Gainor Roberts
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Gainor Roberts
Gainor Roberts (born September 14, 1941) is an American artist known for still life and landscape paintings that explore color, form and symbolism. A classically trained artist in the realist tradition, Roberts calls herself “a fourth generation impressionist.” She combines impressionist brush techniques and intense color with attention to the distinctive—sometimes monumental—form of her objects and their placement in space. Roberts works in egg tempera, oil, pastel, watercolor and monotype.
In addition to teaching classes in drawing, painting and photography, Roberts has produced several monographs on painting technique.1 She is an advocate for traditional media and composition.2
Life Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, Roberts had an early interest in art that was not encouraged by her Quaker upbringing. She was exposed to art due to her great-great-aunt, Ellen Wetherald Ahrens,3 a well-known Victorian-era artist who had studied with Howard Pyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle and Thomas Eakins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eakins). While Roberts often skipped school to draw pictures at home, she had no formal training in art until age 18. Her family would not permit her to enter college as an art major. Instead she attended a summer program taught by the portrait and figure painter Robert Brackman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brackman), whose emphasis on classical technique and color was a defining influence. Roberts studied with Brackman in the summers while attending Elmira College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmira_College) as an English major. After graduating from Elmira, Roberts studied painting at the Art Students’ League (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Students_League_of_New_York) in NYC. Later she worked as a graphic artist.
In the mid 1970s, she became staff graphic artist at Mystic Seaport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Seaport). For almost a decade Roberts and her husband traveled around the country, living first on a 31-foot sailing sloop and then in an Airstream RV trailer. During this period, she had little opportunity for painting. In the late 1980s she returned to school in order to refresh her skills. Roberts studied at the National Academy of Design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_academy_of_design) in NYC with Mary Beth McKenzie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beth_Mckenzie ) and James Childs4, and at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_Academy_College_of_Fine_Arts ) in Old Lyme, Connecticut with Deane Keller. She also took workshops with Aaron Shikler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Shikler). In addition, Roberts studied sculpture at Lyme Academy with Laci de Gerenday.5
In the 1990s, Roberts began creating works in monotype and moved to Westerly, Rhode Island, where she and another artist ran their own gallery. In 2001 Roberts moved to Zephyrhills, Florida. She is Art Curator of the Carrollwood Cultural Center in Tampa, exhibits in several venues in the greater Tampa area and teaches classes and private students.
Roberts is a member of North Tampa Arts League, The Exhibiting Society of Artists (TESA), The Egg Tempera Society, National League of American Pen Women and an honorary member of the New England Monotype Guild.6
Egg Tempera and Genesis Series In 2003, Roberts began experimenting with the demanding medium of egg tempera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_tempera). She was drawn to it because of the luminous color still seen in medieval and early Renaissance masterworks.7 Roberts has written a monograph on the technique and now teaches master classes in egg tempera.
The Genesis Series, Roberts’ best known series of egg tempera paintings, represent a high point of her use of color and form to layer meaning into her work. The small (typically 6” x 8”) paintings are studies of organic form, sacramentalized by the radiant egg tempera color. All show the ovary of a fruit or vegetable, opened and frozen in time. The paintings tenderly examine the plant flesh and focus on the seeds, cradled and glistening with life.8
Feeling Series Roberts has been working for over 20 years on her Feeling Series, twelve paintings that represent individual emotions.9 The first ten are Anger, Fear, Grief, Inspiration, Jealousy, Joy, Loneliness, Love, Shame and Awe. Created in the tradition of great European still life studies that display a tableau of objects, sometimes intended to convey nature’s bounty, sometimes with religious or symbolic undertones,10 these paintings show an arrangement of objects within an intense, restricted color palette. Since our culture no longer has a shared language of symbols, the paintings are a challenge for contemporary viewers. They give clues to Roberts’ intellectual and sensory world, as traditional tropes of still life, like flowers and musical instruments, reappear in different paintings. Yet the meaning of each remains a mystery, to be understood only as part of the whole. The paintings convey the isolation of individual experience even as they attempt to transcend it by means of color, form and image.
1 www.ganior.biz/booklets_and_monographs./html 2 Carrollwood Patch, TITLE, January 25, 2012; New Tampa Neighborhood News, “Gainor Roberts Is December’s NTAL Artist Of The Month,” 16, no. 24, November 28, 2008, p. 38; The Tampa Tribune, Brandon edition, “Art Club Offers a Free Demonstration in Pastels,” January 7, 2007, p. 2; Pasco Times of the St. Petersburg Times, “A generous, lighted space to create,” March 11, 2006, p. 1; The Laker, “Works of Gainor Roberts of Zephyrhills at Horizon Line Gallery,” September 14, 2005, p. 19-20; The Sun, “Art Show Expected to Draw Large Crowd,” 28, ed 8, January 30, 2002, p 21. 3 Ahrens has three paintings in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; for thumbnails see http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/results.html?searchTxt=ellen+wetherald+ahrens&bSuggest=1&keySearch=+Search+&searchNameID=&searchClassID=&searchOrigin=&searchDeptID=&page=1 and five works in Philadelphia’s Woodmere Museum of Art (http://woodmereartmuseum.org/). 4. Americangallery.wordpress.com/category/childs-james/; accessed Jan. 3, 2014 5. The Courant, “L. De Gerenday,” June 19, 2001, (articles.courant.com/2001-06-19/news/0106190448_1_new-york-art-world-fine-art-longtime-artist); accessed Jan. 3, 2014 6. www.gainor.biz/about-the-artist.html 7. http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/egg-tempera.html ; The Tampa Tribune, Across Pasco, “No Joking, This Artist is into Yolking,” June 14, 2005. 8. Centerpieces, “Story of a Picture,” 2, no. 4, p. 3-4 (http://www.carrollwoodcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2009-Winter-Centerpieces.pdf) 9. SCC Observer News, “Art Club Welcomes Guest Artists to Annual Show,” 45, no. 2, January 31, 2002. 45, no. 2, p. 1. See also www.gainor.biz/feeling_series_booklet.pdf 10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm; accessed Nov. 10, 2013
Categories: 1941 births, living people, American artists, American realist painters, American 20thC painters, American impressionism, still life, tempera