16 Special Artists To Follow on Instagram in 2020

Instagram has clearly proven itself to be the best platform for visual artists due to its concise, image-laden format. As a curator, it’s my research tool of choice! Here’s a starter list of artists to follow on Instagram in 2020. 

What used to be longtail keyword deep dives into the 5th, 6th, and sometimes even 17th pages of Google is now a shovel in the form of a hashtag. I’ll set 30 minutes aside and just launch into Instagram to find, say, a bunch of artists in a particular city, or who work in a specific medium.

Aside from the curator tricks, the results these hashtag excavations have produced are fantastic, providing endless fuel for discovery, whether the focus is art prints, murals, oil paintings, installations, gallery shows, releases, or timely collaborations.

This list of artists to follow on Instagram could easily be much longer, but then again, now we have a fun challenge for next year.

NEW YORK CITY , USA – JULY 07, 2015: Mural art Liberty by Tristan Eaton in Little Italy. Eaton painted a massive Statue of Liberty portrait on Mulberry Street on the side of Cha Cha’s Cafe and Bar via 123RF.com

1. @tristaneaton

Tristan’s work has taken Instagram and the entire USA by storm over the past few years. He has various murals in NYC, including a few in Little Italy that are stunning. One mural is over a parking lot and a smaller one that has been photographed and posted a ton on Insta, outside an Italian restaurant. His style is graphic, colorful, bold, and the perfect vibrant interlude to an urban walkabout. Being an LA-guy, you’ll also find plenty of his work in DTLA as well.

2. @VHILS

VHILS is an enigma, a maker at heart who creates wild textural installations and prints that depict faces & characters, while feeling like a sneaky yet insanely involved way to work. His massive installation at Wynwood Walls in Miami for Art Basel Miami Beach 2020, was an incredible undertaking, and the prints shown inside Basel were among the standouts in a crowded fair field.

3. @stormprintcity

If it’s a new approach to printmaking, we’re into it! Hell, we love old techniques too! Russel Muits aka Storm Print City has been travelling the world using manhole covers as aids in relief printmaking. He rolls up to a cover, paints it, lays a canvas over it and memorializes these artful pieces of everyday life.

4. @lizzie.gill.art

We featured Lizzie on the blog waaaaaaaay back in the day, before IPMM was a nonprofit! We recently reconnected with her and were reminded how classic, clean, and iconic her collage work truly is. Somehow existing between design and surrealism, her restraint is notable and quite frankly, exquisite.

5. @tubsz_illa

With an incredible hand-lettered font style, his work is script gone for a walk. It feels like you’re witnessing the lineage of cave drawings and the evolution of human communication through his murals, all at once offering ease in it’s calculated application. 

6. @theperceptionofpurity

This is an incredible project that proves how art is one of the most moving vehicles for conveying hidden truths. The Perception of Purity is “a collaborative project that captures genuine moments and emotions of Black families, musicians, artists, etc.” The photography featured feels like a series that should definitely be added to the IPaintMyMind Permanent Collection.

7. @nick_tez

Playing with pattern, color, depth, and our ability to see and perceive, this muralist and designer plays with space in a way that draws you in and spits you out. Labyrinthian in its essence, you’ll find your brain pretzeling as you allow your eye to follow and move via the clean lines.

8. @sonnenzimmer

Dear friends of IPaintMyMind with art prints in our permanent collection, Nick and Nadine of Sonnenzimmer are an amazing testament to creativity, craft, and an intellectual agility that can’t help but push them forward to create work you haven’t seen before. A nonprofit, a husband and wife duo, and two individuals who are both brilliant & wise. You need to know about them.

9. @kaws

Also known as Kaws One or Brian Donnelly, the Kaws world is about vinyl, figures, murals, paint and everything in between. Playful, and rising on the back of vinyl-figuring culture as it relates to pop art, Kaws is a great follow, and is emblematic of the way the street has bled into the gallery over the last 40+ years.

10. @winterbureau

Veronica Corzo-Duchardt is another artist represented in the IPMM Permanent Collection, and a great person as well. Her photographic screenprints are unique, microcosmic yet clean, simple yet satisfying. She uses photos to create prints that are a testament to hybrids, the beauty of screenprinting, and the elevated results that come from their co-mingling.

11. @tumpinamba

We met in Miami Beach during Art Basel while waiting for the bathroom at a local cafe. Psychedelic, free, global, and multi-modal, Tumpinamba creates the mystic stuff more people should be open to.

12. @efdot

Eric Friedensohn is an up-and-coming designer and muralist whose hand-drawn designs tap into something eternal – the way finding our style comes from many thousands of strokes of the pen. Clearly at home in his style and aesthetic, there’s just something natural about his work that reminds of Picasso with the playful hallucinogenic fun of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

13. @vidhyan

A talented illustrator and frequent contributor to the New York Times, we’re proud to call Vidhya a dear friend who thankfully, is getting the opportunities she deserves. HQ’d in NYC and grinding out iconic projects in her inimitable style, it’s her accessible aesthetic that opens the doors to art in ways Durer never could. 

14. @amirhfallah

Amir was the Founder of Beautiful Decay, and was my editor back in the day! He has enjoyed a successful fine art career creating bold pieces that combine culture, heritage, color and perspective to reveal everything except but the face. He seems joyful when playing with our attention, creepily inviting us to look a bit longer, as if the face will reveal itself from behind a delicate, textural, radiant tapestry.

15. @oriolmassaguer

Hailing from Barcelona, and it feels like it. Color and contour are clearly his friends, using both expertly to create everything from letters to expressionistic pieces that feel mid-century while providing a palettable entrance into projects, pieces, and installations that inhabit a wide range. An artist who thinks conceptually, Oriol’s process of translating into art is a lot of fun to keep up with.

via CBS News

16. @project_backboard

An incredible way to think about the intersection of art and community development, Project Backboard is a beacon of innovation and hope. Turning distressed urban basketball courts into canvases that brighten and invite, it’s solutions like these that require creative minds, and we’re so glad it exists.

We hope you enjoyed this list of groundbreaking artists to follow on Instagram in 2020. At IPMM, we believe that uplifting and supporting artists is crucial. If you are an artist who would like to get involved with us, check out our Artist Submissions page.