Alexander Zavarin is a painter currently living and working in Moscow.

Zavarin often works in a highly textural style, with thick paint application and physical textures contributing to the overall look and appeal of his paintings. It looks as though much is done with painting knives, but I don’t actually have any information about his process.

At times, he moves toward the non-representational, but doesn’t quite step over that line, with large rough edged shapes and blocks of color still resolving into recognizable objects. At other times, he moves toward the more straightforwardly representational, and into Tonalist territory.

His still life paintings are notable not only for their forceful use of texture, but for his application of color in a way that is similar to the atmospheric effects normally applied to landscape.

You can view the galleries on his website by category. In the “Miscellaneous category, you’ll find works that feature stylized figures and often have a narrative component; whether they were intended as illustrations, I don’t know.

I prefer to browse through by the general category of “Painting“, viewing a mix of his subjects and styles.

As much as I enjoy his use of color and texture, it’s Zavarin’s varied use of edges I find most interesting, from broken and scumbled to softly feathered, sometimes sharp and sometimes “lost”, giving his compositions an appealing sense of unity and harmony.

Originally from New York, Howard Friedland is a painter living and working in Bozeman, Montana.

In addition to finding subjects in the area where he lives, Friedland has traveled and painted across the U.S. as well as in Europe and China.

His approach is boldly painterly, his confident brush marks describing his subjects with geometric solidity while edges dissolve into atmosphere and distance.

Freidland’s subjects fall into three broad categories, landscape, still life and other subjects, including wild and domestic animals.

I particularly enjoy his compositions that are, in essence, outdoor still life, in which sunlight reveals the objects very differently than artificial lighting.

Friedland conducts workshops both in the U.S. and abroad.

Howard Friedland is married to painter Susan Blackwood, and their website is shared, as is the Jade Street Gallery site, that offers their work for sale.

Friedland is also represented by Highlands Art Gallery, and you will find some larger images of his paintings on their site than on his own, which give you a better idea of his surface quality and brush work.