About

Brief Biography

Werner Liepolt is a painter and draftsman whose landscapes, portraits and still lifes grow out of sustained, attentive observation. Working in oil, graphite, silverpoint, and pastels, he is drawn to faces, plants, roots, and familiar objects that bear the marks of growth, age, use, and change.

Liepolt’s portraits favor psychological presence over polished likeness. Close viewpoints, dark grounds, and expressive handling give particular weight to a sitter’s gaze, posture, and self-possession. His still lifes approach the visible world with intensity. Vegetables, flowers, bulbs, vessels, and domestic objects become individual presences—sometimes abundant and sensual, sometimes fragile, weathered, or slightly uncanny. Landscapes grow from that moment when being in a place reveals a fresh insight or a small epiphany.

Throughout his work, observation is primary followed by interpretation. Forms may be compressed, exaggerated, or allowed to emerge from worked and layered surfaces. Liepolt is less interested in producing an idealized image than in discovering what sustained looking can reveal. His drawings retain the searching movement of the hand, while his paintings preserve revisions, textures, and traces of their making.

Attention to character, gesture, and human experience has appeared in different forms throughout Liepolt’s life. Early in his career, he was a playwright whose work was produced by Wynn Handman at the American Place Theatre in New York and developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. His movie, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, attained cult horror movie status.

A teacher in the Westport Public Schools for forty years. During a sabbatical in the 1980’s he worked closely with the Veterans Ensemble Theater at the Public Theater. During another sabbatical, he pursued advanced graduate studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he also managed a computer laboratory and taught courses. Apple Computer named him an Apple Distinguished Educator, and he was also named a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at UCSC. Mentored by George Tabori (director of the Berliner Ensemble), he was a close friend and collaborator of Jamie Hammerstein and consulted for both the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization and the Carl Sagan Foundation.

Liepolt holds a B.A. from Union College, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MEd from Teachers College. A longtime resident of Westport, Connecticut, he is active in the community’s cultural and civic life.

Liepolt’s work returns repeatedly to a common question: what becomes visible when we look long enough? How do the eye and hand capture what the mind sees? Whether confronted with a human face or the tangled roots of a bulb, he seeks the inner life of outward forms—and the dignity, vulnerability, and persistence carried within them.

Works Shown

School’s Out. Seven Arts Gallery. June 2014

25th Annual Juried Student Art Show. Silvermine Arts Center. April 2015

26th Annual Juried Student Art Show. Silvermine Arts Center. June 2016

Members Exhibition. Connecticut Pastel Society. March 2017

ArtWorks 2017 juried, at the Somes Gallery, Mount Desert Island, Maine by the Rockefeller Land and Garden Trust

Four Acts. juried. Lyme Art Association March-April 2019

Historic Grounds & Modern Gardens – Juried Exhibition Lockwood Matthews Mansion, Norwalk, Ct. April 11 – June 23, 2019. 

Fresh Expressions. Juried. Lyme Art Association August 9-September 21, 2019. 

Mark Twain Library Art Show. Juried. Redding, Ct. December 6-21, 2019

Mather Homestead “Dappled Stone” permanent collection.

Land and Sea. Juried  Lyme Art Association. October 9-November 19, 2020

Carriage Barn Members Art in the Windows 

Carriage Barn Members Art Show 2022

Mark Twain Library Art Show. Juried. Redding, Ct. December, 2022

Carriage Barn Members Art Show 2023

Mark Twain Library Art Show. Juried. Redding, Ct. December, 2023

Stillness. Juried. Lyme Art Association. April 19-May 29, 2025.

==Juried  Lyme Art Association