Charles Ramsburg’s work is a visual journal, most often drifting toward abstract imagery, occasionally being explicitly narrative. His art mines the worlds of nature, psychology, theology, and philosophy. He works in a multitude of mediums: charcoal and eraser on paper, acrylics, wood, metal, leather, papier-mâché and twine. Each of his series, although in different mediums, follows the pull of what Kandinsky called “inner necessity” – meaning the communication between form and the human soul. And, there is another reality that Ramsburg wrestles with – being essentially blind in one eye.

“I have no idea,” he said, “how other people see the world. I’ve had to fabricate my own version of the complexities of dimension.”

Over his fifty-plus years of working, Ramsburg has attempted to unpack various belief systems, but found them wanting. Hence, for instance, his Text Series and Pathing Sticks are etched with a writing system of his own. And because of his love of nature, his language, his “inner necessity”, is drawn, etched, carved, even welded into his work.