Best Portrait Painter

This Chinese-born artist has been doing impressionistic oil portraits in Chicago for a dozen years. Don’t bother emailing a photo—Qian won’t paint from it. She requires at least six hours of live posing in her Bridgeport studio. “She is a master in painting the richness of the colors of the skin,” says Patric McCoy, a client and art collector on the South Side. Qian’s noncommissioned portraits sell for upward of $3,800 at Ann Nathan Gallery.