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Press Stories about Bremer Paintings
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US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, March 4 2009 Washington Whispers:Talk about a life change. By Paul Bedard
For Former Envoy L. Paul Bremer, Vermont Looks Better Than Iraq L.
Paul Bremer, the early U.S. administrator in Iraq, has gone artist. He just E-mailed his pals about his new venture—selling
oil paintings of his fave Vermont scenes for $250 to $400. "I launched my website for my paintings this week, www.bremerenterprises.com. Most of the works on it now are scheduled to be in my next exhibition in Vermont at the end of the summer.
Hope you enjoy them," he E-mailed. His paintings are classic Americana country scenes. "I only started two years
ago. In terms of artistic description, you would call them landscape oils, mostly Vermont, and I'm sort of a realist school,
I guess you would say," Bremer tells us. "I studied art history at college and have always been interested in art
and particularly in the landscape painting in France at the end of the 19th Century and early 20th Century, and in California—the
Impressionists, the American and French Impressionists. I've always loved their paintings. And it was just a question
of finally finding the time available to do something I've always wanted to do, which was to learn to paint."
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CNN political ticker March 6 2009 March 5, 2009Former Iraq administrator Bremer now a painterPosted: 05:15 PM ETWASHINGTON (CNN) – L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq,
has a new trade: painting.Bremer has launched Web
site promoting his work, mostly oil paintings on canvas or panels, depicting wintery landscapes in Vermont, where he has “an
old farm house.” He’s also holding an exhibition — his second — in the Vermont town of Grafton this
summer.He said he refined his skills at a school in
Glen Echo, Maryland. “I started painting about two years ago,” he said. “It’s something that always
interested me.”Bremer currently does consulting
work and serves on a number of boards in the Washington area. He said he’s donating the proceeds from his sales to the
Chester and Grafton Historical Societies in Vermont.
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Washington Times, March 17 2009
L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, is an artist. For the past two
years, the one-time diplomat has been painting bucolic landscapes inspired by trips to the Maryland countryside and his vacation
house in Vermont. He recently posted his art on a Web site (www.bremerenterprises.com) after selling about half of his canvases
at an exhibition in Vermont in September.
"I've always been interested in art," Mr. Bremer says by telephone. "I grew up in an atmosphere
of art and studied art history at Yale." His
childhood home was a 1949 modernist design by noted Harvard-trained architect Eliot Noyes in New Canaan, Conn., near Philip
Johnson's famous Glass House. His mother taught art and architectural history at the University of Bridgeport.
Mr. Bremer says he decided to take up painting
after finishing his 2006 book, "My Year in Iraq." These days, he serves on several corporate boards but devotes
most of his spare time to painting and cooking. He has taken art classes taught by local painter Walter Bartman at the Yellow
Barn Studio in Glen Echo and plans to sign up for another course this spring.
"I
am just a beginner," he says. Most of his canvases
are painted outdoors to capture local landmarks such as Swain's Lock on the C&O Canal and Poole's General Store
in Seneca. His winter scenes of snowy barns in New England start with a plein-air sketch and are completed indoors with the
aid of photographs. His inspiration? "I particularly
like the Hudson River School and French and American impressionism." His favorite artist is Paul Cezanne. "His blues and blue-greens appeal to me and the way he uses
planes and blocks of color," Mr. Bremer says.
Time spent in Baghdad has had no influence on his painting, he says, but he uses
Iraqi ingredients such as pomegranate molasses and dried limes in his gourmet cooking. He is glad Iraq's ransacked National Museum in Baghdad reopened last month and notes
that "a lot of stuff that was taken during the looting was returned [to the museum]. I would love to get back there to
see it, but for security reasons, that isn't going to happen anytime soon." The fledgling artist will have a second exhibition of his work in September in Grafton, Vt.,
where he plans to display about 25 works priced from $300 to $500. Proceeds will go to the Grafton Historical Society. "Art is work, but enjoyable work," says Mr. Bremer, who
is thinking about writing another book on his experiences in Iraq. "When it's done, you get feeling of satisfaction."
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Washington Post, March 20 2009
A Painter of the Reconstructionist School By
Al KamenFriday, March 20, 2009
Planning an early fall trip in New England? If you're anywhere near Grafton,
Vt., you might want to stop in at the Hunter Gallery to see some 25 works by landscape artist L. Paul Bremer, a career
Foreign Service officer and terrorism consultant best known for his somewhat rocky tenure as President Bush's early Iraq
viceroy. These are not scenes from that
adventure, but oil paintings -- he's been taking painting lessons at a studio and gallery in Glen Echo for two years --
done here and in Vermont, where he vacations. It's
something Bremer said he's long been interested in doing.
"I
studied art history in college," he told us yesterday. He said he has sold a "couple dozen" pieces, and the
ones in the Grafton exhibition go for $300 to $500 (proceeds to the Grafton Historical Society). He calls his work "American realism" ("my teacher tells me I have
to get more abstract"), and his method is in the "plein air" tradition of French and Italian artists, he said.
That means, for example, he drives or walks around the woods, finds a scene he likes, and then pulls out his easel and goes
to work. "If it's really cold" -- it was 15 below zero this winter -- "sometimes I'll sketch on the
site" and then head back to the studio, he says.
We're
not expert on these things, so we asked Washington Post art critic Paul Richard to evaluate. "His work is in
the tradition of 'Our Town,' " Richard said, of the "covered bridge and the stalwart New England fisher
folk of pre-modern New England." The paintings are "taken from nature, rural, untroubled, snowy pure," he added,
"ostensibly apolitical but deeply patriotic."
Winston Churchill, to name another
statesman-turned-artist, was "more French and daubed," Richard said, "where Bremer is much more reliant on
the organizing power of the straight roof and the fence rail and the circle of the wagon wheel." It's "idyllic
America" in the tradition of perhaps Andrew Wyeth, Grandma Moses, and Currier and Ives.
Former powerful officials often turn to painting. "It's a benign and anodyne activity,"
a way of "removing oneself from more difficult thoughts," Richard said. We're thinking here of former Reagan
chief of staff Donald T. Regan or former congressman James Traficant's paintings of horses while in
prison.
But is Bremer's stuff any good? "He doesn't have the high finish you'd expect from a professional,"
Richard said, but "his work is benign, heartfelt and inexpensive -- priced about where it should be." Bremer told us he'll also do commissioned work -- but not
portraits. "I'll stick to landscapes." So maybe a bucolic scene of the Green Zone at sunrise? Baghdad at night
illuminated by tracer fire?
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