“A big influence for me was looking at the La Brea tar pits when living in LA. It’s just there. It’s such a contrast to everything. And how old is a tar pit? Millions and millions of years old. And everything that has happened throughout history as far as man’s development and animal development is in there under that surface. I mean, it’s tremendous stories under there. And you can get off the bench and go to the museum and see what we’ve excavated out there. Who knew, you know?”
“But then you said to me that you’re getting away from stories because art used to have stories but we don’t need the stories.”
“We don’t need the stories. Specific stories. That’s way it’s like every time I looked at de Kooning’s work in a show, even though the title implies a certain scenario, because it’s a door to the room, and there’s obviously a rectangle on this side or that and okay that’s the door. So it’s a starting point for a specific kind of story or specific kind of scenario that’s happening. And at that point in my life I didn’t study sin a lot... I meditated and did zen meditation and I actually think I reached nirvana a number of times, but then one of my other epiphanies of life turned out to be about that.. why would one want to achieve nothingness? You’re going to have that for an eternity some day.
“So embrace this, not escape this. And that for me was another kind of “here’s the surface, what’s you’re doing, and here’s the truth and the reality of the universe is below that situation.”
“I think you started when you were painting early on you were doing actual things, and I was too. And I think we both moved toward abstraction because we both kind of realised well, do we need more of this really? That was my thought anyway.”
“It’s all been done as well as it can be done.”
“And I love figurative work. I just don’t want to make more of it.”
“And I can’t unfortunately do it as well! I look at Picasso when he was 14, 17... and even he moved away from it. Why do that anymore?
“It wasn’t until the summer of ‘60 when I was looking at the tar pits that I really started to appreciate the abstract forms. And that year I had the opportunity to work with, to study under Hans Hoffman in New York. This was a guy who was mid-30s and he was obviously a total abstract painter. And I changed where I was coming from after that. I’m just now to the point where... he didn’t use brushes, he only painted with his hands. I paint the majority by hands or spatulas or something other than brushes. That was a good year for me. He encouraged me to continue and paint things that I saw. And I did for years.”
“My teacher was supportive, but I don’t think she had any idea I’d go abstract. Though honestly I don’t actually like to call my work abstract. I say non-objective. Because mine is still “something”, moreso than yours. Mine are really specifically based on actual places. But other people see them as abstract.”
“Well in some sense you have an actual form in that landscape. [Rodney owns “Golden, Chesil Beach”] Specific physicality going on there. But that’s not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing the mood, the power. I’m seeing everything that the ocean is other than its physicality.”
“Really on the surface our paintings could both be some sort of expression, an abstraction. Mine’s only objective in the sense that I make it that. It’s only for me that it’s really specific to the landscape. That’s something that over the years I’ve tried to let go of, knowing that while it’s particular to me it isn’t to anybody else and it doesn’t need to be. Once I’m finished painting it it can be whatever it wants to be.”
“That’s exactly my feeling on all of my paintings. i don’t care what I was thinking or feeling, it has nothing to do with me anymore. It’s totally with the viewer. I mean, they haven’t had my life, my experiences, my education, my anything. They have totally different education of life. So obviously they’re going to see other things.”
“It’s really cliche but I’ve always had in my statement writing that I paint it and then it’s whatever the viewer wants to see. And that sorts so sort of twee art world talk, but it’s true.”
“It’s so true. I literally went and saw that de Kooning dozens of times and every time I stood in front of it I had a different reaction. I always look first without seeing the title.”
“I do the same thing. The first time I saw the Barnett Newman exhibition, and at this point I was painting sort of impressionist riverscapes of London, my friend Shelagh said go see the Barnett Newman you’ll love it. And of course I didn’t get abstract stuff, and I was like ugh no, it’s ridiculous lines on the canvas.
“And the exhibition blew me away. I was overwhelmed with how much I could feel from these paintings with so little form. That was my moment when I realised paintings don’t need to be specific - or that things can be expressed with less. It took me years to figure out how to even start doing that, but it was that turning point. My reaction to Newman was stronger to even paintings from Turner.”
