Opening Reception with the artist: Friday, March 14, 5-7pm
Evan Feldman
Director
efeldman@gpgallery.com
Carefully observed and chromatically inventive, Tom Birkner’s (b. 1966) paintings of Main Street American seek to illuminate the direct, personal, common, and unsung. The subjects- a toddler reaching for his teenage mother’s hand, a romping graduation celebration in an abandoned factory, the loneliness of an empty street late at night- are rendered in Birkner’s signature gritty realism. Building his canvases through the application of numerous layers Birkner aggressively applies and scrapes away paint until the everyday circumstances take on a vivid liveliness. And although far from Rockwellian, Birkner remains sensitive to idiosyncrasies, depicting places and people who are endearing, mysterious, and wholly themselves.
Birkner received his B.A. from Rutgers University and his M.F.A. from Pennsylvania State University. He is a two-time recipient of the New Jersey State Council on The Arts Fellowship, and his work was recently exhibited at the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas and Centro Cultural de las Fronteras, Juárez, Mexico. He has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally and has earned reviews in the New York Times and ARTnews.
Tom Birkner
State Capitol (Paperless Society) 2025
oil on canvas stretched over board
76 1/4 x 94 1/4 inches
