tom berg is an artist known for his paintings of chairs which have been a focus of his work since his first chair paintings of the late 1970’s.  however, his work has also incorporated subjects as varied as farm animals, architecture, clothes lines, swimming pools and hand tools, painted in a manner that moves across modes of landscape painting, still life painting and portraiture.  he often paints his subject “en plein aire”, though treated in a manner somewhat skewed from a traditional approach to still life and landscape.  the work is characterized by its frontality and emphasis on the picture plane, and the artist’s attention to the geometry of composition,  executed with a painterly brush. the focus of the work seems to be more about confrontation and presence than with the identity of the objects portrayed, and the paintings move from humor and irony to contemplation and a kind of pathos.