BRUCE LIEBERMAN

Statement-

The last several years has found me working on location half the time and in my studio the other half . Inventing and working from small paintings to increase the scale and other things... In the studio, it is always a struggle to capture the same qualities that exists in the paintings that are done on the spot. The studio is a chance to explore and evaluate the relationships that emerged.It is a chance to reassess and invent while still trying to maintain the freedom, that sense of place - the feeling of the moment .

Working from observation and being in nature and has always been essential. Nature supplies all the answers for me. My teachers were Hoffmann/realists, and those open to or effected by the ideas. One notion is that the lessons learned from Art itself – the abstraction in painting, the history of art, and everything else around us, is a recourse for making paintings, even realism, including. My training was eclectic, based around the ability to find and use the “opportunities” that exist in nature to make paintings - the rhythms and relationships. All the formal aspects of painting- coupled with the elevation of the actual “act” itself  - the process of painting as a spiritual event. One cannot exist without the other. From this the elevation of the gesture coupled with versions of strict observation.

I try to get my students to think, work, grow and act like artists. Each one is different with different visions and problems. I struggle endlessly to get them to address these things and become real artists - at least for this short moment in their life. Some do it kicking and screaming but some do it with panache .

I hope their paddle out is honest and sound artistically.. and most of all fun.