BARRETT LEHRMAN

From the Shadows of Nevermore Point

"A dreamy, surreal quality pervades this melancholy painting. I realized, after completing it, that it is laden with symbolism, much of which I am at a loss to verbalize. Have you noticed the onlookers in the shadows of the portico?"

Phantoms

"Why am I so fascinated by old graveyards? Is it because they evoke the souls that lived before us, whose earthly remains quietly moulder beneath? And what of their spiritual beings? Do we feel their presence around us in these earthly surroundings?

It is the artist's privilege to imagine the unimaginable, to visualize the unseen, to give form to our hopes, our beliefs, and sometimes our fears."

Lewis Barrett Lehrman's spooky paintings...
From Lehrman's artist statement:

"How did I become interested in painting the haunted world? I trace it back to the summer of 1944, the year I turned eleven! That was when my aunt and uncle invited me to spend a month with them on a mid-western farm. I was a New York city kid, a budding artist even then, and to say I was excited at making the trip -- by myself!! -- on an overnight Pullman sleeper train to Battle Creek, Michigan, would be understating my feelings by quite a bit. Sleepless with excitement, I spent that night, nose pressed to the window, gazing out at moonlit farmlands, lonely houses lit by solitary lights, as we rolled past in the darkness. They're images I remember to this day, so it was only natural that I'd be drawn to painting the night."

Boing Boing: Lewis Barrett Lehrman's spooky paintings: "Lewis Barrett Lehrman's spooky paintings"