In its seven years of existence, Instagram has become so much more than your go-to way of stalking exes/potential dates. We kid, but seriously, the social media platform is not only a way to catch up on the daily avocado toasts, #OOTDs, vacation photos and selfies snapped by your friends and family—it’s also a legitimate place for artists to share their work. Whether it be digital or analog photography, graffiti, watercolor painting, daily doodles or animation, creatives have taken to the app as a portfolio of sorts. And beyond capturing their completed works, some artists on Instagram use the medium as a place to also feature works-in-progress, inspiration or other imagery that helps them tell the complete story of their aesthetic. If you’re looking for a little inspo yourself, we rounded up a few talented folks to follow now.
7 Insanely Talented Artists That Are Blowing Up On Instagram
Dallas Clayton
Cool moms may know Clayton as the writer and illustrator of sweet yet poignant children's books, but he's also a sneaky street artist, scribbling thoughtful text and whimsical characters on inanimate—often discarded—objects throughout Los Angeles and creating murals in unexpected locations.
Carly Kuhn
Carly, who adorably 'grams under the pseudonym The Cartorialist, features daily doodles, abstract line drawings, watercolors and murals in and out of some seriously stylish venues around LA, but it's her gestural interpretations of fashion from red carpets, runways and magazines that we're most obsessed with on her feed.
Allison Kunath
We love the soothing, landscape-inspired abstract watercolors of this nomadic line painter—and the photos of some of the natural wonders that influenced them: canyons, cloudy skies and frothy shorelines among some of the sights. Kunath takes us on her journeys, then shows us the art that resulted from them.
Amelia Giller
Sometimes you'll LOL and sometimes you'll shed a tear scrolling through the short animated works and illustrations of LA artist Amelia Giller, who among other credits created imagery for Teen Vogue's series "Ask A Sex Educator" and whose nudie pins earned her a cult following.
Maude White
This Hudson Valley artist's incredibly intricate cut paper work immediately impresses on a technical level, but her legion of followers likely became fans because the nature-inspired pieces are also breathtakingly beautiful in a poetic, ethereal kind of way.
Sinziana Velicescu
The way this LA-based photographer captures her city's scenes—composed almost like abstract paintings in their primary focus on shapes and colors—completely nails the spirit of the place, though through a totally specific lens.
Brooke Rothshank
The Indiana-based painter often shows small, inanimate objects (a penny, a kibble of cat food) next to her itty-bitty miniature works for scale. The detail alone is pretty mind blowing but we especially love seeing Rothshank depict images from our childhood, like Lisa Frank unicorns and '90s toys.
