Chesterton's Gregg Hertzlieb leads a life many artists around the region would envy.

By day, Hertzlieb works as the director and curator of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University. When he punches out there, he turns to his easel, creating his own art and exhibiting his works at galleries throughout the area.

"The most enjoyable thing is that I get to be around art all day," he said.

"I get to think about it and talk about it, and then I get to create it. It's nice to be able to enjoy it and then to be able to share that enjoyment with other people."

Exhibiting current works at Highland's Uncle Freddy's Gallery through Jan. 3, Hertzlieb, who was born in Highland and reared in Merrillville, received his master's in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He has served as the director and curator of the Brauer Museum for the last eight and a half years and has lived in Chesterton for the last decade and a half.

In addition to his work at VU, Hertzlieb also holds lectures and forums at Uncle Freddy's for each of the gallery's new exhibits.

"It serves as a great educational component to the gallery," Hertzlieb said of his lectures.

"It allows the people to have a better opportunity to connect with the art."

Hertzlieb's paintings on display at Uncle Freddy's are, according to the artist, the latest installments in a long-running series titled "Natural Selection."

His watercolor and ink paintings feature recurring subjects such as moths, beets, fish, cardinals and plants, to name a few.

Each of the "Selection" paintings are numbered, he said, to allow viewers to view the growth of his subjects in sequence.

"It's about the whole idea of watching things evolve or change into other things," Hertzlieb said of his series. "They're all meant to be light-hearted.

Not funny necessarily, but to kind of make you smile.

"I don't think of (the painting subjects) to mean anything specific," he said.

"I guess 'comforting' would be the best way to describe that."

Exhibiting alongside Hertzlieb at Uncle Freddy's is fellow region-based painter Joe Olah.

"Joe and I, we take different approaches to our artwork, but I think we both work from our imagination," Hertzlieb said.

"We both use kind of a surrealist style."