BP WAVE

SOLD

(In the collection of Mark Griffith)

36" X 36", ACRYLIC ON CANVAS©09/06/2010, EDWARD A. OBERMEYER

$2,000.00

Prints available in multiple sizes

POST ABORIGINAL MODERNISM

SOLD

In The collection of Jennifer and Jerry Macho

Norfolk Botanical Gardens No. 2

Prints available in multiple sizes including 36" X 48" canvas prints and paper prints mounted to foam core.

Edward A. Obermeyer

36" X 48", Acrylic on canvas ©June 9, 2010

$900.00 SOLD to Jerry and Jennifer Macho, Thank You!

I have finally given this new style I have been developing the last few years a name! Borrowing from the traditional Aboriginal dot style, I am creating my new works of art using their famous dot painting and cross hatching techniques and adding old school pin striping techniques I have used on automotive surfaces. The use of pinstripe brushes has greatly enhanced the patterns in the new works and I am able to transform realism into highly patterned surfaces of texture and light. Many of the brush strokes require two to three layers of various tints and tones of color to get the desired effect. In some of the paintings, I am revealing and concealing images at the same time.

In the painting above, I wanted to use this new style to communicate the peacefull tranquility of the Norfolk Botanical Gardens in Norfolk. The Japanese garden has often been a great source of inspiration for me emotionally and artistically. I have been working hard to remove myself from the realistic style that has dominated most of my adult art making over the years and am now concentrating on a more stylized original approach to my creative endeavors in painting. I hope you enjoy my most recent series of works in this style. As always, I would greatly appreciate any feedback from my fans so that the growth process can continue. I will leave you with this quote:

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
Alberto Giacometti

I hope that the intensity of the patterns in my work has opened your eyes to a new kind of reality and a greater appreciation of the natural world that we all live in. You can follow the thumbnails below to see how the piece began and the process that evolved over time.

SOLD!

In the collection of Blue Ocean Wealth Advisors of Richard James

Turtle Wave

36" X 48", Acrylic on canvas ©August 19, 2010, Edward A. Obermeyer

$1,250.00/Framed (Black Nielson Canvas Metal Frame)

Prints available in a variety of sizes and prices (email edobermeyer@cox.net for info.)

I created this piece after reading so much about the BP oil spill and seeing so much of it in the media. I am using my latest style that I call, Post Aboriginal Modernism, where I borrow from the symbolism of the Australian Aborigines and twist it into a more modern mode with my pinstripe skills from automotive painting and some new mark making techniques I come up with as I go along. I find this whimsical yet stylized pattern art style much more interesting to do than my earlier realistic and fragmented pieces. I also feel that I have finally achieved a "personal voice" in my work through complex mark making and sharing stories about topics of interest in the media or travels I have done around the world. When I saw those turtle being relocated in the gulf, the dolphins covered in oil, and the black oil in the shorebreak waves, this was my response. Having been a surfer since 1964, I have always had deep feelings for the ocean and how it has brought so much pleasure to those of us fortunate enough to be near it. This painting is meant to share that positive feeling of the moving wave, fearsome in its size, but beautiful in color and form. The turtles rise in unison to escape the oily waves below as the dolphins leap for the air in desperation. The foam in the center of the wave has been stylized with "wheat strokes" to enhance the beauty of the surging foam which is contrasted against the concentric circles that make up the Aboriginal sky above.

LOTUS

36" X 48", Acrylic On Canvas, ©11/11/2010, Edward A. Obermeyer

SOLD-In the collection of Carl and Kayla Hancock

Prints available for $45.00 dry mounted to foam core and shrink wrapped.

