CHARLES RAMSBURG
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.
“I’ve had to fabricate my own version of the complexities of dimension.”
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 says “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.
Icons of Nature
Drawings - Charcoal and Eraser
Point of view Series
Text Pieces
Sculptures
Pathing Sticks
Charles Ramsburg with his Pathing Sticks
Ramsburg works in a multitude of mediums: charcoal and eraser on paper, acrylics, wood, metal, leather, papier-mâché and twine. The Text series are both intimate and mysterious. His charcoal drawings work with spatial and optical contradictions, photorealist twilight abstractions and observations of nature. The Pathing Sticks are sculpted, carved, incised walking staffs, found natural pieces transformed, ancient yet contemporary, esoteric yet functional. The Shields show the scars of transformation. On many pieces there is incised writing, a script of his own creation. About the Icons of Nature, Ramsburg says, “Religious icons are generally seen as windows into the ineffable, portals to the divine. For me, looking at nature opens a similar door.” All works radiate an innate authority of their own each with ineffable narratives, memories and contemplation.