Libertyville Artist Captures Whimsy of Lake Bluff

This month, the will mail out its annual community guide to about 12,000 of the communities’ residences. Libertyville artist Matt Goldsberry’s The Biggest Wave, a colorful depiction of Lake Michigan waves crashing against a bluff, will appear on the cover.

“To me, it’s indicative of one of my memories of the town,” Goldsberry said. “Big waves curving and churning, bluffs, and trees.”

A Libertyville resident, Goldsberry grew up in and attended .

“It happens to be one of the coolest places in the world to grow up,” he said. “It was just all about exploring woods, and ravines and beaches, and having a very tactile experience with mud and clay.”

Chamber Executive Director Joanna Rolek says the community guide’s cover image often is chosen each year from among photographs or artwork from area artists.

“It struck the fancy of all of us in the office, because it’s just a very charming, colorful, and whimsical way to look at waves crashing on the bluff,” Rolek, a 26-year resident of Lake Bluff, said of the painting. “He’s captured kind of a spirit and lightness of heart in this particular piece of art that just resonates.”

Love for Creativity

Goldsberry says he always has enjoyed drawing and painting, as well as photography, writing, music, and other creative outlets. While studying journalism and advertising at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, he filled his senior year schedule with several art classes.

“Those classes really took my painting from being just me attempting to do stuff to me starting to understand the science behind art,” Goldsberry said.

Throughout school and after graduation, Goldsberry found himself drawing T-shirt designs for certain school clubs, cartooning maps for a college magazine, and even creating his wedding invitations.

His love for the creative process led him to a career in advertising and graphic design, and finally to a love for his current work as a landscape designer and gardener.

“As much as I love drawing and painting, I love being outside in nature,” he said. “There’s something about being on a site at 6:30 in the morning, right when the sun comes up, and there’s fog or a dew on everything. It’s pretty awesome.”

Painting with Landscapes

The father of three has been designing landscapes for area homes and estates for 13 years, and says the process is similar to painting.

“All of the impressionists, and all of these paintings of gardens, well, they were painting what they were seeing,” he said. “I get to kind of create what eventually you could paint. But I’m just jumping the gun and painting with the landscape.”

Nature inspires many of Goldsberry’s works, which he often gives away as gifts. While he has sold a handful of pieces, he refers to his paintings as less of a profession and more of an “itch that’s got to get scratched.”

Four years ago, he joined the nonprofit Artists on the Bluff, where he has been able to further his abilities and talk with other like-minded artists.

“You can do art and you can really feel it like in a way where everything you do has a level of observation,” he said. “You can’t help but notice light and color and shadow. The way the air smells and feels.”

Goldsberry’s work will be on display at the Artists on the Bluff Art Show in June. The Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Chamber of Commerce Community Guide will be mailed to the communities’ residences the weekend of March 16, but Rolek says that anyone wishing to obtain a copy can contact the chamber at 1-847-234-4282.