Erik Weisenburger (1968-2023)
Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland
September 1 - 30, 2023
ERIK WEISENBURGER paints the natural world as a place of mystery and beauty. His precisely crafted images resonate with intricate detail and a sense of wonder, reflecting his interests in folk tales, myths, and history. His exquisitely rendered scenes are created using a painting method developed by the early Northern European masters that imparts an internal glow to the finished compositions. After preparing a wood panel with layers of gesso and sanding it smooth, the subject is sketched in, and the image is built up through multiple layers of thinned oil paint and varnish to achieve a satiny, lustrous finish. Erik Weisenburger has said this method "best allows me to explore and interpret the mingling of memories, monuments, permanence, and impermanence." A recent painting, Red Shirt, is a pastel-hued landscape, sparsely populated by bare-limbed trees and tiny conifers. A hush falls over the vast space, the only human presence appearing in the lone cabin with laundry on the line. In Erik Weisenburger’s painted world, nature persists in its timeless splendor.
Erik Weisenburger (1968-2023) spent many years living and working in Chicago before moving to South Portland, Maine, in 2005. He studied at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and earned his BFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work is in the permanent collections of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Racine Art Museum, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Perimeter Gallery, Chicago; Dean Jensen Gallery, Milwaukee; the Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan; the Wright Museum of Art at Beloit College, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland.
The planned exhibition of Erik Weisenburger’s work, organized in collaboration with the artist, opened as scheduled at Dowling Walsh Gallery with the support of his family as a tribute to his life and work.
