"Profile: Paul Galschneider" (pages 94-95)

For Nantucket painter Paul Galschneider,

Boy with a Kite—courtesy Paul Galschneider

the creative life is both an inheritance and a calling. His Austrian grandfather was an actor and painter, and a restorer of paintings and frames. He taught Galschneider to appreciate the handmade thing, the thing “that always comes from the soul and the heart.”

Galschneider paints, for the most part, traditional Nantucket subjects—the sea, harbor, boats, gardens, cottages, and interiors. Although he works from both location and photographs, memory guides his work. The intention is to express his emotive response to the world around him, his inner state at the moment of encounter.

Yellow Tulips—courtesy Paul Galschneider

In style, he travels the continuum from impressionism to complete abstraction. This is not the passive and objective descriptiveness of the early impressionists. Galschneider observes the interplay of light and color carefully and accurately, but employs it for expressive ends. “I study the light,” Galschneider says. He wants “to capture the feeling and atmosphere of being in the place.” Still, his passion is in the process, the act of painting. It is an activity on his behalf. “At the moment when you are working, the paint draws you in, you are pulled into the canvas, so deep there is no escape,” he observes. “I am the painting. I love it!”

Yet there is more than passion involved in the methods of this accomplished painter; Galschneider is guided by what has come before. Although he has been described as self-taught, it would be more accurate to say he is self-directed in his study. He surrounds himself with art books and often visits museums and exhibitions. From Van Gogh, whom he cites as an early influence, Galschneider has learned how to convey his vision through intense color and to instill movement through the energy of the brushstroke.

His palette is based on four fundamental colors—blue, red, yellow, and green—and the intermediate hues—violet, orange, and yellow with white. “I keep the colors pure. I want to be honest to the colors,” he explains. Yet one hears the Fauvist influence when he continues, “But sometimes, to capture the feeling, I have to go more dramatic, put more power behind it. I have to push the color.” His pigments are dashed onto the canvas with a brush or palette knife, finger, or straight from the tube, vigorous in their impasto.

Galschneider was born in Czechoslovakia of an Austrian mother and Slovak father. When he was 12, the family

Surfcaster—courtesy Paul Galschneider

immigrated to Austria where he grew up and was married. In 1985 Galschneider and his then wife visited the U.S., where he was denied the political asylum he requested. Since then, he has been under final order of deportation, which prevents him from traveling outside of New England for more than two days at a time. “It keeps me close to home and painting,” Galschneider relays from his studio on Nantucket, where he has lived with his new family since 1994.

“All my life I was inclined to drawing and making things. I dabbled in watercolors, but I never really took painting seriously until a former girlfriend in New Jersey gave me a box of paints,” says Galschneider. He took a class, but it was moving too slowly for him. He realized that what he really needed to do was just paint. In Austria, Galschneider trained in the plumbing and heating trades. His first American job was in Colorado, working in a restaurant, and he later worked as a private chauffeur in lower Manhattan. Once on Nantucket, he worked as a heating contractor—until the painting took over body and soul, and the sales grew to support it. Now, it’s painting. He says he is “creating the world in my own style and feelings, taking in life and nature, and recreating it.”

Paul Galschneider’s work can be seen on Nantucket at the following locations: the Even Keel Café (508-228-1979; www.evenkeelcafe.com); Summer House Seaside Bistro (508-257-9976); European Traditions Antiques (508-325-8976); Diane Johnston (508-228-468); and The John Rugge Antiques Shop (508-325-7920). His work is available at his own studio, Pagal Studio, 14 Atlantic Avenue, 508-228-2658, and online at www.paulgal.com.