Paintings that don't smell like the art world

Visit Norbert Schwontkowski's website and browse through the work ("bilden") or click on the long rectange above this text and you will see one of the paintings I refer to in the next sentence. Poodles on pianos, eyeballs on chairs, a monk contemplating a row of washing machines, his laundry basket empty at his feet. He showed last year in Dublin and caused a little ripple of excitement among a few people I know who love painting. The whiff of the authentic about them. They feel as if the painter is freely thinking; he's not standing in the way of allowing anything into the paintings. Schwontkowski says he is "putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible." One art writer (Christa Burger) about NS's painting wrote: " He paints as if he were devout."