Robert Mielenhausen

All rights reserved by Robert Mielenhausen

The following information was provided by the artist unless otherwise noted.

Mielenhausen was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1951. He was educated in New York at the New York Institute of Technology and Adelphi University. He has taught art and art history at Southampton High School for thirty-three years.

During 2003 he began to utilize his photography in combination with painting and mixed media. Having painted for many years, he maintained a respect for the immediacy of the photographic image. He became interest in how one optically perceives space and light in a photograph and how this seeing works in relation to painting. He began to play on the line between painted and photographic representation.

Mielenhausen is drawn to a variety of subjects: doorways, bicycles, and New Yorkers going about their day on the street. The city can be a relentlessly chaotic and impersonal environment. His art depicts the flip side, focusing on the person and intimate spaces of Manhattan, the worn out bicycle, a light filled doorway, the expression of people as they move about.

While photographing he does not have a preconception as to how the final piece will appear. In the studio the photo is adhered to hardboard and elements of the photograph are drawn and painted beyond the image. Various pieces are abstracted and playful. Others are rendered more literally forming the large composition; where applicable found objects are used as part of the compositional structure.

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