5 Paintings We Are Absolutely Loving This Week
At Arts to Hearts Project, we see a lot of art. Every day, we come across work from artists around the world, in every style, medium, and form you can imagine. There is always something new to discover, and while we appreciate so much of what we see, every now and then, a few pieces make us stop and look a little longer.
Sometimes it is a colour that catches us. Sometimes it is a feeling, an idea, or a tiny detail we keep noticing. And sometimes, we just cannot quite explain why a piece stays with us. We only know that it does.
This week, we came across five works that did exactly that. They are very different from one another, but each one caught our attention in its own way and made us want to share it beyond the first moment we saw it.
So, here are the five artists who made it onto our Heart list this week. No big theme, no ranking just five paintings we genuinely loved and felt deserved a little more time and attention. We hope you enjoy discovering them, and maybe one of them will catch you the way it caught us.
01. Peering Out To See What’s Truly There’ by Paulos @the.kind.artist
The first artwork on our heart list this week is Peering Out To See What’s Truly There by Paulos and the title tells you exactly what is happening on the canvas. A single enormous eye fills the frame, and where the lower lid should sit, a hand reaches in to peel it back through that opening a second eye peers out, watching, searching, looking past the surface of things. Painted in acrylic, the whole scene is wrapped in swirling warm browns and terracotta’s that give it a sense of movement, of something spinning and pulling inward all at once. It is surreal in the most precise sense taking the most familiar thing in the world, the human eye, and making it feel fundamentally strange.
Paulos is an artist based in Kitchener–Waterloo, Canada, working in surreal, often dark territory across graphite, pen, charcoal, acrylic and watercolour and every piece on their page carries this same quality of psychological depth hidden inside technical precision. No AI, just an original mind and complete mastery of the medium.
Give them a follow and see everything they have been creating this is an artist worth watching closely.
02. Narrow Escape: At the Water, My Reflection Again by Alexandria Couch @cosmocouch
Next on our heartlist is Narrow Escape: At the Water, My Reflection Again by Alexandria Couch and the more you learn about how it is made, the more extraordinary it becomes. Two figures stand with their backs half-turned to each other, hands held in the middle, their braids climbing up and knotting together under a big pale moon.
Look lower and the two of them melt into a single reflection sinking down into the water. Which one is real? You cannot tell and that is kind of the whole point. There is a red thread running down into the sea, soft clouds drifting across the sky, and a little row of numbers tucked into the corner that is easy to miss the first time.
Then you find out how it is actually made, and it gets even better. Barely any of this is just paint. The clouds are fabric, sewn on. The clothes are cut from an old childhood pillowcase and monoprinted cloth. The red thread is real embroidery, and the whole thing sits on a found quilt. Even the title is hiding in there those numbers come from a dream-number system where the number for water reads as narrow escape. She literally stitched the meaning into the surface.
Alexandria was born in 1998, did her BFA in printmaking and painting at the University of Akron, then her MFA at Yale in 2023, and is now represented by RHODES Contemporary Art in London. Her work lives in this dreamlike, shapeshifting space stitched together out of textiles found materials and memory.
Give her a follow and sit with the rest of her work — there is really nothing else out there like it.
03. Sahne Arkası | Bir Akşam Yemeği byYaren Manas @yarenmanas.art
Sahne Arkası | Bir Akşam Yemeği by Yaren Manas is our third pick this week — a dinner table full of jesters that somehow feels more human than any realistic painting has a right to. Six figures in the costumes of Commedia dell’arte Pierrot, Harlequin, court jesters in deep reds, blues, golds and purple, gathered around a table set with goblets and a bottle, each one caught in a different gesture, a different conversation, a different inner world.
Yaren posted this alongside a caption that translates simply as nobody remembers the first bite, but everyone knows how they left the table. And suddenly the whole painting shifts. This is not just a dinner. This is something that has already gone wrong or is about to.
Yaren is a Turkish painter whose figurative work draws deeply from art history from the drama of the Old Masters, from the theatrical tradition of European painting and reinterprets it with a contemporary eye that is entirely her own. The palette is sumptuous, the figures elongated and slightly stylised, the whole scene suspended between performance and truth.
Give her a follow and keep an eye on what she creates next.
04. There’s Light Yet by Samson Adetunji @samson_adetunjii
The fourth artwork on our heart list this week is There’s Light Yet by Samson Adetunji and it is deeply human, powerful, and the kind of painting that does not let you go easily. A young woman in a flowing white gown turns back toward you over her shoulder, an open landscape stretching out behind her, broad green banana leaves pressing in from one side, dried stalks on the other, and a sunset sky blazing in deep oranges and reds above it all. There is a quiet power in her expression composed, direct, entirely self-possessed and the way Samson frames her against all that warmth feels deliberate and meaningful. Painted in acrylic, the skin is rendered with extraordinary care, the gown luminous, the whole canvas glowing from within.
That title means more once you know what Samson wrote alongside it. He has been noticing how many people his age say they are tired not in the body, but somewhere deeper. One of them told him, “I’m still young, but I feel like I don’t have a lot of time,” and Samson said he understood him completely. So, this is his reply: the woman is not turning away from the light, she is turning toward it. There is real exhaustion in this painting, but there is hope in it too and that is what makes it stay with you.
Samson was born in 2001 in Osun State, Nigeria, and graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University with a degree in Fine and Applied Arts. At just 24 he is already one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Nigerian figurative painting working in acrylic, oil and charcoal to explore empathy, memory and human connection.
Give him a follow and see everything he has been creating this is an artist whose trajectory is worth watching closely.
05. Flower Yokai by Stefan Stoikov @stef.stoikov
Closing out our heart list this week is Flower Yokai by Stefan Stoikov — dark, lyrical, and the kind of piece that makes you feel as though you have stumbled into someone else’s most private moment. A pale, luminous figure in a long white dress rises from a field of wildflowers, her long dark hair falling forward across her face, her form dissolving at the edges into the blooms around her. Above her, bare dark branches spread across a deep blue night sky like ink. The whole painting hovers between the ethereal and the earthly, between grace and grief, between a fairy tale and something far more personal.
Stefan is an artist based in Ukraine whose figurative paintings carry this particular quality of atmosphere dark, lyrical, deeply felt. His work draws from symbolism and romanticism, painted in oil with loose, expressive brushwork in the flowers and landscape while keeping the central figure almost ghostly in its pallor and stillness.
Give him a follow and see everything he has been making his world is unlike anything else out there.
We started this editorial because we believe art deserves more than just a scroll. More than a quick double tap before you move on to the next thing. Some artwork stays with you, and we want to give those artists a little more space to be seen.
These five artists made something that caught our attention this week. If any of their work moved you, go tell them. Leave a comment, share their work, or give them a follow. It might feel like a small thing to you, but for an artist, that little bit of support can mean so much.
And one more thing this one is especially for the women artists.
Art and Woman: Edition 4 by Arts to Hearts Project is now open for submissions. This publication has always been about more than the artwork itself. It is about the women behind the work their stories, their journeys, their experiences, and all the things that shape what they create.
After three editions and more than 300 women artists featured from around the world, we are now opening Edition 4 to women and womxn artists globally. All mediums and backgrounds are welcome.
If you have been thinking about sharing your work with us, this is your invitation. Submissions are open until August 30, 2026.
