The Personal Landscape: A Painting Workshop with Joerg Dressler

This workshop delves into the indispensable and innate relationships between the artist and their environment. How we see and experience a landscape is informed by observations and conclusions of the past. The insight into the external is therefore shaped by our cultural and social background and our system of beliefs.

This workshop encourages participants to draw upon those personal experiences/views to allow for interpretations of the seen that are unique with no obligations towards being objective or fact-based.

Through a personal inventory we will collect a varied bank of individual thoughts, questions and ideas. Which topics have always moved me and which ones have I been feeling passionate about lately? We will explore how to link those up in new and unexpected ways by combining linear and non-linear thinking. Digging deep within, we will engage into the adventure of rules being broken and recognizing how chance fuels art-making.

Participants are encouraged to bring photos or drawings of landscapes that are imbued with special meaning, as well as writings or journals—if at hand. This workshop is open to all levels and painting styles.

Joerg Dressler was born in Hanau, Germany. He received his MFA from the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, Germany, in 1994. Additionally, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France. Joerg moved to the United States in 1996.

Dressler’s work is driven by nature and how we perceive it. He is presenting his experiences of reality filtered through his perception. As a result, disjointed experiences of the seen and unseen are reassembled, creating in the work a reality of its own. Dressler’s evocative, sensual paintings derive from a sincere dialogue between the representational and the abstract, the conceptual conscientiousness and pure spontaneity. While remaining uniquely his own visual communication, the vocabulary for his work is drawn from a cross-section of art history: Romanticism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, graphic design and photography. “Joerg evokes sublime depictions of our confrontation with nature, especially the contrary effects of nature on the human psyche,” writes Christopher Busa in Provincetown Arts. “He places tranquility side by side with violence, light clashing with the dark, fragility beside boldness—surprising forces seemingly summoned on a whim, with involuntary energy.” Recurring themes in Dressler’s work include the passage of time, impermanence, frailty, and perception. He is a recipient of the Romanos Rizk Scholarship, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York. He is represented by Alden Gallery, Provincetown, MA and Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA. www.joergdressler.com