Artist Statement

The intention in all my work is to address the formal issues of painting, specifically, and the visual language paradigm, generally. In other words, the effort is to explore and understand or "realize the nature of painting." At the same time I seek to record a specific visual and "feeling" response to the natural world; to light, to atmosphere, space, color, shape, form, and the symbolic, unique, or archetypal character of the subject matter. My paintings are intended to be expressions of the nature of Nature, the nature of painting, the nature of "sense of place and time," and the nature of the experience of "Being."

In general I prefer to work from direct observation. With regard to landscape this means working on location. I will usually try to finish each plein air painting in one session, although occasionally a painting will require two or more sessions on-site. These are usually oils on paper, or on canvas or masonite. While these plein air paintings are used as the source material for larger studio paintings, they are intended to be complete statements rather than "studies."

In addition to the plein air work I make larger scale paintings in the studio, based upon the on-site paintings and studies, but dependent more on working from memory of the plein air painting experience than direct blow-up of the smaller works. The studio paintings often involve a more reflective and analytical approach to the compositions than I have time for in the field studies. The paint surface and brushstroke elements also often differ as the larger works involve layering and "building-in" color in a manner that is somewhat different than in the more spontaneous plein air work.

Ron Boehmer paints the quiet moments. His subtle and meditative landscapes depict not so much documentation of place, as the spirituality behind and in and around the images. Ordinary byways, river and creek beds, backwoods, and open meadows are interpreted without fanfare, but with a quiet dignity that suggests the eternity present in every moment.

Though deeply influenced by such 19th century landscape painters as David Johnson, Russell Smith and Theodore Robinson, Boehmer's work also reflects the influence of his teacher and this century's noted dean of American landscape painting, Neil Welliver. Boehmer's work manifests the dual influences of the 19th century approach to the spirituality and grandeur of nature, and respect for an agrarian lifestyle and Welliver's 20th c. innovations. Welliver's work, influenced by such important 20th c. painters as Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning, introduced new elements of abstraction and abstract expressionism into traditional American landscape painting.

Boehmer's paintings offer a unique synthesis of these diverse influences, with particular interest in capturing light, attendant atmospheric conditions, and in describing the abstract patterning inherent in nature. The inviting interior woodlands, open meadows, farmland and cityscapes in his adopted home in the Virginias are the subject of Boehmer's most recent explorations.

Boehmer has taught painting in Virginia for more than 20 years and has exhibited extensively in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions. Since 1984, he has participated in over 50 juried shows and exhibitions, receiving more than 40 awards in painting and drawing. Boehmer's more recent noteworthy exhibitions include "Myth, Memory, and Imagination: Selections from the Julia J. Norrell Collection" at the McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina in Columbia, which traveled to the North Dakota Museum of Art, and The Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, and "The Virginia Landscape", an exhibition at the Virginia Historical Society surveying more than 200 years of artistic interpretation of the Virginia landscape.

His works are in numerous private and corporate collections, including Hollins University, Nations Bank, the University of Virginia Medical Center, and the United States Embassy Saudi Arabia.