Select Review

"Creative Juices" in Nantucket Times, 2003
"Paintings by the Pool" in Inquirer and Mirror, 2004
"Paul Galschneider - Profile" in Cape Cod Life Magazine, 2005

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT: Paintings by the pool
Galschneider likes the light outside in Sconset
By Catherine Fahy
I&M Staff Writer

Photo by Jim Powers
Painter Paul Galschneider in his outdoor summer gallery at the Summer House in Sconset last week.

Of all the places to exhibit artwork on Nantucket, poolside at The Summer House is the best, said artist Paul Galschneider, whose exhibit of new works opens with a reception Saturday from 5 p.m. until sunset at The Summer House Beachside Bistro in Sconset.

“I would call this the most beautiful gallery in the world because of the space and the light,” said Galschneider Sunday evening, the turquoise pool surrounded by plush green-cushioned teak lounge chairs and white canvas umbrellas and jazz music from the bar providing the backdrop to his conversation.

In addition to Galschneider’s display of a dozen-plus works on the tall white fence surrounding the grassy area beside The Summer House pool, about 20 of his works are on display inside the main dining room of The Summer House restaurant. After each sunny day spent presiding over his poolside exhibit and, when time allows, working at the easel he has set up there, Galschneider meanders at twilight up the wooden steps and past the rose-covered cottages to the dining room, which he calls his “extension gallery.”

Galschneider’s paintings on display June through September at The Summer House are astoundingly diverse, ranging from large impressionistic Nantucket seascapes and beach scenes with abundant color and texture to a clean-lined realist depiction of Saddleback Mountain in Maine and dark-hued moody interiors. He even has displayed on opposite sides of the fence a pastel of a Siamese cat and an abstract painting, plus in one corner a ceramic vase he glazed flanked by a pair of sculptural metal chairs.

Alternate media aside, Galschneider describes his primary medium of painting as a mix of impressionism and expressionism.

“I feel freedom in the brushstroke,” he said.

Galschneider attributes his diversity in part to being a self-taught artist. He started painting in New Jersey just one year prior to arriving on Nantucket in 1994 after an ex-girlfriend gave him a box of acrylic paints. Until then, he’d dabbled in watercolor drawings but never seriously, he said.

Photo by Jim Powers “Sankaty Bluff,” oil on linen.

Now, at The Summer House and at the Even Keel Café on Main Street where he exhibits year-round, his work is both accomplished and representative enough of Nantucket to enable him to make a living as an artist. What little formal training he has, he attributes to Nantucket artist Earl Biss, who died five years ago.

Galschneider now has his own understudy, Karl Cragnolin, whose oils on display beside Galschneider’s work at The Summer House are selling well, Galschneider said. Even though it’s fairly unusual to exhibit so many oil paintings in an outdoor setting, Galschneider said he doesn’t worry much about rain because a few drops won’t damage his oils before he can load them in his truck, and rainy days provide an opportunity to work in the studio.

Saturday’s opening exhibit will feature 15 to 20 new pieces primarily of Sconset village scenes and Nantucket seascapes that Galschneider worked on this winter at his studio in his home on Atlantic Avenue, as well as the pieces currently on display at The Summer House. This will be his third annual solo exhibit at The Summer House.

“Sconset is my favorite spot in the whole world,” Galschneider said. “Being here is a nice way to spend a summer day.”

In addition to subject matter that will appeal to many people, Galschneider’s new work is “more bold and juicier,” he said. Many of his canvases are already large by normal standards – like the four-foot-by-five-foot painting of Brant Point Lighthouse – but not nearly as large as he’d like them to be one day, he said. “ I want to build a studio where a tractor trailer has to come in and carry out my works,” he said.

Perhaps more than many of his contemporaries on Nantucket, Galschneider, a native of Czechoslovakia who grew up in Austria, is tied to his studio because immigration issues prevent him from traveling outside New England for more than two days at a time. But with a wife and a 3-month-old daughter, he is content in the winter to paint and remodel his home, he says, and seems resigned to the specter of deportation that has plagued him since 1999 when he was taken into custody by Immigration officials from the house on Cliff Road where he was living at the time.

Photo by Jim Powers “Washington Street Extension,” oil on linen.

Galschneider subsequently spent 19 months in jail in Plymouth, Mass., where he was unable to paint but perhaps gained some of his ability to find inspiration in what most might consider mundane. As a ..ament to that time, one of the small interiors on display at The Summer House depicts the room where Immigration officials found him. “If you keep open-minded you can find inspiration in even a little corner,” he said.

Despite the threat of deportation hanging over him, Galschneider cherishes everything about painting, even its mistakes. “I never get mad or excited or upset about what I have done because I see everything as a creation,” he said.

His easy-going manner with the people meandering past his paintings last Sunday evening – and the quality of the paintings themselves - make Galschneider an invaluable asset to the Summer House, said Peter Karlson, who owns The Summer House with his wife, Danielle deBenedictis. “It’s like an open-air gallery, it’s artful and it really adds a nice feel to The Summer House,” Karlson said.

Karlson said Galschneider also lends an air of consistency to the “settling in” at The Summer House Beachside Bistro, now in the second year of its reincarnation as a laid-back yet sophisticated place with atmosphere and decor inspired by St. Barth’s, Karlson said.

Galschneider said the appreciation and positive comments he hears from both The Summer House management and its guests is inspiring and encouraging.

“The feedback is tremendously positive, from buyers and non-buyers,” he said.

Paul Galschneider’s works are on exhibit daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. at The Summer House Beachside Bistro and in The Summer House Restaurant. An opening reception of new works will be held from 5 p.m. until sunset Saturday, July 17, at The Summer House Beachside Bistro in Sconset.