Kit Williams

I had a copy of Masquerade as a youngster, and went through a period of being fairly obsessed with it. I would say I grew out of my deeper love of Williams's style of painting, pretty much, in my 20s. Now I'd say too many of them strike me as too fussily photorealistic, too clean, too inert. It's not a style that has aged very well, I think: that whole 'Marillion album-cover' school of British art. That said, there are a few of his that strike me as both beautiful and powerful. This, for instance: a detail from Macaroon (2013), showing a fold-out element of the frame

That detail, as a complete composition, is (I think) even more lovely than the whole image; though that's pretty fine too.