I build and paint because I like to solve the inherent problems associated with these processes.
As a painter I create unique representations of my everyday life. For the past few years my family and the local wilderness has been my subject of choice. My passion for drawing has allowed me to push the boundaries of the creative process without losing hold of the subject.
My paintings are composed of independent layers. Each layer alters the direction of the work while preserving its history, allowing the painting to exist in a state of constant evolution. The painting drifts in between abstraction and representation, clearly born from a specific subject yet transitioning into the ethereal space only a painting can allow.
As a builder I design and make functional aesthetic objects such as storage units and work stations. These are often customized for specific locations, storage problems, and work necessities. I use basic materials such as two by fours and plywood and as much as possible, I recycle waste from the arts industry.
Over the past few years I have been combining my painting and desires to build objects. Recently I started making shapes that interact with each other. Some of these shapes are wall mounted, some are free standing. These shapes are discovered through careful observation of my subjects.
Upon these shapes are layered representations of moments I capture through photography. I layer information until the painting ignites. A painting may find its conclusion in fifteen layers or fifty layers; I work on multiple paintings at one time, each group of works I see as a single piece. The expressions themselves transcend the subject through layers of depiction, creating a sense of time and movement within a unique shape.
Artist Biography
Eric Reinemann works with his daily environments, which he can reconstruct, re-imagine, and remember in a new way on the pictorial plane. “The sense of completeness we experience in everyday seeing and observing becomes dissected,” Reinemann says when describing his process. “Visual information is filtered through the mind, coded with a color, translated into a line, and reassembled onto the surface.”
Inspired by the complexity and richness of everyday scenes, Reinemann has chosen his studio locations in areas of crude, natural beauty. Years in the North Country of New York State, the woods around Eugene, Oregon, the mountain wilderness of New Mexico, and the hill towns of Western Massachusetts have each informed his process and his philosophy of painting.
Reinemann was born in Albany, NY, 1978. He studied art at SUNY Plattsburgh and received an MFA from the University of Oregon in 2003. He currently lives and works in North Adams, MA. In 2019, Reinemann produced a solo show for Tennessee Technical University, received his first public arts commission, and was a recipient of the North Adams Project Award. In 2021 Reinemann was a finalist for the Gottlieb Foundation Grant. His next solo show Puzzel Puzzle will be at UMASS Amherst in 2022.
