NW artist's works on display at home, abroad

Paintings by Northwest Missouri State University Associate Professor Armin Mühsam have been placed on permanent display in Eastern Oregon University's Inlow Hall.

A suite of 12 original works by Mühsam, comprising 19 canvases, was installed last month. The project was made possible through Oregon’s Percent for Art in Public Places program, which commissioned the Maryville artist and educator following a call for competitive submissions.

Mühsam personally delivered the paintings to the campus in La Grande, which is located in the heart of Oregon's Blue Mountains.

"These pieces express the content of what I want to communicate in my art, the complex and ambivalent relationship that our technological society has with the land and its non-human inhabitants," said Mühsam, a committed environmentalist.

Mühsam’s work is also appearing this month in two solo shows at the Albright Art Gallery in Concord, Mass., and the Ambacher Contemporary gallery in Munich, Germany, the artist's native country.

In addition, the Munich gallery is publishing Mühsam’s first hardcover catalog, a 64-page book featuring his work over the past four years along with two scholarly essays.

In October, Mühsam paintings will be exhibited at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art in New Harmony, Ind. He also recently accepted an invitation to mount a solo show beginning Nov. 8 in Hamburg, Germany.

Mühsam, who has taught art at Northwest for a dozen years, said he seeks to teach students that a passion to work creatively can be become more than just a hobby.

"The artist is a cultural agent. He adds to a society’s intellectual and spiritual wealth," Mühsam said. "The teacher of art, if he or she does their job well, passes on knowledge and life experience to the future contributing members of society – the students.

"I believe my own students can benefit from my success as an artist because they see it as one example of the kind of life that I am trying to prepare them for."

Mühsam holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich and a master of fine arts degree in painting from Montana State University in Bozeman. Earlier in his career, he taught painting and drawing at Munich Community College and at various private art schools. He also edited the visual arts section of "Applaus," a monthly magazine covering Munich's cultural scene.