Biography

Born in Festus Missouri, Floyd Alsbach (the eldest of four born to F.H. & Shirley Alsbach between 1958 & 1962).  An ambitious, rough edged, blue-collar household, Alsbach’s workaholic parents gradually dug themselves out of deep poverty and into success.  The price was a broken family.  Not an uncommon story in the tumultuous 1960’s, and a well from which Alsbach draws to this day.

 Alsbach began taking art classes with friends at St. Pius X high school as a way to meet girls.  “When I was introduced to painting that was it, I had found my thing, besides I quickly discovered that I was far better at art than girls.” Getting his BFA from Columbia College, and MFA across town at the Univ. of Missouri at Columbia, Alsbach taught at UMC (MIZZOU) & Central Methodist College supplementing his income working as a carpenter.  He now teaches studio art at Missouri Valley College.

 Married in ’86 to graphic artist and long time girlfriend Lynda Mead, in 1987 Alsbach had his first one-person show in NY at Blue Mountain Gallery.  While in NY for the three-week run of the show Alsbach was offered a job, a relationship with a commercial gallery (M-13), and a bright future if he would stay.  He joined Ward Nasse Gallery a Co-op on Prince St, and remains a member buthe didn’t stay in NY.  “Before long I was starving for color, I just couldn’t stand all the shades of gray, the sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the streets were gray, the ocean was flat steel gray, and central park was just another shade of gray, the size of an average farm back home completely un-natural.  I needed to see clean sky, healthy natural woods, a real river, wild animals, farmland, not a freshly mowed park and people studiously ignoring each other everywhere you look.  I guess I would have had a very different career if I had stayed, for me NY is a great place to to do things, not a place to sound great depths.  That requires a far less traveled path.”  The couple decided to settle in Lynda’s hometown, Marshall Missouri.  Marshall is a populated island in a great sea of rolling farm ground, rivers, ponds, woods, and pasture.

Painting most days, Alsbach has also worked as a teacher, a carpenter, and trashman to help support the couples family.”I tend to ask more questions, than offer answers in my work.  What is actually conventional, what is truly interesting, what is lastingly relevant, and what in truth… is not.”   The old  modern casual glance, “what you see is what you get” is really rather silly.