5 paintings on our Heart list this week

At Arts to Hearts Project, we built this community around a belief we come back to every single week that every artist who creates and shares their work with the world deserves to be truly seen. Not just liked. Not just scrolled past. Actually seen, felt, and celebrated.

Every week, we discover hundreds of incredible artworks from artists across the globe. Most of them make us pause for a moment before we move on there’s always more to see, another artist to discover, another story waiting to unfold. But every now and then, a handful of pieces refuse to leave us. They’re the ones we keep coming back to, the ones we mention in conversations, the ones someone on the team screenshots and shares with no caption because some artworks simply speak for themselves.

That’s what our Heartlist is all about.

Every week, we bring together artworks that found us when we were not looking for them not because they are the most popular or the most talked about, but because they made us feel something, sparked a conversation, or reminded us why we love discovering artists in the first place.

This is five of those pieces. Five artworks, five artists, all of them living rent free in our heads this week. Here is our heart list.

01. Penitencia by Secreto Rebollo @secretorebollo

The first on our heart list this week is Penitencia by Secreto Rebollo and we genuinely did not know what to do with ourselves when we saw it. Penitencia shows a robed figure holding a rosary while an enormous eye replaces the head entirely, the whole scene set against a dramatic stormy sky in deep purples and burnt oranges. It is unsettling and beautiful and deeply loaded with meaning all at once the kind of image that you look at and immediately know you will not forget.

Secreto Rebollo is a painter and street artist based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, part of the Eyos Crew collective, whose work sits at the intersection of surrealism, spirituality and raw personal honesty. His paintings draw from Catholic iconography, symbolism and the inner world making familiar religious imagery and pushing it into territory that feels both ancient and completely of this moment.

There is a theatricality to his work, a sense of drama and weight, that makes every piece feel like it is carrying something far larger than its canvas size suggests.

Give him a follow and see everything he has been making his feed is unlike anything else out there.

02. Glaubensbrüder by Felix Giesen @giesenfelix

Glaubensbrüder by Felix Giesen is our second pick this week and it is one of those paintings that gets more unsettling the longer you look at it. Multiple figures seem to emerge from and dissolve into each other, their faces partially formed, skin taking on a waxy, melted quality, all compressed into a small 30 by 40-centimetre panel of oil and UV print on wood. The title translates to Brothers in Faith and that context adds an entirely new layer to what you are already feeling looking at it.

Felix is a German artist currently studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Ellen Gallagher one of the most respected contemporary art institutions in the world and his practice sits at the intersection of painting, digital processes and material experimentation. He has shown at ART Düsseldorf, exhibited in Berlin, and participated in multiple Rundgang exhibitions at the Akademie. He is early in his career and already making work this unsettling and this original.

Give him a follow and see everything he has been working on this is an artist right at the beginning of something significant.

03. The Ocean of Warmth by Ivan Pokidyshev @pokidyshev_art

Third on our heart list this week is The Ocean of Warmth by Ivan Pokidyshev and the moment you understand what you are looking at, everything about this painting becomes even more extraordinary. A figure sits at the edge of a glowing golden shore, the entire canvas bathed in this luminous amber warmth that seems to radiate from within the scene rather than from any external light source.

That is because it does. Ivan is a Saint Petersburg based painter born in 1993, trained at the prestigious Repin Academy of Arts, whose entire practice is built around thermography the science of infrared radiation, where warmer objects appear to glow from the inside out. He translates that principle into oil on canvas, building compositions around two opposing forces the inner glow that illuminates a person from within and the dark emptiness that surrounds them. In 2022, amid global upheaval, his work shifted from darkness toward light, warmth, love and hope and this painting is a perfect expression of that shift.

Give him a follow and spend time with his full body of work it is unlike anything else out there.

04. Out of Frame Frenzy by Kra_Chok @kra_chok

Next up on this week’s Heart list is Out of Frame Frenzy by Kra Chok and this one is pure, unapologetic joy. A towering 180 by 120-centimetre oil painting, it’s absolutely packed with cartoon-like creatures in every colour imaginable teal, pink, orange, brown, white all tumbling over one another, spilling out of a painted frame within the frame, bursting with energy, personality, and a kind of playful chaos that is genuinely infectious.

There is real technical skill hiding inside all that exuberance too, the rendering of each individual character, the layering of colour, and the way the composition holds together despite how much is happening. That combination of genuine craft and complete fun is exactly what makes it so compelling.

Kra_Chok is a contemporary artist whose work sits at the intersection of fine art and pop culture, bringing the language of cartoons and animation into large-scale oil painting with complete conviction. Every character on this canvas has a distinct personality, a distinct presence, and together they create a work that feels like a celebration of pure creative energy.

Give Kra Chok a follow and explore everything they’ve been working on their feed is genuinely one of the most joyful corners of the internet right now.

05. Marble Me by Hikuma Akari @hikuma.akari.01

And the last one on our heart list this week is Marble Me by Hikuma Akari and it is the kind of painting that makes you look twice and then a third time. A figure holds their own face in their hands, and where the forehead should be, the skin has given way to something organic and flowing marble-like forms, visceral and strange, as if the interior of the mind is literally surfacing through the skull. It is unsettling in the most compelling way.

Oil on canvas, shown as part of a group exhibition in Japan, and carrying the kind of psychological weight that stays with you long after you have scrolled on.

Hikuma Akari is a Japanese artist whose work sits at the intersection of figuration and surrealism the human body as something that can be peeled back, transformed, made strange. There is a precision to her painting, a careful realism in the face and hands that makes the surreal element hit even harder by contrast. This is exactly the kind of work that reminds you how much is still possible with oil paint and an original mind.

Give her a follow and see everything she has been making this is an artist worth watching closely.

That is our heartlist for this week. Five artworks, five artists, and five reminders that great art comes from everywhere and looks like nothing else. Go find these artists, follow them, let their work find you properly.

One last thing Art and Woman Edition 4 by Arts to Hearts Project is open for submissions right now, and we would love for you to be part of it. This is a globally distributed coffee table book dedicated entirely to celebrating women artists and the stories behind their creative journeys.

One hundred women artists, one beautifully produced volume, reaching collectors, curators and art lovers around the world. Open to women artists of all mediums, all backgrounds, all countries. Your story deserves to be in this.