Vivid landscapes from local artist Sober

Don't make the mistake of referring to Richard Sober's artwork as a hobby. At the recent opening of the Passionfish Gallery in Hampden where his work is on display, I did and was swiftly corrected. "It's like eating, it's a part of life," the artist said.

An assistant in the MSE library's acquisition and monograph department by day, Sober is a poet and painter at heart. He started painting at age 15 and hasn't stopped since. He works mostly during what he lyrically calls, "the edges of the day"; early in the morning and late at night and has turned out an exciting exhibit for Passionfish's debut show.

The newly opened Passionfish space is a story unto itself. Co-owned by Shawn Baron, a photographer and set-builder for Local 487, the movie industry union in Baltimore, and his mother, local poet, Sandie Castle, Passionfish is a combination vintage shop and art gallery borne out of the mother and son team's love of collecting art and, well, everything. The upper level of the shop features cabinets, drawers and bookshelves filled to bursting with a staggering array of old books, dolls, postcards, jewelry and even shoes. Sculptures, paintings and Shawn's black and white cityscape photos grace the walls.

Downstairs is a warm, cozy gallery space. It's nothing special, just plain whitewashed walls, a floor painted black, a few benches and track lighting. Yet its simple, no-frills aesthetic is as inviting as the work that graces its walls.

As Baron, who did all the rehab work on the building himself, explains, "We show work down here for people who don't usually get their work shown, for artists deterred from galleries who say, "Yeah, maybe a show in a few years. Bring in 20 slides and we'll see'. This is not about slides or anything, this is about showing pictures."

Sober's paintings make a bright splash against the clean walls of the new gallery. Equal parts exuberant and soothing, he works primarily in oils on wood and also executes several watercolors to depict bright, geometric, almost folksy renditions of landscapes in bold colors, etching out lines with the end of his paintbrush when the paint is still wet to create an unmistakable hand-crafted quality.

Sober says he doesn't paint the landscape scenes from the Southwest, Cape Cod, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore that dot Passionfish's walls for any other reason than he paints other images. "I don't even consider myself a landscape painter," he says, "only to say there's a lot of stories in landscapes and I like stories, but mostly painting is a means of learning about the world. All its qualities of light, form, mystery. Sometimes it's easy to forget, if you live in the city and work inside all day, that a landscape even exists." Sober goes on to explain that paintings of landscapes are not always just landscapes, but an emotional response to landscapes. "...Real places are never down on any map, as they say," he says, "For me paintings are part of a huge mosaic and landscapes are just one part of that. It's a never ending story."

And although landscape lends itself to expansive compositions, most of Sober's paintings are no bigger than a square foot and many are much smaller. "I enjoy the intimacy of small paintings," he says, "and I'm not obsessed with big, even though I'm an American and once rode in a 1967 Bonneville."

The canvases themselves may not be very large, but Sober packs bright color into them in a big way. "I enjoy watching the sun come up, go down, the oblique light of autumn, the night time, the early morning before everyone starts making noise," he says. You can tell Sober has studied the coming and going of light and the deepening and fading of color by looking at the skies he paints. One is a creamy blue streaked with orange clouds, another is depicted in the lavenders and oranges of morning sunrise and yet another appears in a deep midnight blue softened by the glow of an icy yellow moon.

All of these elements add up to give Sober's paintings an unassuming charm. Catch them before they leave the equally as charming Passionfish Gallery on November 30th and head to Sascha's at 527 N. Charles Street until Jan. 12.