This piece was created after a trip to Mackay Island Refuge on the Virginia and North Carolina boarder. Someone over the years had tossed some beautiful lotus plants into the water at the boarder, and to this day, they have flourished and reward those fortunate enough to notice these beautiful blossoms in the summer months. Creating this piece was incredibly challenging, in that my newly formed style of Aboriginal Modernism required a labor intensive layering of the stroke techniques I had developed over time. The background for example started as a deep pthalocyanine green mixture of strokes, which was then overlapped with a lighter green, and then an even lighter one after that. I actually got much too light and had to go back over the strokes with a darker green before adding the red strokes to give the green a more vivid but subdued hue. Varying tones of the green hues were adjusted in the foreground area to create a somewhat three dimensional feel to the foliage and blooms. Towards the end, I added even lighter hues and intensities to the butterflies at the top of the painting which turned our nicely. I have found painting with this new technique to be incredibly calming for a hyper person like myself and hope to make many more pieces soon.

North American Dragon

Edward A. Obermeyer©1/14/2010

23" X 29", Acrylic on Illustration Board

After seeing Avatar, I was so excited I had to go home and paint a dragon myself! I did a lot of research on line to prepare for a mythology unit for my sculpture class and will be starting with several projects that are going to be dragon based on research my students do in the library and on the web. For this piece, I chose to go back to my airbrush expertise, which I have not used in some time, to get a more illustrative feel for the beast. After the initial contour drawing in HB pencil, I placed frisket film over the entire drawing and cut out every line with an X-acto knife. The sky was exposed first and I did freehand clouds with variations of pthalocyanine blue. For the foreground and background areas, I chose to use a photograph I had taken in Australia of the Blue Mountains. I will never forget the fear in our eyes when we saw the steep drop off below and virtually no fences or guard rails to keep you from going over the edge! That seemed like an appropriate setting for my North American Dragon. The one in the distance is another variety entirely. Rather than focus on the wings, I decided to focus on the emotions of the face after seeing dragons by Douglas Carrel whose images are licensed by The Templar Company Limited. The foreground and background were hand painted with acrylics using smear and smudge techniques I have developed over the years and splattered with a toothbrush for a realistic rock effect. The scales were meticulously done one at a time, with a light highlight pin line and a deep shadow area. The great thing about mythology is it is all fantasy and you can create your own as you go. Some things about these beasts are based on historical facts, but they vary from place to place all over the world. There are so many categories of dragons out there, that it appears to go to infinity, with limitless possibilities for the artist to pursue. It was a fun piece to make!

BOTANICAL GARDENS, NO. 1

ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 3' X 4'

EDWARD A. OBERMEYER©10/11/2009

$1,500.00 (Sold to Johnathan McCarthy)

Prints available in various sizes for $25.00 and $85.00

This piece was inspired by a trip to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens during the spring of 2009. While looking up at the Japanese maples through my camera, I saw some incredibly abstract patterns through the lace leaf varieties of that tree peering through the sun light in the early morning. I plan on doing a series of these trees and other beautiful objects I saw in the Japanese garden that year. I have been there many times to seek comfort and to just plain connect with nature, but this was the first time I had noticed the intricate patterns of leaves and light while looking up from the ground.

I first chose to sponge the paint onto the canvas with no preliminary drawing whatsoever so that I could capture the feeling of light that day. Working wet into wet with acrylics, I continued to sponge until I felt I had the feeling of the pastel colors that peered through the sunlight that morning. I then began to illustrate onto the canvas with mars black and dioxizine purple the various branches of the tree, starting first with flat bristle brushes and then on to softer lettering brushes and small round brushes. Once the branches were done, I decided to outline them in red, to simulate the style of Aboriginal cross hatch outlining I had seen in Australia. This was followed by months of layering dots using small dowels. At this point, I put away my brushes and laid the canvas flat in Aboriginal style to tell the story about the trees I had seen at the garden. I was especially excited to paint like this and began to see all kinds of serendipitous images appear in my dot patterns that were never planed! I believe this loose, stylized way of painting is opening up new directions for my work in terms of mark making and personal expression of real life experiences and cultural influences.

