The Wild South

A native of South Carolina, Brian Rutenberg has spent years honing a distinctive method of compressing rich color and form into complex landscape paintings that imbue material reality with a deep sense of place. He believes it’s the job of a Southern artist to make the region come alive for people who weren’t born there — because one place, fully grasped, helps us understand all places.

When creating The Wild South for the Endowment, Rutenberg was inspired by the idea of knowledge being applied in service of the very region from which it was born, enriching lives and communities. Rutenberg encourages the viewer to let their gaze travel across the abstract terrain as if actually wandering the Carolinas — from the hills of upstate, to the opalescent lakes of the midlands, to willows gathering river haze along the coast.