Brian Rutenberg: The Wild South

Before I learned to paint, I practiced drawing live oak trees in the South Carolina Lowcountry. I am still practicing. My ritual is simple. I sit in the buggy grass and copy what's in front of me. I don't make anything up. There is no symbolism in a tree; a branch is a branch, and a leaf is a leaf. What you see is what's there. What's there is what matters. Rubbing a No. 5B pencil on cream paper catapults me seven hundred and seventy-seven miles from the cut-throat New York art world. There is no anxiety of influence, formalist dialectic, or theoretical constructs, just clear and present information: me, a tree, and bugs. As my teacher William Halsey at the College of Charleston advised, "You have to see the obvious thing before you can see the superhuman thing."
A painting isn't created; it's made.   
-Brian Rutenberg

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, October 24
6-8pm

COFFEE & CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTIST
Saturday, October 25
11am