Uluru

SOLD

(in the collection of Belinda Polk)

Edward A. Obermeyer©10/23/2009

27" X 19", Acrylic On Canvas

$175.00

This is a new method I am developing in my painting based on my travels to Australia in the summer of 2009 where I combine my old school pin striping techniques with Aboriginal dot painting techniques. I have also been inspired by Mexican American artist Alfredo Arrequin recently and have been using his technique of stylized patterns to reveal, yet conceal images within my paintings. While in Australia, we traveled to Uluru, Alice Springs, Kuranda, Sydney, The Blue Mountains, and many other fantastic places with rich history and scenery. Here I am showing our journey on a path to the Uluru through layers of pin striped animals such as the Emu, Crocodile, and Kangaroo that we saw along the way. I have decided to utilize a dark ground to enhance the patterns created with pin stripe brushes and lettering brushes in acrylic on black illustration board.

Peacock

Edward A. Obermeyer©11/14/2009

Acrylic On Canvas 26" X 36"

$900.00

Prints available in $25.00 and $85.00 sizes

SOLD

This is part of my series of paintings based on our travels to Australia in the summer of 2009. As a passionate follower of the didgeridoo and all things Australian, I just had to embark on a visual journey to revisit all of the amazing places we had been. While developing art lessons for my advanced art students at Ocean Lakes High School, I became very interested in the art style of Alfredo Arreguin, a Mexican American artist who moved to Washington state from his beloved Mexican rain forests. His unique jewel like patterned style really appealed to me and I felt that by mixing that style with my old school pin striping skills and Aboriginal dot painting, I could come up with some very interesting ways of sharing my experiences through the visual arts. For me, mark making has always been what painting is about, and I have always tried to come up with new and exciting ways to do so. I also liked the idea of utilizing a dark ground to generate a sort of brilliance to the colors when applied to the surface.

I used several photographs I had taken in Australia as a visual reference to catalog our exciting journey. The inspiration for this painting came from a peacock we had seen when we first arrived at Alice Springs in Australia. He just paraded around us without a care in the world, and was more concerned about a bird threatening his territory than with us photographing him. At the bottom of the piece are symbols of the hands we had seen at Red Hands Cave in the Blue Mountains, about an hour outside of Sydney. When we first entered the cave, we only saw a few hands on the walls, but after peering at the walls for a few more minutes, more and more of the various adult and child sized hands began to appear mysteriously before our eyes!!! Just above the hands are several of the Birdwing Butterflies that we saw in Kuranda at the Northeast Queensland rainforest area. The three blue shapes represent the Three Sisters Rock formation in the Blue Mountains and of course, above that is our Peacock friend from Alice Springs and one of the many kangaroos we saw in the wild while there. The bird on the right was a wild Jemby Rinjah birds we also saw in the blue mountains. They are gorgeous wild parrots found in that area of the country. Various rock formations from the Arrernte area of Alice Springs, the blue mountains, and Kuranda finished the piece.

MUSTIQUE, ABORIGINAL SERIES II

SOLD

in the collection of

Greg and Sandy Egnatz

23 1/2" X 31 1/2"

Acrylic On Illustration Board

Original Painting By Edward A. Obermeyer

Copyright October 12, 2008

$900.00

Prints available in small and large sizes for $25.00, $45.00, and $85.00

Tobago Cays, Aboriginal Series SOLD

in the collection of

Alaina Ilko Ferris

24" X 36"

Acrylic On Illustration Board

Original Painting by Ed Obermeyer

Copyright October 12, 2008

$900.00 for the original painting-Prints available in a variety of sizes at $25.00, $45.00, and $85.00

Mackay Island, North Carolina, "The Blue Line"

Size, 3 feet by 4 feet, Acrylic On Canvas

Price, $800.00

SOLD

Mackay Island, N.C. is one of the closest places to visit near where I live, on the Virginia Beach, North Carolina line. It is a terrific wildlife refuge where my wife and I often go to see birds or visit the local wineries. This particular boat was just behind the Moonrise Bay Winery. The scene was so monochromatic and relaxing with the exception of this one bright blue rope the boat was tethered to.

