Born just outside of Kiev, 19th century artist Mykola Pymonenko spent most of his career portraying the land and people of his native Ukraine.

He became a member of the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts, but also exhibited with the more progressive Society of South Russian Artists and the Peredvizhniki. (See my Lines and Colors posts on some of the Peredvizhniki.)

Pymonenko’s paintings of peasant life set their work against the backdrop of fields and farms, as well as scenes of village life. He was adept at portraying scenes in twilight and evening light.

Pymonenko was also an illustrator, teacher and portrait artist.

Pennsylvania artist James Freeman describes his work as “Magic Realist oil paintings, a combination of landscape and still life”.

Freeeman’s fascinating, often complex, compositions consist primarily of plant forms — though they often incorporate man-made objects — in which the context of our view of plants is shifted by his selection of point of view, size and arrangement of elements.

The results are a series of often other-worldly scenes in which we, as viewers, are often reduced in size and intimately close to the convoluted arrangements of forms. Freeman deftly uses color and texture to separate his hidden little worlds into planes of distance and focus.

Freeman’s website has galleries of large and small oils, along with a selection of drawings that show the careful observation of natural forms on which his more imaginative work is founded.

Freeman also maintains a blog on which you can find additional images, works in progress, process sequences and more. He has also published a Blurb book collecting images of some of his work.

[Via Artist a Day]