Don’t get distracted by the vibrant colors: Rob Hitzig’s paintings are all about surface. At the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery, the Montpelier furniture maker turned painter presents a wealth of new works, many of them large, that showcase his attention to process and form. Paintings such as “Installation Information” highlight a humble material — construction-grade oriented strand board, or OSB — by carefully inlaying the plywood into a dynamic collection of bright stripes. By sanding, painting, sanding again and shellacking ad nauseam, the artist builds glossy, luscious layers that allow the light to play off the prosaic material as though it were the finest mahogany. Some works, such as “Laundry Day,” augment the wood’s choppy texture with gold leaf — perhaps a reference to the messy work happening next door under the Statehouse’s golden dome. We can’t know for sure, as Hitzig’s project eschews definitive meanings. “If my art does any good,” he says in his artist’s statement, “I hope that it undermines certainty.”
‘Rob Hitzig: Planting Confusion, Sowing Doubt’
On view through March 27 at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Surface Level”
This article appears in February 18 • 2026.
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