If I were to say “Think of a great landscape painter.” or ” Think of a great portrait artist.”, you would probably have a few names spring immediately to mind. If I were to say “Think of a great still life painter.”, chances are better that you might draw a blank, or at least have to think for a bit to come up with a name.

Still life, though a respected form of painting, just isn’t very glamorous. It’s been a staple subject of artists for centuries and many artists today are doing wonderful work in the area; but historically, artists who paint still life and something else are usually remembered for the something else. Well, here’s a name for your list, even if it is a long hyphenated one: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. (I think the French just loved long hyphenated names so they could outdo the British at something else.)

Chardin was one of the great painters of the 18th Century. His unsentimental portrayals of his subjects, strongly influenced by the Dutch masters, were in sharp contrast to the opulently decorative and playfully erotic canvasses of other Rococo masters like Boucher and Fragonard. He was renowned for his portraits and genre paintings (pictures of everyday life), but in his case it is the still life subjects that get the attention.

Though the subjects are humble, often pots, ladles, jars and simple kitchen utensils, Chardin paints them with a richness and tactile vibrancy that is outstanding among all still life painters. He was particularly a master of texture, whether of beaten and polished metal, scuffed wood or the rough surfaces of walls and tables. You can feel the objects in his paintings, pick them and hold them in your mind, even though the way he represents them is painterly and not photorealistic. He often laid in parts of his paintings with rough chunks of color, smudges and and scumbling, letting the surface of the paint itself provide some of the texture.

If you have the opportunity to look at a Chardin painting in a local museum (see the listing on Artcyclopedia), you may find that you’ve unknowingly walked by it several times. Like most still life paintings, Chardin’s don’t scream for attention, but they do reward it. Contemplation of a Chardin still life can be an almost Zen-like exercise in the appreciation of the humble and immediate as sublime.

Don’t ignore his portraits or domestic scenes, he was a superb painter in all areas, but it’s his magically tactile still life subjects that are most memorable. You may come away with at least one name for your mental list of great still life painters.

Many art forms can be collaborative, film production, musical performances, mainstream comics, animation and others can be the culmination the efforts of several artists working together in varying degrees.

Collaboration in painting is usually more one-sided, as in a master being aided by an assistant, a master touching up the work of a pupil or a figure painter employing a specialist to paint animals into a composition (as Rubens did); all are examples of one dominant painter and one helping. True collaborative painting, in which the same painting is worked on by two artists working in tandem with equal input, is rare.

Husband and wife Evgeny and Lydia Baranov, who are originally from Russia but now live in California, seem to have achieved a balance that allows them to do just that. They work side by side on the same canvas, which might be started by either, sharing the application of paint and the advancement of the composition in an interplay they liken to improvisational jazz.

They seem to work and think alike enough that the intention and execution of the paintings feels of a whole, like the work of a single artist. They apparently travel extensively and their work includes landscapes and cityscapes from Paris (image above), Russia, Venice and other parts of the world, in addition to their adopted home of California.

Their online galleries also include intimate interiors and still lifes, occasionally combined with exteriors in the same composition as in their “Moscow Windows” series. Their work also includes portraits and figures in the context of interiors or landscapes. Their approach is painterly, with broad strokes of intense color laid down directly, space and form defined with areas of color and little evidence of line.

I don’t know if someone more familiar with their work than I could pick out the influences of one artist over the other. Their site sometimes arranges their work by date, and I see more variation in style over time than I do in a given year, indicating to me a pretty seamless synthesis of the vision of the two artists into a shared whole.

It’s interesting to compare this approach to that of two other artists I have featured who are husband and wife, Neil and Karen Hollingsworth, who obviously share influences, but retain separate artistic points of view. I think it’s rare enough to find couples who work in the same medium and general style; the Baraov’s joined expression is very unusual.