
Ranch Roads & Daisies
By Darcie Peet
Located in Colorado Springs, CO
Original oil painting on linen by artist Darcie Peet. Framed
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Paintings
Linen, Oil
21st Century
Joseph McGurl is one of today's most celebrated American realist painters. The Art Renewal Center has designated him as a living master, and it's not hard to see why. With their strikingly reflective water surfaces and blue skies streaked with warm oranges and yellow-reds, McGurl's figurative paintings and landscape paintings resemble photographs of serene places captured in the best possible natural light.
McGurl's first and most influential teacher was his father, James McGurl, who worked as a muralist. As a young man, Joseph attended the Massachusetts College of Art and earned a dual degree in painting and education. He then spent time studying at Fenway Studios and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in addition to studying in Italy and England. A stint on a yacht also inspired a love for painting the natural world.
For its interplay of light and color, McGurl's distinctive, hyperreal style is often likened to the American luminists, a 19th-century movement linked to the Hudson River School. McGurl is a plein air painter — he works exclusively in the great outdoors as opposed to working from photographs within the confines of a studio. His atmospheric landscapes are mainly of areas in New England and the eastern United States.
McGurl is a member of the Plein Air Painters of America and the Guild of Boston Artists. His work is held in the Forbes Collection, the Mellon Collection, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Cahoon Museum of American Art. He has also earned numerous awards, including the Art Renewal Center’s International Salon First Place in Landscape and the Guild of Boston Artists Gold Medallion. In 2020, Cavalier Galleries in New York City was home to an exhibition called "Joseph McGurl — Contemporary American Luminism: Journey through Time and Space."
On 1stDibs, find original Joseph McGurl paintings.

Near Wagon Mound, NM - Realistic Landscape Oil Painting
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
Aeling’s fascination with meteorology is unmistakable in this dramatic skyscape. Since his earliest years in the West, he has been captivated by weather’s capacity to alter the emotional temperature of a landscape. In this painting, the low, turbulent cloudbank reveals his deep knowledge of sky structures—an understanding informed by both scientific observation and personal experience. The luminous blue patches above suggest hope breaking through uncertainty, a recurring theme in his atmospheric work. Jeff Aeling Near Wagon Mound, NM Oil on panel 10h x 14w in 25.40h x 35.56w cm JAE055 Jeff Aeling (1958–2025): The Sky Remembers Through Jeff Aeling’s eyes, the landscape becomes a world shaped as much by air as by earth. In works such as North of Las Vegas, NM and Pond Near St. Cloud, MN, he balances the quiet structure of plains and wetlands with skies alive in constant motion. His mastery of atmosphere is unmistakable in Light Pillars (2023) and Light Pillar (2023), where rare optical events turn night into architecture. Even intimate scenes like Crabapple, Dogwoods, and Red Bud find their emotional power under skies that lend the land its shifting character. Aeling’s winters in Hawaii deepened his sensitivity to movement and weather. Surfing taught him to read the rhythm of the ocean, a knowledge reflected in Wave, Kauai (2018), where a breaking wave becomes a luminous wall of force. In Volcano (2023), he channels the islands’ elemental drama, linking fire, vapor, and sky through the same atmospheric vocabulary found in his plains paintings...
Oil, Panel

Valley South of Junction City, Kansas - Realistic Landscape Oil Painting
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
Aeling frequently depicts landscapes at moments when atmosphere dominates the ground, a fascination born from his time living in the West, where storms roll in across unbroken horizo...
Oil, Panel

After Rain, Oil Painting
By Nikolay Rizhankov
Located in San Francisco, CA
Artist Comments
Colorado summer evening. A man walks his dog as storm clouds clear overhead. Warm light from the left reflects off of the many wet surfaces. Classical realism...
Oil

"Far Away, " Oil Painting
By Joseph McGurl
Located in Denver, CO
Joseph McGurl's "Far Away" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a vast landscape of valleys and mountains in the distance under the orange and yellow glow of sunrise or...
Oil, Panel

"O Precious Thought" by Michael Magrin, Oil Painting, CO Landscape
By Michael Magrin
Located in Denver, CO
Michael Magrin's ( US based) "O Precious Thought" is an original, handmade oil painting of a vast sky above the plains. This piece is framed in a natural float frame and is ready to ...
Linen, Oil
"On the Horizon" (2025) Oil Painting, Colorado Landscape
By Michael Magrin
Located in Denver, CO
Michael Magrin's ( US based) "On the Horizon" is an original, handmade oil painting of a sunset above Colorado plains. This piece is framed in a "barn wood" frame and is ready to han...
Linen, Oil, Wood Panel