Chicago Impressionism is a new genre that is influenced and inspired by the impressionist paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Painters who study the Impressionist paintings themselves, studying the actual paintings housed in the museum in Chicago, as opposed to formal art school training, have been inspired to create Art with an Impressionistic influence. This body of Art is similar to the Paris based Impressionist movement in that the painter paints a subject of his or her own choice, not as dictated by a King’s Commission or Vatican Living Allowance. The painter decides what to paint and when.

As with the controversial Impressionists of mid 19th Century Paris, the Chicago Impressionists use visible brushstrokes, open composition with emphasis on light and its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter and unusual visual angles. Chicago Impressionism of the New Millennium is a bit different from mid 19th century Impressionists in that Chicago Impressionism embraces pop culture subject matter and emphasizes Art as communication of ideas about society of the 21st Century.