Norbert Waysberg
I moved in New York City already 9 years ago and didn't stop painting Manhattan .
Symbol of our humanity , our freedom , our desire to accept the differences and make it work.
We hate it and love it at the same time inconfortable feelings.
then the metamorphosis start slowing in us.
We all love New York and more looking at our world and the sufferings around us we can only be sorry and appreciate our blessing to live in this city.
My painting journey talk about that.
Beauty and beast generate and strange alchemy in our entire body and mind.
My painting journey is this in between where silence is more significant then words. Questions don't have to determine an answer but just emotions, feelings and dreams. The water color portraits are forever looking into our eyes sending questions from the past to our generations: "What are you doing to this world?"
The New York bridges paintings are symbols of a link between past and future, inside and out, yin and yang , darkness and light, new possibilities by cutting across the river and transform the fear of difference. These nudes represent impermanence of life, solitude, imperfection and the ultimate beauty of life.
Should I define myself as a contemporary watercolor artist when technology is more and more embedded in our life ?
Water, paper, pigment , brushes have been used by generations of artists. By embracing the tradition I've decided to bring a microscopic droop of colors in this space and time full of chaos and suffering.
Bio :
Norbert Waysberg spent much of his childhood in Paris wandering through the corridors of the Louvre and other art museums in the City of Lights. He experimented with drawing and painting to notice his own artistic voice. He mastered martial arts, took dance lessons, and was strongly influenced by Japanese and Chinese cultures. Even today, Meditation and Zen infuses his artistic style.
Norbert’s talents reach beyond the arts. He was an outstanding student who excelled at math and applied science, and eventually he entered the business world. But his love of art endured; his adult evenings were spent in painting and drawing classes. Today,although his preferred medium is watercolor, he has produced magnificent works in oils, charcoal, and ink. Hispaintings of the swirling as well as laid bodies of dancers, muted yet colorful floral designs, and sensitive charcoal and ink drawings of nudes were chosen for exhibitions of emerging artists in the Louvre and other sites in Paris, galleries in Bordeaux, Art Bastille, and exhibitions in several French cities. The works began to find their way into the homes of art lovers.
In 2006, Norbert came to America and discovered a new obsession- the incessant beat, roughness, mix of old and new,volume and energy of New York City. Although the streets of Paris had not inspired him artistically, as soon as he settled in New York he began to capture the essence of the city with scenes of traffic, crowded streets, parks, city signage and perhaps the most iconic- the bridges that cross the rivers linking New York to the rest of the world. He paints the city alongside the dancers, floral, and abstracts.
Norbert joined the Art Students League, where in 2010 five of his works that made up “Dance in Canvas” were chosen for an exhibition at City Hall. Within a year of arriving in the city, his watercolors and abstracts were displayed in a gallery different gallery. American art collectors have been joining their French counterparts in acquiring Norbert’s creations.
Norbert lives in New York with his wife and children.
Norbert Waysberg, Statement
THE PRIVATE SELF:
As a French-born artist who fell in love with America’s boundless energy a decade ago, whenever I think back to my evermore distant past, my strongest memories all take place in Paris. But not just anywhere in Paris, though the beauties of the City of Light are legendary, and with every good reason. My most vivid childhood recollections all take place in the corridors of the world’s greatest museum, which is, of course, the Louvre.
There I wandered for hour upon happy hour as a boy. Today as an adult I can still see many of those magnificent works in my mind’s eye; undimmed by time, they live in my memory and sometimes in my dreams too. And in a certain sense, they also live in my studio as well: not as an achievable goal, mind you, for masterpieces are by definition very rare and highly prized in equal measure. Call this instead an unattainable goal, to which we continue to aspire; in vain, but not in vanity. Though the power and sheer beauty of their art may remain unequaled, the Masters inspire all of us to do a little bit better each day, day after day. And then who knows?
As it happens, another Frenchman, Charles Baudelaire, offered us a useful and very hopeful answer when he proclaimed that, “Genius is the ability to recapture childhood at will.” His aphorism sends my mind racing back in time, back to the corridors of the Louvre, where the child is father to the man.
THE PUBLIC SELF:
From 1990-2006, Norbert Waysberg studied sculpture in Paris, at the Association for the Development of Cultural Activities. After emigrating to the United Sates in 2006, he attended painting and drawing classes at New York City’s renowned Art Students League.
His work has been reviewed widely and it has appeared in varied venues throughout Europe. American exhibitions include shows in the Bertrand Delacroix Gallery, NYC, and Anderson Contemporary Art, NYC.