About

Noah Overby is a visual artist who creates contemporary paintings and works on paper. He studied drawing, painting and printmaking at The University of Washington in Seattle, Washington and Rome, Italy. He finds inspiration in the formal elements of art and design, the natural world, and the study of art history. He creates images which are derived from his personal fascinations while allowing him to explore materials and technique in a meditative process.

Here is how Noah describes his work:

I have different bodies of work which can vary in style, but I am always interested in the visual aesthetics of my painting, drawing or prints. Some of my work displays a pop aesthetic, while others are more naturalistic or abstract in style. The ability to represent form, space and objects on a flat canvas or paper has always been intriguing to me and I find the greatest interest in a piece when I can simultaneously draw attention to the flat surface of the support, the medium or process used to create the image and the subject portrayed.

I work in several media: acrylic paint, cut paper collage, woodblock or intaglio printing. I utilitze different processes because of the range of possibilities in those materials. The way a gouge cuts through wood lends a certain quality to the marks and informs the manner in which I craft imagery in that media. There is a certain power and richness in combining media. It brings alive the different componenets in ways that would not otherwise be possible.

 I have a fascination with clouds- I enjoy the portrayal of their fluid, swirling, bouyant forms and their tendency to lend themselves to abstraction. They are universal, but also contain an air of mystery. They can obscure, thinly veil, or give form to the invisible.

Currently I have been drawing from ancient Roman and Greek sculpture. They reveal an inherent beauty and eroticism. I find the smooth, idealized, perfection of their form contrasts marvelously with the broken, marred, crumbling effects that time and history has had on them.