Born on June 5, 1953, in Cincinnati, Ohio, John Peter Kluesener is rapidly emerging as one of America’s most talented contemporary landscape artists.

He began his life on one of the seven hills which overlook the beautiful Ohio River Valley City of Southeastern Ohio. At a very early age the cultural richness of the city began to influence Kluesener’s natural talent. His mother, a successful painter in her own rite, often took her large family to the prestigious Cincinnati Art Museum. There, John became greatly inspired by the paintings of John Singer Sargent. Later, as a student of Robert Hasselhoff, his high school portfolio was determined to be worthy of
a scholarship award to the famed Cincinnati Art Academy.

While a student, the lush farmlands and gently rolling hills of his homeland served as a backdrop and subject matter for his early works. The seeds of inspiration were beginning to germinate in the psyche of artist John Peter Kluesener, “My work is, of course, inspired by the great impressionist painters of France.
The play of light as it falls on the land is where I begin. My intense love and desire to ‘commune’ with the physiography of the land that I see before me continues the inspirational process. Finally, the physical action of ‘the stroke’ of color applied to the surface becomes the sometimes violent, culmination of my
expression.”

Indeed, Kluesener draws on many of the techniques of those who have traveled the same roads before him. As Daniel Brown, American critic and curator has noted, “the great strength of Kluesener’s work includes his brilliant understanding and handling of the interactive properties of color and light. The radical brushwork of the Impressionists is built upon by him in the strength and confidence of his own marks on the paper. Kluesener’s articulation of his color is bold and daring and reflects his understanding of the work of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse, as well as the original Impressionists. This blend of influences emphasizes the sophistication of Kluesener’s work. Kluesener’s colors are derived from nature as filtered through the Impressionists and Post Impressionists. The colors are significantly heightened and distorted, emphasizing the pristine quality of the landscape.”

This sense of pristine, open space in a Kluesener landscape is aptly contributed through his consummate understanding of the photo processes. His professional experience as a commercial and technical photographer has added to his complete understanding of “the scene.”

In his essay, Daniel Brown eloquently concludes, “As Americans and others around the world begin to come to grips with the host of environmental concerns which face us, artwork like John Kluesener’s may help to remind us of what we have to lose if our natural environment becomes irrevocably polluted and decimated. Since ecological concerns are transitional, Kluesener’s landscapes provide an opportunity for us to use the strength of our ties with the land in service of saving it. Kluesener’s paintings, then, are beautiful landscapes, very successful works of art, and more than timely and relevant in speaking to our environmental awareness. Outstanding artwork, like John Kluesener’s, always succeeds on many different levels. Kluesener’s work should certainly prove that contemporary art can be visually pleasing, as well as aesthetically complicated and socially concerned.”