Born in 1961 in West Bend, WI, Charles Dwyer graduated Valedictorian from the Milwaukee School of Art & Design in 1984. He enjoyed early recognition when the West Bend Art Museum exhibited his work in 1985. This success led to further exposure and exploration. Soon his creative passion led him to Europe where he was influenced by Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter and a teacher of Gustave Klimt, and by Sonia Delaunay, a French painter whose palette affects art and design to this day. Other influences from this journey included Alexei Jawlensky, a German expressionist from the Der Blaue Reiter group (including Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and August Macke) and Matisse. It was during this trip that Dwyer developed his fascination for the Expressionist movement, the decorative arts, and restoration– all elements which were to be influential in the development of his own unique vision.
Dwyer’s style mixes a strong abstract and design foundation with minutely and sensitively observed figure studies. Fascinated by the complexities of both the human form and the human mind, Dwyer finds inspiration for his art in the simplicity of the face, and expands on that in his love for doing portraiture. In the end, Dwyer’s women are beautiful, enigmatic, colorful, reflective, inviting, dazzling, but always just beyond our reach.