Thomas Anthony Pfannerstill Sold at Auction Prices

Tom Pfannerstill is a studio artist who lives and works in Louisville, and exhibits in galleries locally and nationally. He is a versatile artist with a broad range of interests, and produces several series of works in different styles and media.

He is best known for his found object works- trompe l’oeil recreations of common, everyday objects- paint brushes, studio clothes, cigar butts, street trash and even donuts. These life-size, carved and painted, meticulously detailed pieces deal with concepts of consumerism and waste, and how these objects age as they pass through time. Other works use these found objects as media, utilizing these found bits to make ’quilts,’ large pieces in traditional quilt patterns made from cigarette packages, aluminum cans or broom and mop handles.

A series of portrait heads explore the issues of chance, identity and personality. The life-size, polychrome plaster sculptures all start the same- as a casting of the artist’s head- but then are altered to represent other archetypes, characters and possibilities.

Another group of works probe concepts of art and presentation, represented by images of still life or interiors in over-large, painted gold frames. They are pieced together from small bits of wood so they have a bit of inherent Cubist feel. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality in much of Pfannerstill’s work, but in these pieces the humor element comes to the forefront, but does not overwhelm the seriousness of the homage to art and artists from the past.