American by birth, but raised in post-war Germany during the formative years of his childhood, Chester Arnold is interested in the capacity of painting to convey the complexities of the human psyche. His compositions present skewed linear perspectives that place the viewer at a remove, above and beyond an unfolding narrative. The romantic beauty of natural landscapes, in part informed by historic master Caspar David Friedrich, is subverted by Arnold’s preoccupation with the detritus of human accumulation.

Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Sonoma County Museum (2013) and American University Museum, Katzen Art Center (2012). The Nevada Museum of Art’s exhibit of Arnold’s work, On Earth as it is in Heaven (2010), was accompanied by a catalogue.  Arnold’s work is represented in the public collections of many institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, the di Rosa Preserve: Art and Nature, the Tacoma Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Art.  He has been critically reviewed in Artforum, Works + Conversation, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Arnold lives in Sonoma, California, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2003.

Courtesy of Minnesota Street Project Editions