Bob Richardson paints it like he sees it, and that means representing the light along with the dark.
“When I paint,” he writes on his website, “I work to capture an unrehearsed moment of someone’s life.” Unrehearsed is a quality that permeates much of his art. A latecomer to painting, he is largely self-taught. Nonetheless – or perhaps as a result – he does not shy away from challenging subject matter and introduces levity into scenes that might otherwise appear grim.
Richardson, whose work will be on view in the Bareiss Gallery starting Saturday (July 10), took a roundabout path to painting. Raised in New Jersey, he spent his Saturdays at the Art Students League of New York, a school with an independent spirit at which Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko all studied.
“As a kid that was the coolest thing I could do,” Richardson writes.
After high school, Richardson attended Bard College, also in New York – only to drop out after his junior year.
“It just wasn’t me,” he offers. For years after that, he traveled around the country, living for a while in Aspen, Colorado, then in San Francisco, California, and worked odd jobs. On his way to Mexico for a trip, he stopped in Santa Fe. There he ran a successful carpentry business before settling into painting full-time, 20 years ago.
At first, Richardson identified as an abstract painter. But, the more time he spent at the easel, the more he began to feel himself a figurative artist. Like Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud before him, he found infinite mystery and possibility in representing the human body. He began “slowly transitioning my paintings to reflect my insights of people.”
Today, Richardson’s paintings capture the unidealized and idiosyncratic human experience.
“I’m an outsider looking in on human activity of no particular importance,” he writes. It is these “unimportant” moments, he notes, that “reveal so much.”
Richardson observes his subjects with a sharp eye. In the last decade, he has amassed a body of work that ranges from paintings of animals – he has done several of dogs, some posed in armchairs and others sporting costumes – to likenesses of people from all walks of life. One series features Arizona sunbathers snacking in swimsuits, rearranging towels on loungers and scrolling through their smartphones.
Unsparing as they are, Richardson’s paintings reveal compassion on the part of the artist. One depicts a man who, ravaged by age, exhibits a certain gravitas. The sex worker represented in triplicate in Miss California stands with dignity, even as she fumbles with her keys and squints into the sun.
It is no wonder Richardson is able to paint the downtrodden with compassion; the artist spent much of his own youth feeling lost and out of place.
“Once you’ve seen the darkness, it’s always there,” he says. “You can be as happy as you want, but there’s always that darkness.”
Richardson’s paintings combine dark and light to produce an effect that is at the same time unsettling and comforting. They invite the viewer to recognize themselves in the dismal subjects Richardson captures and to find belonging among a group of misfits. Of painting, Richardson says, “I felt this was where I was supposed to be my whole life.”
“People I Know” will be on view in the Bareiss Gallery on Saturday-Sundays, July 10-11, 17-18 and 24-25 from 1-5 p.m., and by appointment. The opening reception will take place Saturday (July 10) from 1-5 p.m. At 3 p.m. Sunday (July 11) will be a panel discussion about figurative art with Bob Richardson and fellow artists Erin Currier, Christopher Benson and Sarah Stolar. Ann Landi, contributing editor at ARTnews and a writer for the arts and culture section of The Wall Street Journal, will moderate.
Bareiss Gallery, established in 1982 by Philip Bareiss, specializes in contemporary art and large scale sculpture of Taos and the Southwest. In addition to Bob Richardson, artists whose works are featured in the gallery include Larry McLaughlin, Norbert Voelkel and Michelle Cooke. The gallery also works as an art brokerage, helping clients sell works from their collections.
To learn more about Richardson and his art, visit bobrichardsonstudio.com. For more about Bareiss Gallery, see taosartappraisal.com.
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original article by Stella Leitner: Dark matter, light touch | ‘People I Know,’ works by Bob Richardson on view in the Bareiss Gallery
