Photo by Jason Houston

Bart Elsbach

Sheffield-based Bart Elsbach is one of America’s premiere landscape artists, greatly influenced by the works of 17th and 18th Dutch Masters as well as the Hudson River School. His work is set in locales throughout America and Europe, but more often depicts scenes from New England and has been described by some as a “celebration of the Berkshires.”

Mr. Elsbach was born in 1961, raised in Manhattan and attended The Dalton School and the Art Students' League in New York City. He received his BA from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and a MFA at New York University. He has taught privately, and at the Berkshire School in Sheffield and the The Interlaken School of Art in Stockbridge.

Mr. Elsbach’s work has won numerous awards from the Sheffield Art League and the Kent Art League. He is currently represented by OK Harris Gallery in New York, David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, the Ferrin Gallery in Lenox and Townsend Gallery in Atlanta.

Mr. Elsbach’s work is delicately detailed, softly textured and imbued with light and muted color. It conveys a detatched tranquility, expansive and serene, as well as a deep sensuality which evokes the scent of earth and leaves and the feel of the atmosphere on the skin.

"When I look at the world I try to understand how it is put together; how the little pieces I am seeing are connected to each other; how they are related to all the other, incalculable little pieces, creating an ever-larger reality, rippling out from the center to infinity," says Elsbach.

Elsbach honors nature, and the southern Berkshires, which provide him with a great source of inspiration. “Only when we realize we are a part of Nature can Nature teach us to embrace the struggle,” he says, “and, ultimately, elevate us beyond its reach.”

Mr. Elsbach and his wife Janet Reich Elsbach have been very active in the local community. Mr. Elsbach has worked with Berkshire Grown and the Railroad Street Youth Project, and is Vice-Chairman of the Sheffield Planning Board. His wife is the President of Community Access to the Arts (CATA) in Great Barrington. They are both supporters of the Sheffield Land Trust and the Housatonic River Walk.

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Links

Bart Elsbach’s Home Page – Links to paintings gallery, drawings gallery and artist’s statement

www.bartelsbach.com/

Bart Elsbach is represented by:

Ferrin Gallery - Ceramics, Sculpture and Contemporary Art, 69 Church St., Lenox, MA - Bart Elsbach Page, including portfolio, bio and resume

www.ferringallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=4

OK Harris Works of Art - Soho, Manhattan, NY - Bart Elsbach Page

www.okharris.com/current/press9.htm

David Klein Gallery - Birmingham, MA - specializes in American and European Contemporary Art and 20th Century paintings and sculpture.

www.dkgallery.com/

M.A. Doran Gallery - Tulsa, OK

http://madorangallery.com/

Other Galleries

5points Gallery - Art Mathematics Science Pattern Process - exhibitions presented by Five Points Gallery in East Chatham, New York, and in the surrounding region of upstate New York, during the years 1987 through 1994

www.5points.com/library/5exhhist.htm

Community Involvement

Art and the River - Views and Visions of the Housatonic River - Featuring the artwork of Bart Elsbach, Morgan Bulkeley Jr., Joan Griswold and others, Art and the River promotes a renewed vision of the Housatonic River as an artistic and literary inspiration of national significance. Proceeds go to a collaborative project for Housatonic River improvement. Link from Housatonic River Summer - a celebration of the arts, culture and nature within the Housatonic Valley.

www.housatonicriversummer.org/TheBook.html

Berkshire Grown – Originally The Berkshire Regional Food and Land Council, co-founded by Robin Van En, Clemens Kalischer and Cathy Roth. Now under the direction of Amy Cotler,  Berkshire Grown promotes produced food, flowers and plants in the Berkshire region and builds partnerships between farmers, chefs and consumers.

www.berkshiregrown.org

Community Access to the Arts, Great Barrington - a non-profit arts organization, provides over 1,000 visual and performing arts workshops for hundreds of individuals with physical and/or developmental disabilities

www.communityaccesstothearts.org

Great Barrington Housatonic River Walk – a twenty-year community river restoration effort of 2,000 local volunteers

www.gbriverwalk.org/

Railroad Street Youth Project - empowering young people by creating youth generated activities that promote responsibility, self-worth, and intergnerational communication

www.rsyp.org/

Sheffield Land Trust - dedicated to protecting the land essential to Sheffield's natural, scenic, rural and agricultural character through a program of stewardship and by working with landowners, farmers and other partners

www.sheffieldland.org/

Other

Orion Magazine Online Gallery - Top of the World: Bart Elsbach’s Final Drawings from the 91st Floor of the World Trade Center

www.orionsociety.org/pages/oo/gallery/index_Elsbach.html