I’m an artist who works from life. I have been making art for over forty years. I use oil paints. I choose my subject matter for its visual appeal, for how my eye moves across the surface and how all the elements of the painting correspond and compliment each other creating “gestalt”.
Working from life is inevitably impressionistic. Light and colors are fleeting and details are best left to the viewer to determine. My work attempts to capture the temporal qualities of the day in the natural world.
My day job is teaching drawing and painting to high school students. I have taught art for over 40 years and it has been fulfilling to watch young artists learn skills that allow them to express themselves through visual media. My goals as a teacher are to show students how to observe and interpret the world through their own eyes, applying their own means of visualization and imagination, empowered through the traditional art skills that allow them to realize these images. I believe in teaching what I am and what I do, so that my students’ experience is never disconnected from my own. To this purpose I have always been a practicing artist, continually engaging with the act of making art as my life’s vocation and passion. The artwork shown on this site is my most recent series of paintings based on subjects near my home which have become increasingly important during this past year. The Pandemic has forced a more inward view at what surrounds me and what I value most. My paintings aim to find and discover my environment anew. Places I have long taken for granted have become new and original once again. The beauty and rhythm of shape and color in the natural and man-made world can be found through observation and imagination. These elements can be discovered and represented in compelling compositions, wherever one looks. I think of my paintings as impressions of this environment, and consequently my paintings are impressionist in style. My ultimate goal is to refine and perfect a method that seems to express most closely something that resonates within me.
Oleg Osipoff 