Paul Ransohoff is a painter living and working in Menlo Park. Originally from Cincinnati, his work is largely representational, while incorporating abstract passages and paying great attention to surface, texture, and brushwork. He has studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, San Francisco City College, Stanford, and the Pacific Art League. Originally drawn to art by his childhood discovery of Magritte, his inspirations have grown to include Titian, Rembrandt, Chardin, Goya, Manet, Courbet, Klee, Morandi, Bischoff, Freud, and Auerbach. He has recently become interested in the narrative implications of all representation, especially of figures in relation to others and to setting. Relationships are constantly at play, among the shapes and marks of the work, between represented objects or figures, and between artwork and viewer.

Having drawn and painted throughout my life, my esthetic sense has deepened and sharpened in the past several years, as I have explored the terrains of still life, landscape, and figure. Recently, I have been investigating through paint the textures of stone and wood and flesh, as weathered by nature or shaped by man and time. Old rocks, wood-beamed structures, bombed out cities, and classical sculptures have rumbled through my studio.

My artwork emerges from the view that “beauty is the splendor of truth.” Each piece seeks to do justice to the appeal of reality, by rendering objects or scenes that are well-seen, well-understood, and well-composed. When a painting succeeds, a feeling of the complexity and activity of the lines and marks coheres into a composed, integrated object, in both the world represented and in the world of paint.

“Beauty is the anticipation of pleasure.” My art draws energy from the tension and interplay between part and whole, between complex and clear, between medium and subject. The resulting liveliness invites the viewer to linger, explore, and return–to follow the natural curiosity of the eye and to complete the act of creative perception.

Juried Group Shows

2017 “Summer Exposure” / Pacific Art League / Palo Alto, CA

2017 “Beginnings” / Gallery Route One / Pt. Reyes Station, CA

2016  “Landscapes, Seascapes and Urbanscapes” / Pacific Art League, Palo Alto, CA

2016   “California 2016 Impression” / International Art Forum & Exhibition /South San Francisco, CA

2016   “Figures and Faces” / Pacific Art League / Palo Alto, CA

2015   “Uart Open” / University Art / Redwood City, CA

2015   “Landscapes, Seascapes and Urbanscapes” / Pacific Art League / Palo Alto, CA

2015   “Spring is in the Air” / Pacific Art League / Palo Alto, CA