Like Matisse, contemporary American painter Elizabeth Peyton paints her friends. Her intimate works draw viewers in, inviting them to step into her jewel-toned world. In works like Nick Reading Moby Dick, above, Peyton uses vibrant colors to illustrate intimate scenes from daily life.
Born in Connecticut, Peyton began making portraits when she was a child. She studied art in college and now lives and works in New York and Berlin. The artist got her start by making whimsical paintings of famous figures like royalty and rock stars. Eventually her focus shifted. “It wasn’t conscious,” Peyton explains. “I was beginning to get a lot more interested in the things that were right in front of me and the people I knew.”