These Five Oil Painters Make Us Fall in Love with Art
There are moments when a painting stops you in your tracks, not because it shouts for attention, but because it feels alive in its quietness. The five painters in this article have that rare ability to make us pause and really look. “These five oil painters make us fall in love with art” is a celebration of that seeing, of artists who find meaning not in grand gestures, but in patience, care, and curiosity.
Sarah Sedwick, Jenny Barroso, Karen Crowell, Emma Woolley, and Elena Gual each work with oil paint, yet their approaches couldn’t be more varied. Sedwick builds her paintings through calm observation; Barroso paints to listen and heal; Crowell draws on a lifetime of design and nature’s quiet details; Woolley captures the space and feeling between people; and Gual transforms her classical training into something tactile and full of presence. Together, they remind us that painting is as much about attention as it is about technique.
What ties their work together is the sense that every mark comes from looking closely at life, whether that’s a piece of fruit on a studio table or the expression on someone’s face. Through them, we learn that art doesn’t need to be loud to move us. It can whisper, linger, and stay with us long after we’ve walked away. These painters show that falling in love with art is really about slowing down, noticing what’s in front of us, and seeing how ordinary moments can quietly shine.
Sarah Sedwick @sedwickstudio
Sarah Sedwick, born in Cleveland in 1979 and now based in Eugene, Oregon, paints with a calm intensity born of years of looking closely at the world around her. After earning her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001, she devoted herself to painting from life—objects, people, light, and the space that holds them. Her work finds its strength in attention and restraint rather than spectacle.
On her Instagram, Sedwick shares glimpses of her studio table scattered with apples, glass jars, and half-finished portraits—scenes that show how she builds a painting through observation and patience. She often works in series, testing how subtle shifts in colour or composition can change the feeling of a scene. There’s a quiet rhythm in her process, a sense that every object and figure has something to say if given time.
Her exhibitions across Oregon, Ohio, and New York show a steady, thoughtful career. Whether arranging a still life for her “Colour of Light” series or painting the curve of a shoulder in a portrait, Sedwick approaches each subject with the same curiosity. As a teacher and mentor, she passes that sensibility on to students around the world, emphasising that painting is as much about paying attention as it is about rendering.
Among contemporary oil painters, Sedwick stands out for how she turns simple moments into something lasting. Her canvases remind us that the familiar—an orange peel, a shadow, a quiet face—can hold its own kind of radiance when seen with care.
Jenny Barroso @jennybarroso_art
Jenny Barroso, a South Florida–based painter, approaches her work as both creation and healing. What began as a playful curiosity with acrylics became a deeper calling in her thirties, leading her to study at the Milan Art Institute and dedicate herself to oils and mixed media. Painting, for her, isn’t just a practice—it’s a way to listen, to turn emotion into colour and experience into form.
Her canvases often unfold intuitively. She starts without a fixed plan, layering colour and texture until a rhythm appears. Galaxies, flowers, and animals drift into her compositions, each symbol a quiet nod to the natural world and to the unseen ties that connect people to it. The surfaces shimmer with movement, but at their core is stillness—a space for calm and contemplation.
Barroso’s work carries a sense of care. She paints to hold space for others, hoping her images help viewers feel recognised and encouraged to reconnect with what is most real in themselves. Her pieces don’t demand attention; they invite it, offering moments of quiet wonder.
As part of a feature on five remarkable oil painters, Jenny Barroso brings a voice rooted in empathy and transformation. Her paintings remind us that creativity can be both a mirror and a bridge—a way to heal, to grow, and to rediscover light through the act of making.
Karen Crowell @karencrowellart
Karen Crowell’s story is one of steady devotion to the act of creating. Growing up in Southern California, she was the kind of child who could lose track of time at her grandparents’ kitchen table, filling pages with colored pencils her uncle had lent her from his UCLA classes. That early fascination with drawing never left. After raising three daughters, she returned to school to study art, earning her BFA from the Art Centre College of Design in Los Angeles, where she studied under Lorser Feitelson.
Before returning to painting full-time, Karen spent years in the world of design—working at KTLA television and later as a senior art director for a commercial printer. The precision and discipline of that environment shaped her eye, and when she eventually stepped back into the studio, she brought with her a sense of balance and structure that carries through her work today.