The Serenity Series No. 7

The Bluenose, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Copyright 2007 by Edward A. Obermeyer

Acrylic On Canvas, 36" X 48", $2,500.00

10/31/2007

This is another in a series of paintings based on my travels to Nova Scotia with my wife Kristine. We had the pleasure to visit the quaint town of Lunenburg which is home to some very famous sailing vessels which inspired this very piece.

The following information is from the Nova Scotia Archives and Records:

According to the official operators of the Bluenose II, generations of Atlantic canadians have grown up with stories of Captain Angus Walters and the Bluenose. The vessel became the world's most famous nova Scotian fishing schooner and won a place in the hearts of thousands.

The Bluenose was launched at Smith and Rhuland Shipyard, in Lunenburg, on march 26, 1921. Hundreds of people watched as the vessel went down the ways. The crowd cheered and the hills echoed with jubilant good wishes for the new schooner.

Captain Angus Walters, a Lunenburg native, was 39 years old when the Bluenose was launched. He was eager to prove the worth of the new schooner. Work progressed rapidly to get the Bluenose ready for the first trip to the fishing banks. She fished a complete season and had fulfilled the main requirement as a prospective competitor in the International Series. The racing schooners had to be "real" fishing vessels, and had to fish a full season to qualify for the series.

After many years of successfully fishing and racing, the Bluenose went aground on a reef near Haiti in January of 1946. In 1963, a replica of the Bluenose, named Bluenose II was launched from the very same shipyard where the original was made.

The term Bluenose was a nickname for Nova Scotians that referred to the violent contentions between the Loyalists and the old inhabitants called blue noses.

The Grenadines Studies

"Mustique NO. 1"

Copyright 09/30/2007, by Edward A. Obermeyer

Original Acrylic on canvas, 36" X 48"

$700.00 (Sold)

This is the first in a series of paintings I am doing on our travels to the Grenadine Islands during the summer of August, 2007. We sailed a 55 foot mono hull sailboat called the "Magpie II" from the island of St. Vincent to the rest of the Grenadine Islands. This piece was the sight that first greeted us at the island of Mustique, where we saw Tommy Hillfiger's house and visited the bar called "Basils" for a snack and a cool drink.

The art work was more than just based on my own personal photographs and experiences there. I used a more loosely defined painting technique with hundreds of small marks and daubs of color instead of my usually tight, precise realistic effects. The colors and figures were exaggerated to enhance the feeling of the tropical islands ambience. I will never forget leaping from this gorgeous sailboat into these pristine aquamarine waters that defined the words, "crystal clear".

The Grenadines Studies, Tabago Cays No. 1

Copyright December 2, 2007 by Edward A. Obermeyer

Acrylic On Canvas, 36" X 48"

$700.00

This painting was done from a photograph I took from our 55 foot sailboat while sailing the Grenadines in the summer of 2007. The translucent colors of aqua through the water were beyond description. There were no accommodations for miles around and the only way to the Cays is by very small sailboat.

The Grenadines Studies, Mustique No. 3, Basils

Copyright December 30, 2007 by Edward A. Obermeyer

Acrylic On Canvas, 36" X 48"

$4,500.00

One of the first islands we encountered on our sailing trip after leaving Bequia was the beautiful island of Mustique. This island hosts famous personalities like Tommy Hilfiger, Mick Jagger and many others. Our boat is centered in the painting behind the famous "Basils" bar and restaurant. One can simply leap from your boat and swim up to the shore or arrive in your dingy, and enjoy a cool drink during the heat of the day. The island had a great deal of "carpenter gothic" style architecture and many artifacts brought from Indonesia. I was told by some of the locals that the Indonesians were brought to the island to create many of the points of interest and architectural structures.