I'm just wondering.. what keeps several artists (not necessarily on this site) from using larger resolutions when working with computer graphics?
I've seen amazing wallpapers that were made in very small resolutions that would look awesome, had people still been using 14" monitors.. Personally, I haven't seen it as a challenge to make my pictures in ATLEAST 1024x768, especially with Photoshop, which scales the picture to fit your screen resolution.

it may be because most of the artists are 'purists', in that they don't want to change the resolution of their art after completion. when the computer resizes the image to refit, it usually turns out at least mildly pixelated, etc. it may not even be noticed by the observer, but to the person who created it, its totally intolerable. especially after an excruciatingly long render time.

or, it could be due to something i have no clue about... ya just never know! :)

I'd say that it's usually because their monitors run at a low resolution. It's difficult to make a 1600x1200 image when you can only see 1/4th of it at a time. That's why most of my images are at 1280x1024, that's the res that my 19" monitor looks best at.