Sam Liberman has been painting colorful art work for over 35 years. He now works primarily with pastels, while also fashioning a number of oils each year and drawing on an almost daily basis.
His work is primarily landscapes, including seascapes, skies, mountains, flowers, swamps, architecture and almost any outdoor setting you can imagine. In the past two years has also been painting figures on a regular basis.
His art education began in a class with Sheldon Helfman, and he has studied pastels with many excellent teachers, including Doug Dawson, Albert Handell, Colleen Howe and many others.
His work is hard to categorize. His paintings portray recognizable realistic subject matter even in those that lean slightly toward the abstract. The most unusual characteristic of his work is his use of color. He often, if not always, departs from the realistic format in arranging color to express his feelings about the subject matter rather than to reproduce the actual color that he sees. He also uses color to develop the structure of the picture. The contrast in the painting is often more warm/cool than it is light/dark.
He states, “I am more interested in the interaction of the colors than duplication of anything I see. While I don’t try to personify colors in a symbolic way, I sometimes think of them as similar to skilled dancers or athletes, and once I have gotten into the painting I try to just let them perform, relying mostly on my instincts, experience or other unconscious sources.”
“I seldom copy any of the artists I admire most, such as Payne, Van Gogh, Degas, Rose, M. Wachtel and Bonnard to mention just a few, but once in a while I seem to see some things in my work that I have learned in viewing the works of others. My work contains a little of expressionism, color field, post-impressionism and other identifiable movements, but I enjoy many others art movements, such as art nouveau and fauvism. I would have to admit the most of the painting I love most was done between 1825 and 1950”
Sam’s work has been exhibited in over 50 competitive national and international art exhibitions. In June, 2009 he had a one person exhibition at The Butler Institute of American Arts, probably the top national venue for pastel artists in this country.
What people seem to like about his work is its freshness and simplicity; although sometimes you will find some things in each painting which you may not notice until after you have looked at it for a while. His work is intended to encourage your imagination as well as his own. It is suggestive and open. In other words, he wants to show you a path and let it take you wherever you wish to go.
