Noah
Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Windy

Noah Erenberg is a self-taught artist who has been exhibiting and selling his paintings and drawings for the last 15 years. Noah had the chance to show his drawings at the Drawing Center in New York City in 1998 and as a result is now in many national and international collections. Noah lives in Isla Vista, Calif., the college community near the University of California at Santa Barbara, and has been able to audit art studio classes on occasion and works with art studio students who act as his studio assistants and friends. Noah loves to paint landscapes in Isla Vista, which is right on the beach, so there is a lot of nature right in his back yard. He is also influenced by popular culture and music and his drawings reflect the magazines and newspapers he collects. He works with ink and marking pens to create dense word compositions copying words from the newspapers and magazines. His paintings are often painted outdoors as he roams around his very visually interesting neighborhood. Noah has a dynamic sense of color and composition and his work as been described as eccentric, outsider and edgy and he definitely fits into these categories. Noah’s work is included in a traveling exhibition of work by visionary/outsider artists titled INTERNAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS which has been exhibited at many venues throughout the USA and Canada from 2006 to 2008.

A statement by Noah: “ I copy words and text from surf and fashion magazines, DVDs, CDs, posters and newspapers. Most of these text drawings and paintings are done with acrylic paint and ball-point and felt tip pens. I like to draw over old calendars and posters. I like abstract paintings because I like bright colors and crazy shapes. Abstract painting reminds me of hip hop music. The abstract shapes come out of my head.”

A statement about Noah’s work from Michael Darling, a curator of art at the Seattle Art Museum: “Noah Erenberg is actively building a vocabulary to express the world around him in his own terms. Built up with curious, startling and subtle color combinations and a still developing range of gestural marks, Erenberg re-creates the sights and sounds of Isla Vista with an affecting freedom from convention.”