The floors of Robert Wieferich’s basement are lined with hundreds of paintings, with hundreds more scattered throughout his house. The volume of the Freeport artist’s work possibly amounts to over 1,000 pieces just in his home, a figure he said was based off an attempt to count them years ago, but he ran out of steam around number 700. Freeport-based artist Robert Wieferich says he aims to capture beauty in his work.
Kristian Moravec / The Times Record The 73-year-old artist, who has been painting for more than 50 years, describes himself as an impressionist. Instead of honing into every detail of the scenes he captures, he focuses on creating an atmosphere, depicting a wide variety of subject matter ranging from sports to landscapes. Many of his pieces have been exhibited in Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth.
The most recent exhibit, “ Deep in the Woods ,” which showcased a series of outdoor landscape paintings this past spring, brought him his first review — a February Portland Press Herald piece by arts and entertainment writer Jorge S. Arango, who noted that he had reservations about reviewing landscape work in Maine. “Frankly, to paraphrase a bizarre 19th-century idiom, you can’t swing a dead cat in the Pine Tree State without hitting a Maine landscape/seascape painter,” Arango wrote.
But to Arango, Wieferich’s work had a “thrilling take” and the paintings were “unabashedly beautiful in their familiarity, and their apricity is more palpable here .
