Edmund Ferszt

Born in New York to a family engaged with music, art, literature it seemed likely that I would continue with one or more of these muses. Bad at music I gravitated to art and literature. The desire to paint, fostered by six years of art school (producing a BFA and MA in Art degrees), continued. Perhaps the enduring impulse that drives a life of art is like the enduring impulse that drives a life of scholarship: not asking a question that you don’t know the answer to, “but answering a question you never figure out how to formulate”. I also explored a life of scholarship returning to university (with a growing family beside me) to obtain a doctorate in education. After a number of years, with the support of my lovely wife, I have again returned to a life in art. 

I work on large 56” square paintings with water-based media (primarily transparent watercolor) on stretched paper. Watercolor is a peculiar genre that presumes a certain skill set and most frequently presents somewhat bland and innocuous content in an intimate context.  The use of the medium on a large scale to explore complex themes and abstract ideas intends to create an internal conflict between the medium and the message. 

Watercolor also fades over time in bright sunlight. “Impermanence” is simply the occupational hazard of a powerful idea. “The great truths,” as W. Somerset Maugham tells us, “Are too important to be new.”