Jeff Jordan is an American painter whose favorite “ism” is surrealism.
I think that once artists learned to paint the world around them – call it ‘realism’– it was a short step to paint imaginary realities. Maybe the Greeks were the first surrealists, with all those stories about centaurs, mermaids, satyrs, and so on. Mythical creatures, visions of heaven and hell, dreams and nightmares – artists have always painted realistic images of worlds which never were. Surrealism has existed in various forms nearly as long as realism, and I consider it to be the second “ism.”
See more of his work at The Art of Jeff Jordan [NSFW].