Looking at a painting on your wall at home, that may be a hand-painted replica of a masterpiece from the past commissioned from ArtsDot.com, your thought may drift to the origins of this rather amazing invention of a painting., Like an author of a book, or a film maker these days, you realize that an artist at some stage had spent much of his and her time to translate personal perception and feeling as an image to be painted on paper, wood, or canvas to share with his or her fellow human beings.

Looking at a painting on your wall at home, that may be a hand-painted replica of a masterpiece from the past commissioned from ArtsDot.com, your thought may drift to the origins of this rather amazing invention of a painting.

Like an author of a book, or a film maker these days, you realize that an artist at some stage had spent much of his and her time to translate personal perception and feeling as an image to be painted on paper, wood, or canvas to share with his or her fellow human beings.

Why? Because we humans, even the most reclusive ones, have an overriding need to relate and share our various experiences with other humans on this small planet of ours.

There is also an overriding need to create beauty, to share that around, and to enrich our lives with it.

Whether in literature, cinema, music or painting and drawing, these special people who devote their lives to capturing the sometimes illusive beauty are called artists, by other people, who involve their lives in other occupations.

These more sensitive souls among us are able to be composers, authors, film makers and painters, all "artists", whose talent and personal disposition make them suited to spend their lives in these creative professions.

"Someone who practices one of the fine arts, especially painting," is a definition for an artist, given by the Macquarie Dictionary , and also: "Someone who uses the skills of art in their work."

A painting then is, according to the same dictionary: "A picture or pattern, done in paint" and also "the act, art, or work, of someone who paints. 

Painted in 1661, The Art of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a famous oil on canvas work by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675).

In this large and complex painting, we can see the painter painting himself at work in his studio, a view famous by the accurate depiction of the wonderful Dutch light flooding in.

The wily Vermeer also had fun in allegorical painting, alluding to Clio, the muse of history, the double-headed eagle symbolizing the Habsburg dynasty and former rulers of Holland as well as the Catholic Church, and a rip in the map that divides Holland into north and south.

Men and women, it seems, had always painted, since they depicted in awe on the walls of their caves the sheer power of the animals they were hunting for their food.

Painters paint on stone and bark, as the Australian Aborigines and other indigenous natives do, wooden surfaces, on wet plaster, as in fresco murals of the Renaissance, on primed canvas, on cement on the modern urban footpaths and graffiti walls, and now on computer screens, using color pixels.

Natural and synthetic color pigments are collected to be suspended in egg yolk, as in tempera paints, linseed oil or acrylic plastic, as in oil and acrylic paints, and applied mostly with brushes on the surfaces chosen by the painter.

This beautiful self-portrait by Raphael (1483-1520), or Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, shows the sensitivity and the other-worldliness that we associate with artists, as defined earlier.

A painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance, this artist of genius died at a very young age of 37, but still left a large and brilliant body of paintings, filled with typical serene and harmonious qualities.

The artist was a part of a vibrant artistic tradition of Florence then spent his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome working for two Popes.

Eastern painting developed historically in parallel to Western painting. African, Islamic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese and Western art developed both independently through the centuries and also influenced one another.

In the West painting was originally a utilitarian art, commissioned for private, civic, and religious purposes. Then the aristocracy and the middle class became patrons of painters through Middle Ages, Renaissance and the modern periods.

In the 20th century, art then became only "for art's sake", purely for the purpose of visual communication, for decoration, but also increasingly as a valuable commercial product to make money for the artistic creators and also for gallery owners and private collectors. 

The Catalan painter Salvador Dali (1904-1989) knew all about the potential of painting as a means of communication as well as free and liberating self-expression, as seen in this painting Leda atomica (available as a canvas print at ArtsDot.com).

To call in by his full name and title, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol, Dali was a surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain.

A very skilled draftsman and painter, Dali was very much influenced by Renaissance masters, and used his skills to freely paint images straight from his subconscious, like a good surrealist that he was.

The flamboyant Dalí's also used film, sculpture and photography to show his fascinating visions. His grandiose eccentricity contributed to the stereotype image of Western artists.

Art has become more and more expensive and rarely available for purchase, even with all the available money in the world.

This is when ArtsDot.com can step in to help you acquire reproductions of beautiful paintings as excellent canvas prints or real hand-painted replicas, very economically.

The large archive of digital images of the treasures of Western art, from which you can choose to have reproduced as full-sized canvas prints or hand-painted oil replicas, are searchable by different historical art movements for convenience.

Art Deco Baroque  Cubism   Pointillism  Pop Art   Realism   Surréalisme  Symbolism  Symbolism. Art Nouveau   are some of the movements from you can well-loved works.