7 Paintings We’re Absolutely Loving This Week
Painting is having a moment. Not that it ever really stopped but right now, across our community and beyond, there is something electric happening in the world of paint. Artists are doing things with canvas and colour and texture that feel both deeply rooted in tradition and completely of this moment. And spending our days inside a global community of artists at Arts to Hearts means we have a front row seat to all of it every experiment, every breakthrough, every piece that quietly rewrites what you thought was possible.
This week, seven paintings did exactly that to us. Seven pieces that came through our feed at different moments across the week and each time without fail made someone on our team stop completely. Send a screenshot. Pull it back up an hour later just to look again. The kind of paintings that are still sitting somewhere in the back of your mind days after you first saw them, asking to be thought about a little more.
We started this editorial because we believe every artwork deserves to be seen and every artist deserves to be celebrated loudly, genuinely, and without reservation. This is us doing exactly that.
Here are the seven paintings that made our jaws drop this week.
1. The Inferno Born in Familiarity by Nudcha Nuey @nu3y6
The first painting on our list and it already had us completely floored. The Inferno Born in Familiarity even the title alone does something to you before you have properly looked at the work. NudchaNuey is a Thai artist whose oil on linen paintings sit somewhere between fairy tale and nightmare, between the deeply familiar and the quietly unsettling and this piece is perhaps the most powerful example of that tension we have seen in a long time. Three figures, childlike and wide-eyed, stare outward from a world that is chaotic and strange and somehow achingly recognisable all at once.
The details in the background the creatures, the shadows, the tiny stories playing out in every corner of the canvas reward every second you spend looking closer. This piece is part of the Coming of Age exhibition currently on view in Bangkok, and it is the kind of work that makes you wish you could be there in person to stand in front of it and just take it all in. Painterly, narrative, and deeply, deeply memorable.
Go follow NudchaNuey from the link below, this is an artist you will want to watch.
2. Growing Up by Carla Petelski @carla.petelski
Next up is Growing Up by Carla Petelski and this one genuinely stopped the entire team. Carla is a Brussels-based artist whose work sits at this beautiful intersection of the human and the botanical, where emotion takes the shape of leaves and colour carries the weight of feeling. In this piece, a figure stands quietly at the centre robed in deep burgundy, covered entirely in painted foliage hands folded, expression soft and inward, as if caught in a moment of becoming.
There is something so tender and so alive about it. The way Carla builds her compositions, layering saturated botanical forms against those pale, introspective human faces, creates a tension that is both visually stunning and emotionally precise. She has collaborated with Hermès, Elle Magazine and Anthropologie, and has exhibited across Brussels, Stockholm and Paris and every single time you look at her work, you understand exactly why. This is painting that feels like it was made from the inside out.
Go discover more of Carla’s world from the link below, every piece is worth lingering over.
03. Songbirds in Spring by Maya Marija Ripley @mayamarijaripley
This one had us completely still the moment we saw it. Maya Marija Ripley is a Denmark-born contemporary painter whose heritage spans the Balkans, the American Southwest and Scandinavia and you can feel all of that richness in how she paints. She works in acrylic, and this piece Songbirds in Spring is one of the most quietly powerful things we have come across in a long time. A woman looks directly at you, steady and self-possessed, while bold graphic florals grow all around her and into her strength and renewal existing in the same breath.
Maya describes this painting as that quiet turning point, where something new begins to grow from what felt barren and still. And you feel exactly that when you look at it. The hyper-real portrait against that vivid, almost folk-art background creates a tension that is both visually stunning and emotionally true.
She has lived in Copenhagen, London and Berlin, exhibited from London to New York, and eventually chose a quieter life in the countryside closer to nature, closer to what inspires her most. That choice shows in every single painting she makes. This one is an original acrylic on canvas and is currently available through her website.
Go explore Maya’s world, you will want to see everything she has ever made.#
04. Mitos do Rio Azul By Bruno Novelli @bruno_9li
We sent this one around the team without a single word — and everyone came back with the same stunned silence. Bruno 9Li, born Bruno Novelli in Brazil in 1980, is one of the most mythological and dynamic painters working in contemporary art right now, and this piece from his Série Rio Azul is the kind of work that makes you feel like you have stumbled into an entirely different world.
