On Not Knowing Art

Berliner Straße im Sonnenschein (1920s) - Lesser Ury
(image source)

I wish I knew ways to find paintings and artists that I loved - other than looking around the same old art galleries in London.  Some bloggers (notably Mary and Jane) seem often to attend wonderful exhibitions or highlight the work of a great local artist.  I respond to paintings much more emotionally and vividly than I do to music, and yet my knowledge of art is so slight.  And it doesn't help that this strong response is really only for 19th and 20th century art, particularly interwar; I've yet to find anything older that which I really love.

Interior, The Orange Blind (c.1928) - Francis Cadell
(picture source)

I think one of the issues is that my deepest affinities, with paintings as with books, are for the middlebrow - the domestic and the rural.  And, as with literature, these are not fanfared as much as other varieties of art - and it's quite likely that I shall respond most strongly to artists who are not technically the most proficient or most significant.  It really is the same as my love for middlebrow literature - but with novels, I know what I'm doing and I know where to look.  With paintings, I just meander around a Google image search, filled with hope... it's taken me about half an hour to stumble upon these three paintings, all of which I really like.

Korhinta (1931) - Vilmos Aba-Novak
(image source)

So I'd love some suggestions of artists to investigate, galleries to visit, and exhibitions to attend.  I believe in you, my readers!  And let me know what you think of these paintings I've unearthed.  I have literally no idea whether they are world-famous or done in someone's loft.  Perhaps that is a nicely democratic way of enjoying paintings... but I've done it for long enough now.  Help!