American
b. 1955
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Don Holzschuh is a plein air painter whose loose paint and high-keyed colors have captured the essence of local cafes, parks and residential neighborhoods and downtown streetscapes since the 1980’s. He has also painted the lush river valleys of southeastern Minnesota and rural France as well as scenes from travels in the Netherlands.

Don Holzschuh has exhibited his paintings internationally. His works are in art collections in United States, France, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands.

“Unlike the studio, reality and life can be completely different than in your mind. With open air painting, you don’t have painting as a form, but reality and life and you as an individual participating in the natural world. You tend to look at things in a more objective and pure way. When you’re painting outside you’re actually putting yourself on the line. Everyday you’re a different person, and if you go back to the same spot the next day, it’s a completely different scene… “I just think open air painting is more honest. It has a purity, because it’s really about how a person perceives a situation and who they are at that moment. It’s not contrived, it’s not pre-planned in execution. It’s there. It’s total emotion. You have hits and misses like anything, but when you’re really going at it outdoors you can feel everything around you: the birds, the traffic, the rhythms, the people, the air. You can see how the rhythm of the earth goes, you get that tune. It all just contributes to the frenzy of creativity, something you don’t get in the studio.”

donholzschuh.org