>>4113514looking at paintings helps you understand composition and color theory. the painters that have influenced me most are - anyone from the hudson river school (thomas cole, john frederick kensett,rederic edwin church) andrew wyeth, edward hopper, hiroshi nagai, mark rothko, claude monet. it helps to look at paintings that look like pictures you want to make, and work that is extremely opposite. if you can, track down a copy of monet's garden at giverny (museum made book, not random trash from amazon) and a copy of stephen shore's book of the same name - there's a lot of interesting and direct comparisons to be made between paintings and photographs in those books.
