Christopher Gerlach

"I'm chiefly concerned with light," Gerlach says.  "The play of light and color has always given me the most joy.  I feel the French Impressionists were my ancestors and Monet my main teacher.  You might say I patronized a 'Dead Painters Society' - learning of the Impresionists, and from Sargent, Velazquez, Titian, Tiepolo and Rembrandt.  I paint pretty loose, pretty free, bright pictures, with sunlight and shadow, and often reflections on water."

Painting in Monet's own gardens at Giverny, France in the early 1980's reinforced his loose touch. . . Gerlach's goal today us simply to capture a beautiful moment.  "I'm painting pathways and avenues, pictures that are an invitation to a magical world that really is the world we live in." 

Gerlach's painterly realism owes a debt to the accomplishments of photographgy, with its ability to record precise detail, and to the lessons of abstraction that invite the painter to loosen up.  Gerlach says he chose painterly realism as his expression because "sharing is the reason for painting," showing the world that first butterfly:  "The dialog with the viewer is as much fun as any part of painitng, and realism offers more opportunities to connect with a viewer."