusted Speedball pens, tacked-up comic strips, ink and white-out bottles (above, bottom).

Edmund Charles Tarbell was the primary founder of the “Boston School” of American Impressionism, one of the most important of the painters called American Impressionists, and to my mind, one of the great American painters in general.

Since I last wrote about Tarbell back in 2006, many more resources have become available for viewing his work on the web, and I’ll take advantage of this update post to list some of them, and to post more of Tarbell’s beautiful paintings.

Unfortunately, the two best books I know of about Tarbell and his work are not as directly available as they were, but you can still find them used or new from some sellers: Impressionism Transformed: The Paintings of Edmund C. Tarbell and Edmund C. Tarbell: Poet of Domesticity.

Rather that repeating my description of Tarbell, his stunning impressionist portraits and figures and his elegant Vermeer-inspired interiors, I’ll refer you to my two previous posts: Edmund Tarbell and Edmund Tarbell (revisited).

In the latter post, I mention a brief email contact I had with the stepdaughter of one of Tarbell’s three granddaughters, as she was showing her stepmother “Tarbie” how her grandfather’s work was mentioned and displayed on the web.

[Correction: One of the images originally accompanying this post was actually by Frank Benson, Not Tarbell (the result of late night editing – sigh). After several alert readers pointed it out to me, I’ve replaced it, and another that could have been in question, with other images. See this post’s comments for more.]

Phil Starke is an artist who brings a bright, painterly sensibility to his portrayals of the landscape of the American West and Southwest.

Starke was exposed to European art as a boy while his military family lived in Germany. He later studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and was drawn to the color and light of the American Southwest.

His work has been featured in numerous publications, including American Artist, Southwest Art and Art of the West.

I particularly enjoy his paintings in which he has areas of shadow falling across part of the composition, part of his fascination with the play of light within a landscape. He demonstrates a subtle appreciation of lower color and value contrasts in areas within paintings that also include high-contrast, high-chroma passages.

Starke paints both on location and in the studio. He also paints still life and figurative work, and his landscapes often incorporate figures.

Unfortunately, the gallery on his website is one of those annoying arrangements in which you must keep your mouse positioned over the thumbnail while viewing an image, instead of simply clicking on the image you want to see, but there is a more traditionally arranged small works section, and you can find additional images on the sites of galleries in which his work is represented (linked below).

Starke conducts workshops in both plein air and studio painting. He has also published instructional DVD’s and books, the most recent of which is Plein Air Take-Along Tip Guide.

He has a site for Starke Studio, devoted specifically to his instructional materials, and maintains a related blog, Between the Palette Scrapings. He also participates in the Tuscon Art Academy online instruction (the next session starting March 25, 2013). You can find short preview clips of his instructional videos on YouTube.