6 portrait artists that made it into our Heart List this week
At Arts to Hearts Project, we look at countless artworks every week. But sometimes, without planning it, a quiet pattern begins to emerge. This week, it was portraits.
Portrait after portrait appeared in our feeds from artists across the world each one entirely different in medium, style, mood, and story, yet all carrying the same magnetic pull. The kind of work that makes you stop scrolling without even realizing why.
The human face may be one of the oldest subjects in art, but it remains one of the hardest to truly capture. For centuries, artists have returned to it again and again, searching for something just beyond appearance: the heaviness behind a gaze, the softness of vulnerability, the silence of a private thought, the traces of a whole life resting inside a single expression.
And yet, these artists made it feel new all over again.
From oil and acrylic to charcoal and mixed media, from London to Lagos, New York to Saint Petersburg, each artist approached portraiture in a completely personal way. Some were shaped by years of classical training, while others built their visual language through instinct and experimentation. What connected them was not technique or style, but honesty. Every portrait carried a presence that lingered long after we looked away.
These are the portrait artists who made it into our Heart List this week.
01. Light by Naila Hazell @nailahazell
The first portrait on our heart list this week is Light by Naila Hazell, and the Rumi quote she posted alongside it lands before you have even properly looked. “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Then you look, and it makes complete sense. The face is built in a way that has no interest in natural skin tone peach and burnt orange and raw yellow and cool teal all layered together in a way that should not hold and completely does. The left eye retreats into shadow.
The right one catches a sharp blue highlight that feels lit from somewhere inside, like something shifted behind the iris while you were not paying attention. Loose everywhere except the eyes those are exact. And that gap between the controlled gaze and everything falling apart around it is the whole painting.
Naila is an Azerbaijani-born artist now based in London, working in oil and acrylic, and a winner of the RSA Lyon and Turnbull Award 2021. This particular piece was painted as a gift for a dear friend. You can feel that in it.
Give her a follow and spend time with her full body of work every painting on her page carries this same quality of feeling.
02. Pink Marshmallow by Daria Dolgareva @
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Pink Marshmallow by Daria Dolgareva is our second portrait for this week all pink fur and wide brimmed hats until you look at the face and everything shifts. A young woman barely visible above a cloud of pink, black gloved hand resting on the softness with a lavender ring catching the light. Soft and dreamy and editorial until those eyes. They are watching you back and they have been the whole time.
Daria built the entire atmosphere of this painting around pink marshmallow, the trending colour of 2024, tied to tenderness and femininity and then placed a face inside it that is neither tender nor soft.
That friction is the whole point. Daria Dolgareva is a Russian born portrait painter based in New York, classically trained and deeply influenced by the Old Masters an award winner at the ARC Annual and a finalist in the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, whose work has been exhibited at MEAM in Barcelona and the LA Art Show. Her dream, in her own words, is to turn banality into drama. This painting does exactly that.
Follow her and see everything she has been working on her feed is genuinely worth your time.
03. Staying In by Sara Gregory @saragregoryart
Third on our heart list this week is Staying in by Sara Gregory, and this one does not soften anything. A woman sits folded into herself, knees drawn up, looking directly at you in a white fur coat that is not fashion it is comfort, the thing you wear when you are not going anywhere, and you have made your peace with that.
Nothing in the face is smoothed over. The lines are there, the weight is there, the tiredness is there. Those blue eyes are the sharpest thing in the frame, and they are carrying something you cannot quite name.
Sara is a UK based portrait and figurative artist whose work explores the emotional landscape of women’s inner lives quiet, ambiguous, intense — revealing what is felt but rarely spoken. She is drawn to stillness and gaze, using body language and subtle detail to suggest narratives that are deeply personal and completely open ended.
This painting started from photographs she took during lockdown, capturing that specific feeling of nowhere to go, nothing to perform. The photo kept nagging at her until she painted it. You can feel exactly that in every mark. She has shown at the RA Summer Exhibition, the Women in Art Prize and the WIA Fair at Mall Galleries.