Now based in Vista, California, Karen paints the landscapes that surround her quiet stretches of desert, the shifting light over the Pacific, and small corners of nature that often go unnoticed. Her background in both illustration and design is evident in how she organises space and light, yet her paintings retain an easy warmth that comes from years spent simply observing.
Among the five oil painters featured, Karen brings a grounded and thoughtful presence. Her work carries the calm of someone who has spent a lifetime looking closely, whether at a coastline, a cactus bloom, or the movement of shadows at the end of the day. Through her eyes, the familiar world feels freshly seen—steady, generous, and quietly alive.
Emma Woolley@emma_woolley_artist
Emma Woolley paints people in a way that feels both intimate and unguarded. Based in Birmingham, she moves effortlessly between two creative worlds: the structured logic of design and the intuitive space of painting. Her background as an art director gives her a sharp eye for composition and tone, while her time in the studio allows her to let go of rules and follow instinct. The result is work that feels alive with human presence, quiet, immediate, and full of small, truthful gestures.
Her portraits are less about likeness and more about connection. She’s interested in the moments between people, the pause, the shared silence, the space that holds feeling without words. In The Wonder Series, she painted her way through grief, using colour and form to re-learn joy. Her current body of work, The Space Between Us, turns toward others, exploring how closeness and distance shape our relationships. Each painting becomes a kind of conversation, part seen and part felt.
Emma’s studio practice is instinctive. Some pieces begin with a carefully thought-out idea, others with a photograph taken in passing. The music playing, the season outside, and her state of mind all leave their mark on the work. There’s a sense that every portrait carries both the person she paints and the quiet imprint of the moment they shared.
Among five contemporary oil painters, Emma Woolley stands out for her ability to make something tender and grounded out of ordinary connection. Her paintings don’t shout; they listen. They hold still long enough for us to notice what usually slips by the charged, fleeting space between one person and another.
Elena Gual @elenagual.art
Born in Mallorca in 1994, Elena Gual studied classical painting and drawing at the Florence Academy of Art, then furthered her practice at Central Saint Martins and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Her canvases depict women from various cultures and walks of life, using a palette-knife technique that gives her works a tactile, layered quality.
Her early training in Florence gave her a grounded understanding of drawing, anatomy and light. Later, after developing an allergy to turpentine, she abandoned brushes in favour of the impasto method—building thick surfaces with a spatula rather than delicate brushwork.
Travel has also informed her view. Encounters with women in India, Africa and Latin America broadened her gaze, leading her to portray subjects not as idealised icons but as individuals shaped by identity, geography and movement.
Her exhibitions include institutional and gallery-based solo shows in Madrid, Mexico City, London and Paris, and she has participated in major art fairs. In doing so, she has drawn the attention of both European and North American collectors and curators.
In the context of five remarkable oil painters, Elena Gual stands out for the combination of technical rigour—rooted in classical foundations—and contemporary sensibility: the way she uses surface and pigment to engage with gender, culture and representation gives her work a resonance beyond portraiture.
What stands out about these five painters isn’t just their talent, it’s the persistence behind it. Each of them has faced the quiet, often unseen struggles that come with choosing a creative life. There are the long days in the studio when nothing seems to work, the self-doubt that creeps in, and the slow, steady effort it takes to keep going anyway. Yet through all of that, they’ve each built a body of work that feels grounded and true.
Sarah Sedwick shows how patience and attention can turn the simplest scene into something lasting. Jenny Barroso paints her way through emotion, using colour to make sense of what can’t always be said. Karen Crowell’s return to painting after years in design is a story of resilience, of finding her way back to what she loves. Emma Woolley looks for connection in every portrait, translating small, unspoken moments into paint. And Elena Gual’s textured canvases carry both her classical training and the strength she found in adapting when life forced her to change her methods.
Together, their stories remind us that making art isn’t about constant inspiration; it’s about showing up, even on the uncertain days. Their journeys tell us that struggle isn’t separate from creativity; it’s part of it. Over time, through patience and the courage to keep looking, these painters have found ways to turn the challenges of life into quiet beauty. They make us see that art is not only about what’s painted, but about the persistence, care, and faith that live behind every mark.
