Humpty Dumpty Adieu 2009/2013

 Humpty Dumpty 2009

Painted Over 2013

I did Humpty Dumpty in 2009.  It captured perfectly the Humpty Dumpty in all of us(note: my face on Humpty):  precarious, proud, confused as he starts to topple.  I especially loved the bilious background, a color combination that speaks of sea sickness and being out of balance, but quite beautiful.   Alas, Humpty sat in my storage for four years and last week I pulled him out and covered him up. The only evidence of Humpty is the shape of the figure under the green-you can faintly see his head and his raised arm, the rest is  swallowed by the paint. Humpty will become the ground for a new piece, which is of course, is yet to be determined. Because I am so enamoured of the new painting, it may cause trouble when I go to form the image, and it may also have to be sacrificed(painted over) to appease the greedy art gods.

*For those of you who consider yourselves to be true and die hard Holly Roberts fans, I am posting a link to a short(well, not really short,it's 30 minutes)video produced by Catherine Edelman of me talking about my work in my most recent show with her.  http://www.edelmangallery.com/artiststalk.htm

Woman with Child and Water 1996

“Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.” 
― Nicole Krauss, Great House

“- A mother, a real mother with a little child, thinks day and night about the welfare of the little one in her arms. A mother knows what dangers the child will have to encounter as he grows up. She does not let the father reassure her when he makes light of things and says that the children have to find their own way.
A mother worries, for she carries the burden, and she often sees much deeper than the father just where the child is in danger.”
― Johann Christoph Blumhardt

“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.” 
― Debra Ginsberg

This painting is about the terrible fear one has as a parent, knowing that something bad might happen--probably will happen--and that you are powerless to do anything about it: your child is born with a hole in his heart which can't sustain him, your son carelessly turns left in front of on going traffic with his brother seated beside him,  your daughter begins to cover her wrists with bracelets to hide the scars of her cutting.  

Icarus(not Listening), two versions 2013 and 2012

 First Version 2012  Icarus

Second Version 2013 Icarus(Not Listening)

ICARUS: The main story told about Icarus is his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned.  Wikepida

In June of 2012, I finished Icarus.  Not long after that, I realized that his right arm was slightly shorter than his left, and I knew I would have to redo it.  The piece sat on the wall for the next six months, until it was requested for an exhibition.  I had little time to get the piece framed and make the repair, but I knew I had the weekend to correct and varnish it before I packed it to go out that Monday.  As I worked on taking off, and then replacing the arm and hand, something bothered me about the piece, something very low key, but there nonetheless.  The next thing I knew I was pulling out my "birds" folder and looking for small bird bodies to place on that left arm.  The perfect bird ended up being a Kingfisher I had photographed that had crashed into a window, then recovered and flown away.  He had been angry and annoyed, and had threatened me with his sharp beak when I came too close with my camera.  

I understood as I attached  the Kingfisher on Icarus's arm that he was trying to warn Icarus, and that Icarus wasn't having anything to do with it.  I loved that the bird was telling Icarus about the dangers of not being careful, having just crashed himself.  He understood the consequences of   recklessness and lack of attention, of what happens when you don't notice the world around you.

Blind Woman Praying 1994

I've been working as a professional artist for over thirty years, and it never ceases to amaze me at what transpires before I start. Here's how it always goes:

 1.  excitement about getting started
 2.  buying lots of materials I don't really need
 3.  putting off getting started
 4.  more putting off getting started
 5.  getting anxious
 6.  getting depressed
 7.  wondering what the purpose of my art making is all about anyway
 8.  coming up with reasons not to start
 9.  coming up with reasons not to be an artist
10.  crying and making my husband worry about my mental health
11.  getting started

It's such a leap of faith.  For one thing, I have no conscious idea of where I'm going, what I will be doing, or what I will end up with.  I have lots of ideas that I've gathered since the last time I worked, and it comforts me to collect those ideas and write them down, to assure myself that I do have some direction and  purpose( of course, 99% of those ideas will fall by the wayside once I get started).  All of this obfuscating is a pathetic attempt on my part not to have to go into the fire, not to have to struggle and be lost, not to have to feel chaotic and confused.  But mostly it's about not wanting to surrender, to turn myself over to that power that I don't have any control over.  And even though  I always know that this force, when I finally give over to it, allows me be the very best I can be, I still have a terrible time letting go.  It finally just boils down to faith, and trusting that once I get started, all will be okay.

Basket 2013, Benefit "Picnic for the Planet"

Pieces for the cover

Paper Mache eggs after being painted and crackled

Lid after being crackled

Prepping the basket

"Bad" eggs

Inside cover

Outside of basket

I recently received a request to donate a piece for a benefit to be held for the Nature Conservancy and the Farmer's Market, organized by Patina Gallery in Santa Fe.  I was to create something based on a picnic basket which the Nature Conservancy would provide.  The name of the benefit was Picnic for the Planet, .

I don't like doing benefits, and I don't like doing auctions.  As artists, we are constantly being asked to donate work for  causes, good and not so good.  We receive nothing in return, usually not even the name of the person who bought our piece for the benefit, and when there are rules and  limits attached, I get even more annoyed.  That being said, I decided to say no, which of course didn't take into account  my creative self.   That creative self was intrigued: a basket, eggs, a bird.  Hmmmmm.  Interesting.  And so I was hooked.  I planned most of it, which is something I almost never do, and I was pleased that I could actually kind of call the shots.  The "eggs" are paper mache rocks made by my good friend and artist Laurie Tumer, http://www.laurietumer.com/ given to me years ago when Laurie was getting rid of stuff.  The bird was loosely based on another image I had done called "Bad Eggs" http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2012/01/bad-eggs-2009.html. It seemed right for this cause and this particular picnic basket.

Man Being Chased 1991

In Chicago from 1991-1992, I tried to run for exercise on a regular basis.  We lived about six blocks from Lake Michigan, so that was my course; over to the lake, then along the shore for a mile or so, then back. On one of my runs two men sped by me.  I thought to myself, "How great, they're racing each other".  Well of course, this wasn't the case.  The leading man had stolen the chasing man's wallet and and the chasing man was trying to retrieve it.  I came home from my run to paint this painting.

Mexican Folk Artist, Anonymous 2012

No Te Rindas en La Primer Caida: Don't give up in the first fall.

In December of this year I was invited to give a workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACO).  I hadn't been to Mexico in years, and was reminded how much I loved the Mexican people-their warmth, their humor and their openness.  I was also reminded of how much I have been influenced by Mexican Folk Art.

In Oaxaca I found a number of  little paintings on aluminum  and bought seven($6 each).  Based very loosely on the Mexican Retablo, a Latin American devotional painting, they are humorous, often sexual, and truly wonderful, all six inches by five inches, hung with a piece of heavy thread from a small nail hole in the metal. They are where I want to go with my own work:  essential, honest, and simply painted with no fuss or muss.  I love the loosely painted yellow background on the slick metal surface with the overpainting of the bossy little skeleton wrestler .  Red, black, and white-how much simpler can you get? In real life, the Mexican wrestlers wear masks much like the one our little skeleton is wearing, so he is able to be both a "real" skeleton and a "real" wrestler at the same time. And finally, what a great life message, "don't give up in the first fall".  Truly words to live by.