Give her work the time it deserves follow her and see everything she has been making.
4. Christina by Steve Caldwell @stevecldwll
Coming in at number four is this stunning close up portrait of Christina by Steve Caldwell and the more you look the more you find. Her head tilted back slightly, eyes half closed, curly brown hair loose around her face with strands caught across it. Light hitting from above, hard and direct. Strong shadows under the nose and jaw.
A small nose ring catching the light. Lips barely parted. The skin has actual texture rather than the painted idea of texture every curl rendered with a level of attention that should feel like showing off but somehow never does.
Because she is not posing. She stepped into the sun and closed her eyes and has no idea she is being studied this closely. That moment of not performing, caught inside all that technical precision, is what makes this painting stay with you long after you have looked away.
Steve Caldwell is a British artist born in 1971, trained as a medical illustrator which tells you everything about how he sees. He uses that knowledge of anatomy to create portraits with a finessed attention to tone and texture that is genuinely rare. He exhibits regularly with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Follow him and spend some time with his full body of work every portrait on his page is worth watching.
05. Daniel by Olga Guzhbina @olga__guzhbina
Fifth on our heart list this week is Daniel by Olga Guzhbina and the shift in medium is felt immediately. Everything up to this point has been oil or acrylic. This one is charcoal on toned paper, and it lands differently. A man in classical profile, facing right, long dark hair tied loosely at the back, a white shirt that begins with clear intent and dissolves into the paper before it finishes.
He is not looking at you. He does not know you are there. And that quality of being truly unobserved is exactly what makes this portrait so quietly powerful. The face is fully resolved light falling across the cheekbone and nose with complete conviction, skin with actual texture, an eye with real depth inside it. Then the shirt simply fades into loose marks and disappears. That move from precision to suggestion is centuries old and Olga pulls it off completely.
She is a Russian artist and teacher based in Saint Petersburg, working in a deeply classical tradition the kind of draughtsmanship that takes years to develop and either becomes second nature or does not. For Olga it clearly has. Her caption when she posted this was simply now I have good quality photos of my work, sometimes I will show them. No announcement. No context. Just the work, turning up when it was ready.
Give her a follow and see everything she has been making her work is well worth your time.
06. Whispers of Freedom by Gloria Olarewaju @gloriaolar
And our absolute favourite portrait this week is Whispers of Freedom by Gloria Olarewaju and the moment you see it, you understand why. A face fills almost the entire canvas, a small bird perched at the lips as if mid-whisper or mid-flight the most tender, most loaded detail in the whole painting. The hair is painted in a glorious electric blue afro, every coil rendered with obsessive care and attention, the kind of commitment you would more often see given to silk or lace.
The warm browns and ambers of the skin are built up with such patience and precision that the face feels genuinely three dimensionaldepth that never goes flat, light moving across the forehead and cheekbones in a way that feels completely alive.
Gloria Olarewaju is a Nigerian artist who takes commissions worldwide, and her portraiture has this extraordinary quality of rendering dark skin with a level of care and reverence that the history of Western painting has not always extended. This piece is already sold. Which tells you everything. It is not just technically remarkable it feels like a statement. Like a painting that knows exactly what it is saying and says it with complete conviction.
Follow her and see everything she is creating this is an artist whose work deserves every bit of attention it gets.
There is something about a painted face that nothing else in art quite replaces and these six portraits this week proved that completely. Go find these artists, follow them, tell them their work found you. It means more than you think.
And before you go the International Artist Award 2026 by Arts to Hearts Project closes in three days on June 10th. 100 artists will be selected and published in the second edition of The Great Book of Artmakers a globally distributed hardcover dedicated to documenting exceptional contemporary practice, read by collectors, curators and galleries worldwide. Open to emerging and mid-career artists everywhere.
Reviewed by a distinguished panel including jury member Sonia Borrell. Your work deserves to be in this. Three days left.