The whole canvas is consumed by deep, electric blues serpentine creatures coiling through the water, fantastical beasts from some half-remembered ancient bestiary, flora and fauna tangled together in a scene that is part mythology, part rainforest, part dream you cannot shake. Bruno draws from alchemy, shamanism, Art Nouveau and the lush contradictions of Brazil, and the way it all collides in this painting is breathtaking. Shown at SP Arte Bienal, with collectors among the most respected names in the global art world this is a painter at the absolute top of his craft.
Give him a follow and go see his full body of work, it is unlike anything else out there.
5. Misty by Rachel Patrick @rachelpatrick.art
We did not expect this one to stop us the way it did. And that is maybe the best thing about it. Rachel Patrick is a self-taught gouache and oil painter from Scotland who started sharing her work during the pandemic, and in that time has built a practice that speaks entirely for itself. Known for her bold, joyful, colour-drenched still life paintings, this portrait of Misty a greyhound painted as a commission for a friend, shows a completely different and equally compelling side of her.
The long elegant face against that flat periwinkle background, the soulfulness in that single enormous eye, the quiet dignity of the whole thing it is genuinely extraordinary. Rachel herself described it as a challenge, noting she is by no means a pet portrait artist. Which somehow makes it even more remarkable.
Her originals are available through EF Gallery and she is an ambassador for Arches Papers. She is exactly the kind of artist you follow and then never unfollow.
Go follow her and see everything she has painted , her feed is genuinely one of the best things on the internet.
06. Frida by Luiza Guedes @luizaguedes.ilustra
We have seen a lot of paintings of Frida Kahlo. A lot. And then we saw this one, and something about it just landed differently. Luiza Guedes is a Brazilian visual artist and illustrator born in Minas Gerais, who studied Visual Arts at the Federal University of Uberlândia.
Her work weaves nature, the spirit world, and dreamlike storytelling together in a way that is entirely her own. This piece, painted in gouache on Arches cotton paper is described by Luiza herself as touching sacred territory. And you genuinely feel that in every mark.
The deep dark botanicals surrounding the figure, the glowing moon, the hummingbird, the monkey, the sacred heart held with such extraordinary tenderness it is Frida as a whole world, not just a portrait. Every single detail feels chosen with love. Luiza describes her work as creaciones con alma creations with soul. This painting has more soul in it than almost anything we have seen this year.
Visit her page and see her work for yourself every piece carries this same warmth and soul.
07. Firechild by Hannah Yata @hannahyata
We saved this one for last because it has honestly been living in our heads the longest. Firechild is an oil on panel painting by Hannah Yata half Japanese-American visionary artist from Georgia, BFA in painting from the University of Georgia, and one of the most singular voices in contemporary art working today.
Her paintings are symphonies. Layered, mythological, psychedelic, ecological weaving feminism, spirituality, ancient symbolism and a deep reverence for the natural world into canvases that feel like they came from somewhere just beyond the edge of reality. Firechild is all of that in one blazing, breathing image part creature, part spirit, part pure force of nature perched among orchids and hummingbirds in a world that feels both ancient and electric.
The detail will take your breath away. The feeling it produces will take the rest. Featured in Juxtapoz, Hypebeast and ArtNews, exhibited at Art Basel Miami Hannah Yata is an artist whose work you feel before you fully understand it. A spark, a flame, a dance, a revolution. Her words. Every single one of them true.
Follow her and see what she has been working on her world is vast and every corner of it is worth exploring.
That is our heartlist for this week. Seven paintings, seven artists, seven reasons we are so grateful to be part of a world where people make things like this.
If any of these pieces moved, you go show these artists some love. Follow them, share their work, leave a comment that actually means something. Because behind every painting is a real person who showed up and made something and that deserves to be seen and celebrated.
Oh, and we almost forgot actually no, we did not forget, we saved this for last on purpose. The 101 Art Book: Colors Edition open call is live right now, and submissions close on 5th June 2026. This is the twelfth edition of our 101 Art Book Project a series that since 2023 has featured over 1,000 artists from across the world in beautifully designed, theme-based hardcover books distributed globally through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Arts to Hearts Project Shop.
This edition is all about colour. The emotional weight of it, the symbolism, the way it shifts mood and meaning bold and vibrant or soft and muted, abstract or narrative, minimalist or experimental. However colour shows up in your work, this is your space to explore it.
101 artists will be selected. Each one published, recognized, and added to a growing global creative archive that exists to give artists exactly the kind of visibility their work deserves. Open to all artists aged 18 and above, from every country, every medium, every background.
If you have been thinking about submitting stop thinking and just do it. The deadline is 5th June 2026 and we would genuinely love to see your work in this one.