“I find that the modern British artists I look at most are those using colour combinations not found in nature in the UK... Barbara Rae, Gillian Ayres, Albert Irvin and John Hoyland. But of course he was influenced by the New York Abstractionists. The main difference I see between the US and the UK artists is choice of colour palette.”
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| Details from "Thames Haven" (left) by Tina Mammoser and "I am nature" (right) by Rodney Beecher Roberts |
“Landscape! Just landscape as a subject matter even in urban contemporary painters’ work. I can find seascapes at all levels in all styles, at galleries and fairs. I’m always amazed at shows in the US that I rarely see landscapes, but lots of depictions of people and political work.”
“I am totally disconnected from Britain’s long standing history and reverence for water colour. I can’t get past observing the techniques involved. And for me art is a singular solitary endeavour, so I don’t see the importance of an artist attaching letters to their name through art societies.”
“I feel disconnected from the long history of community many artists seem to have. Art in the family, maybe connection with a home town, plus a long cultural history. In a way it’s an almost hereditary grounding they have in their view towards being an artist. My background is one of constant movement so sometimes I envy that element of psychological stability.”
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| Detail from "Resound" Acrylic painting on canvas by Tina Mammoser |
“What has changed most is the light. Even though I paint in a studio under artificial light it is still darker and greyer which affects my choice of colour and mood.”
“I started working here so am not sure I can answer this regarding painting. I used to draw a lot since high school so I suppose any change in creativity has been a slow movement away from exactitude. Not entirely away from realism but relaxing the need for perfection and capturing ideas and impressions instead.”
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| Detail from "The 5th Dimension" Mixed media painting by Rodney Beecher Roberts |
“I think growing up in the states, especially California, left me with the typical American attitude of wanting everything the way I want it, not ‘how it comes’. For me, my expectations are what counts not the status quo or what others may think is proper, which I think shows in my art work.”
“I was raised with a very achievement-oriented attitude to life, something that has ebbed since moving to the UK. But it is still there and I think it drives my artwork. I have a need to push more, find something different, for the work to have meaning and my technique to be challenging. Even within the creative process I do naturally build myself structures.”
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| "Hymn" and "Her" by Rodney Beecher Roberts |
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| "Storm Cloud" by Tina Mammoser |
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| He said the oceans were rising
Tina Mammoser, acrylic on canvas (from the Dark series) |
"So I started using words. Sometimes that grew into having an entire stanza of a poem, either written on top of the painting when I finished or scratched through the various layers. It's because I just realised that words are abstracts of themselves. They're an abstract of a meaning. They're not real things unto themselves other than words. They're symbols."Tina
"Yeah, they're just arrangements of letters. I like your new one "Social Media". Because I saw that in an exhibition and it wasn't until today, looking at the picture, that I saw the equations. I'd seen the symbols and I knew there were letters there or something, but I hadn't looked closely enough. Today I looked at it and went wait a minute there's brackets and equal signs and those are equations! And you've done them backwards, which I like because it takes away a level of meaning."Rodney
'It takes away, and that's the way it was shown in the movie - it's taken from the movie "Social Media". And in that movie when he's just gotten dumped by his girlfriend and he's going to do this comparison "which girl's prettier", and his mate comes in and he goes up and writes it on the window. We see it from the outside, reversed, and then we see it from the inside. So I chose to do it from the outside because it's a little more abstract. One in my Venice series that I stuck words in there later, because most of my Vencie series have no words in them... they have illusions to words by having doodle or scribble-like lines in them that somehow suggested words but weren't words."
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| Social Media
Rodney Beecher Roberts, mixed media on canvas |
"I've done a Venice series as well and mine are symbolic, mine are symbolic of kinds of light. Because I've done shadows under the bridges, and the way lamps reflect off the river... that's where a lot of the gold is coming from, because it's night, and I was only looking at the water surfaces."
"With the English coast it's actual place names. With Venice I wanted it to be actual Italian phrases for the kind of light I was painting. In fact the only series where I haven't used a very specific title that was what I put in the paintings was the Dark series. Those are named after song lyrics. So instead of being the place or the light it was the feeling of when I was painting it. There the only ones that aren't specific places as well. So then I couldn't title them with places because I felt I was lying. So each one of those I listened to one song over and over again. So each title is the song I listened to while painting that painting."
