Joel Rea
First off we have Joel Rea. He is my newest discovery. I discovered him about two years ago and I just love his work. It is photo-realistic and is surrealistic, which is the style all my favorites do and also mostly what I do.
Rea uses himself in most of the paintings he does and generally multiple versions of him doing different things in a piece. In his version of "The Last Supper" (pictured below) he is all of the people you see, except the woman of course, which is his wife.
http://www.joelrea.com.au/paintings/
M.C. Escher
Next is M.C. Escher, the master of optical illusional art as I call it. With a lot of his illustrations you don't know if you're coming or going, if you're up or down, if it's birds or fish.
I like the way he fools the eye into thinking you're seeing one thing, but then it turns into something else.
One of the works I like best of his is the "Bond Of Union", which is below. I love the way the ribbons of the heads intertwine at the top end up actually connecting.
http://www.mcescher.com/
Rene Magritte
Below is the painting that I like best from Rene Magritte. It is also the one that put him on the map for me. It is called "Time Transfixed".
I love the realism and the simplicity of the piece. As a matter of fact, that's what I like about most of Magritte's work, simplicity. Even though most are very detailed, the composition is generally simplistic.
http://www.renemagritte.org/
Roland Heyder
I have been following Roland Heyder for awhile now. The painting below is what put him on my radar. I forget exactly where I saw it, but I followed it back to Heyder's site and I check it every week to see if there's anything new.
What I like about the painting, which is titled "The Knot", is how the material clings to the woman's body giving it the look of wetness. And there's those dark, fluffy, ominous looking clouds that I absolutely love.
Where as I like the simplicity of Magritte's work, I love the detail and complexity of Heyder's.
http://www.heyland7.de/english.htm
Salvador Dali
I have mentioned in other posts that Salvador Dali is my all time favorite art creator. After all he is the guy that made me turn from wanting to be a comic book illustrator to wanting to be a surreal artist.
It is hard for me to pick one piece of artwork of his that I like best, but the one below is definitley among them. It is titled "Crucifixion". I love everything about this painting. The realism of the clothing on the woman in the foreground, which I assume is suppose to be Mary, which is modeled by Dali's wife Gala. I love the intensity of the hands and the feet. I love mood of the whole piece and I love his version of the cross.
All in all, a fantastic piece of art.
http://www.dali-gallery.com/galleries/paintings.html
There are other art creators that I like. Some are even comic book illustrators. But these are the ones that have the most influence on what I do.
