The floors of Robert Wieferich’s basement are lined with hundreds of paintings, with hundreds more scattered throughout his house. The volume of the Freeport artist’s work possibly amounts to over 1,000 pieces just in his home, a figure he said was based off an attempt to count them years ago, but he ran out of steam around number 700.

The 73-year-old artist, who has been painting for more than 50 years, describes himself as an impressionist. Instead of honing into every detail of the scenes he captures, he focuses on creating an atmosphere, depicting a wide variety of subject matter ranging from sports to landscapes. Many of his pieces have been exhibited in Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth.

The most recent exhibit, “Deep in the Woods,” which showcased a series of outdoor landscape paintings this past spring, brought him his first review — a February Portland Press Herald piece by arts and entertainment writer Jorge S. Arango, who noted that he had reservations about reviewing landscape work in Maine.

“Frankly, to paraphrase a bizarre 19th-century idiom, you can’t swing a dead cat in the Pine Tree State without hitting a Maine landscape/seascape painter,” Arango wrote.

But to Arango, Wieferich’s work had a “thrilling take” and the paintings were “unabashedly beautiful in their familiarity, and their apricity is more palpable here than in any similar scenes” — a line that drew a smirk from Wieferich.

“All I care about is beauty,” Wieferich said, explaining his reaction. He noted that in today’s art world, many are expected to have profound commentary, such as on politics or global events, seeping through their work on gallery walls. “But you know, that’s not how I go about the work. I’m always just looking for composition.”

Some of the draw to Wieferich’s work is that he builds his paintings in three or four layers. Starting with a neutral base of blues and tans, he carefully introduces other colors, lighter hues and more detail in each stage of the painting. The underpainting technique, while seemingly straightforward, requires decades of skill to get just right. As a well-weathered artist, Wieferich knows exactly how to incorporate a new layer and new colors without making it “jump,” or conflict with the wider composition.

Landscape art, a style featured frequently throughout Wieferich’s portfolio, is all about capturing intriguing and beautiful scenes. But Wieferich strikes a balance between capturing landscapes on canvas and incorporating methods that, at times, stem from non-impressionist styles.

Perhaps this approach ties back to Jean-Édouard Vuillard, a symbolist French painter who created maximalist pieces in the late 1800s and early 1900s (and someone whom Wieferich said he takes inspiration from).

Though not an impressionist like Wieferich, Vuillard made each minor part in his paintings as prominent as the focal point. In his 1899 painting titled “Woman with Child,” a slew of textile patterns mix with the soft, blue figure of a woman facing her baby, whose face nearly melts into the wallpaper. Though a focal point is present (the woman and child), the painting demands viewers to consider all facets of the scene, such as the walls and the furniture.

“I think [Vuillard’s] whole message was to make the whole — as much as you can — equally important,” Wieferich said. “That’s what I mean about creating a composition — that composition is like using the entire canvas or paper but trying to make the whole canvas interesting so your eye will travel around in all different parts of the canvas without any interruption.”

‘From the concept all the way to the finish — its all yours’

Without having a background in art aside from formal training in college, Wieferich said that he does not have many other influences in the art world, aside from realist painter George Bellows who created depictions of New York City life during the early 1900s. Instead, Wieferich takes much of his inspiration from writing.

“A lot of my influences [that] get me started for certain subject matter is literature, actually — books that I read about certain things,” he said. “And I get interested and I go and experiment. I have a lot of writers that I’ve read that influenced me and kind of gave me direction for what I wanted to do.”

Among greats like novelist and journalist Ernest Hemingway and sports writer Rodger Angell, wilderness writers like Peter Matthiessen also influenced Wieferich to choose subject matter in nature. Pieces Matthiessen wrote about migratory birds, for instance, even inspired the artist to go to the Great Plains in North Dakota and produce a painting of a large flock of geese taking flight.

But nature is just one of many subjects that Wieferich devotes his talent to. Paintings of baseball players, cityscapes and views from Maine towns are all featured in his work. Being able to fully control subject matter is one of the rewards of being a painter, according to Wieferich.

“I don’t want to take credit for creating this thought,” he said, explaining that the philosophy came from a unnamed woman in one of his college classes decades ago. “[But] you’re in control of it — all by yourself right from the beginning. From the concept all the way to the finish — its all yours. You can do whatever you want. It’s pretty rare to have that.”

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