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Art & Antiques | May 2005
Emerging Artist
NAME
Rob Colvin
BIRTHPLACE and CURRENT HOME*
Chattanooga, Tennessee
* Accurate as of press time. Colvin now resides in New York
Price Range
$750–$4,000
Gallery Representatives
Anne Loucks Gallery 847.835.8500
George Billis Gallery 212.645.262
Plus, see Rob Colvin's Recent Work. http://www.colvinarts.com
DESCRIPTION OF WORK
Rob Colvin is a 28-year-old artist undergoing a transition from landscapes to still lifes. His evolving craft captures the oftentimes-severe essence of reality. Up until recently, he has worked exclusively outdoors, creating plein-air landscapes of open spaces, fields, rivers, even parking lots. Toward the end of last year, however, his artwork traveled down a different path: still-life painting. "I don't really think of them as still-life paintings, though," he says. "What are bananas nailed to a wall?" Colvin's current oil-on-linen paintings derive from commonplace items with a beautifully tragic story, such as an art mannequin falling into a tin can for pickles. He adds that this inspiration is similar to how his plein-air work came to fruition but notes that "the space is flattened and more severe."
METHOD OF WORK
A realist by definition, the nature of Colvin's approach is painting directly what he sees but with unexpected abstract layers of depth and humor. "I don't plan my paintings," he says. Placing the "emphasis on immediacy of experience" and making the paintings "direct and unmediated," Colvin says that whether it's a still life or an open-air work, he paints in the moment, on site, with little to no additions later. "This process has always been with me, even when I made the move into plein-air landscapes," he says. "Now that I work on still-life paintings, the process is the same." Colvin's technique consequently finds him painting a different subject than he originally intended. For example, Colvin has often picked a view to paint, then turned 180 degrees and painted what was in the opposite direction, revealing an entirely new experience.
FAVORITE SUBJECT MATTER
From bananas and plastic bags to industrial factory scenes to lush landscapes, Colvin's subjects possess an eclectic range. "My paintings are about nothing or absence as much as they are about something," he says. "In the landscape, I like to paint the negative space more than the objects. I see landscape painting as space painting, environments with a certain feeling."
ARTISTIC PHILOSOPHY
"My paintings are conditioned by my intuitive reactions to spaces or environments and by my feelings," Colvin notes. "Like an existentialist," he says he finds tragedy in "anything serious, threatening or fated." Whether there is "a sense of melancholy" or "a very dry or dark humor," Colvin relates his theory on life or the lack thereof "in varying degrees of subtlety or directness." He's quick to point out, though, that "the tragic isn't the whole story. There is also the redemptive side. I think the good will eventually win out. I don't want to make any paintings that have any one feeling; life is more complicated." Colvin also seeks a religious truth in his works and relies on his trust in the search for what he calls "the liminal, deferred, abstracted, pre-verbal."
BIGGEST BREAK
Colvin has been bolder than most for his age, especially when he was in his late teens. For example, he describes himself as "naive" for walking into a Chattanooga gallery when he was just 16 or 17, embracing his freshly painted art on a Frederick's canvas, asking how he could sell it. However, his instinct was right: The gallery allowed Colvin to display his work in a "clothesline" show (literally, the works were hung on clothesline), which gave him a jump on his peers. When Anne Loucks, owner of the eponymous Chicago-based gallery, signed him, Colvin began to learn about pushing himself for others. "She took a risk on me, given my age [24]," he says. "I try to show my appreciation by continually improving my work. It is all I really have to give."
MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE
"Two painting professors from two different schools were quite influential in my development," Colvin says. Ed Kellogg at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where Colvin received his B.A. in philosophy and religion, guided Colvin away from abstraction and into landscape painting. And Colvin says Dan Gustin (Art & Antiques' February 2004 Emerging Artist) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where Colvin received his B.F.A. in painting and visual communications) "pushed me further into observational painting and gave me an ethos to making work that was honest and direct." He names Fairfield Porter as a muse, mainly for his critical writings, as well as his paintings. An avid reader, Colvin draws philosophical inspiration from poet R.S. Thomas, Søren Kierkegaard, Alasdair MacIntyre and abstract artists such as Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning.
ONE EXPERT'S OPINION
"Rob Colvin's paintings remind me of a saying by Fairfield Porter: 'Make everything more
beautiful,'" says John T. Spike, director of the Florence International Biennial of
Contemporary Art. "As Americans of the 20th and 21st centuries, Colvin and Porter are
agreed on the importance of painting our own landscape. Metal and bricks are a part of it—why not make the best of it?"
FAVORITE PIECE
"My favorite piece is always the one I have just completed," says Colvin. "I will like
it for about two weeks and then start finding all kinds of problems with it.
After a month, it looks terrible to me, like some kind of skeleton in my closet."
One piece he does still like is "Silent Night," an oil on canvas that he painted
during the Christmas season two years ago. It reveals much about his artistry.
Created in the dark parking lot of a strip mall late in the evening after the masses
of shoppers had returned home to their families, Colvin calls the work "depressing"
in "the way that pre-Christmas, pre-holiday season is—it's so crass, and it just kind of makes you feel empty."
AWARDS AND OTHER ACCOLADES
Colvin has been stirring things up since his teenage years when he was the youngest artist in the juried "Art Spectrum" show at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, in 1995, and he has been flourishing ever since. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago awarded Colvin with a merit scholarship in 1996. In 2003 he studied at the International School of Art with Dan Gustin and John Moore in Umbria, Italy.
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