DESCRIPTION AND METHOD OF WORK

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Imaginative reds, purples and aquamarines: The whimsically colored tree trunks resemble tall human forms, as if the viewer were strolling through enchanted, hauntingly lit forests. Brian Rutenberg's emphatic painterly art brings to mind the ephemeral qualities of the French Impressionists and the intense coloration of the German Expressionists. "My paintings begin and end with a love of paint," Rutenberg says. "The creation of images stems from series of drawings of the human figure and forms in nature; it is the subsequent blurring together of figure and landscape through the process of abstraction that funds the content."

FIRST ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

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The South Carolina native, born in 1965, recalls a childhood and youth spent on the Lowcountry coast, where the beaches, rivers and lakes had a special quality of light. Even at a young age, he recognized the importance of negative space. "I was convinced that I could see air--between things, around me," he says. It was the "rich color and haunting light" that captured his interest. "Especially inspiring is that point when the land meets the water and, for a moment, the two become blurred. I have never wanted to be anything but an artist." Today, he revisits that topography, both physically and metaphorically in his art.

BIGGEST BREAK

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In 1989 while a Masters student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Rutenberg was discovered by Neo-expressionist painter Gregory Amenoff. In turn, Rutenberg says, "I had admired his landscapes." Hired as Amenoff's assistant, Rutenberg gained practical experience--and an important audience. In the early '90s, Amenoff invited sculptor and collector John Raimondi to visit Rutenberg's studio. "From that visit, John began buying my work in depth, keeping selected paintings and placing the rest in important private and public collections." Rutenberg continues to benefit personally and professionally from his relationships with "these two extraordinary men."

MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON

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Rutenberg's personal hero and mentor is not a painter or sculptor, but a musician. "My connection with the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould has to do more with how one crafts a life as an inventor and how one protects that life," Rutenberg says. Gould believed that the purpose of art is "the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." Rutenberg, an artist in love with light, says he is "also inspired by the radiance of my wife, Kathryn."

FAVORITE SUBJECT MATTER

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As exemplified in the sprawling "Algonquin," 2001, "Hemlock Lake," 2001-02, and "Hemlock Lake II," 2001-02, Rutenberg's unabashedly ecstatic statements about nature occupy a middle ground between abstraction and representation. "I am in love with the act of looking at things, their color and strangeness," he says, thus allying himself with the Impressionists in capturing light's fugitive qualities. But he notes "my interest is less in re-creating visible reality than in inventing my own reality." His travels in Ireland (the "lush, sensual countryside") and in Algonquin National Forest in Ontario, Canada, for example, have reinforced his admiration for 19th-century naturalist painting. Yet his playful use of Neolithic and Celtic motifs ("the origins of abstraction") continues to enrich his canvases. "I try to be an inventor, not just a painter, though working with oils gives me a gratifying sense of history," Rutenberg explains.

AWARDS AND OTHER ACCOLADES

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Fulbright Scholarship to Ireland, 1997; Artists' Work Program Grant at the Irish Museum of Modern Art,1997; Peter S. Reed Grant, 2000; Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Grant, 1993; Basil Alkazzi Award, 1992.

COLLECTIONS

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Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roselyn Harbor, NY; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Dow Jones & Co., New York City; Bank of America, San Francisco; Federal Reserve Bank, Richmond, VA; Saks Fifth Avenue, San Francisco; and numerous other public and private collections in the United States and Europe.

CURRENT EXHIBITION

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Forum Gallery Los Angeles, 8069 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048, (323) 655-1550. July 19-August 17.