Robert Louis Brodner Posner (Lou Posner) died on July 9, 2025, at the age of 82. Art was at the center of his life, and he devoted much of it to making art, exploring ideas, and continually learning. This website is an effort to share his work and artistic vision with others, offering visitors an opportunity to discover the paintings and the person behind them.

From early childhood in Trenton, New Jersey, art was an inseparable part of Lou’s life. His first creations were homemade cards and painted borders, early expressions of a lifelong urge to transform his surroundings. Though he pursued other studies—earning a B.A. in English from New York University and serving four years in the U.S. Navy—art consistently called him back.
During his service in Vietnam, a shipmate handed him a charcoal pad, and that simple act rekindled his creative life. He began sketching his fellow sailors and, upon returning home, committed fully to painting. What began as trial and error soon became disciplined self-education: he devoured books on technique, studied art history, visited museums, and learned to build his own stretchers and canvases.

In 1974, he left writing to paint full time. Self-taught yet determined, he sought precision in draftsmanship and freedom in experimentation. He exhibited widely at juried shows, community spaces, and museums; founded artists’ groups; taught privately; and published Posner’s Pocket Guide to Oil Painting. His work as a member of the Vietnam Veterans Art Group was especially meaningful, culminating in the inclusion of his work in Vietnam: Reflexes and Reflections, published by Harry N. Abrams in partnership with the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum.

Over the decades, he painted in attics, basements, and barns, from Indiana to Connecticut, constantly refining his vision. For Lou, painting was more than a craft; it was an evolving language that kept him in conversation with the greats who came before. He chronicled that journey in 26 volumes of journals combining writing, sketches, and records of every painting he made.

Art challenged, sustained, and surprised Lou throughout his life. Through it all, he remained guided by the joy of creation and the belief that true art never stops teaching the one who makes it.