About
Artist Statement
Robert Waters, painter
Influenced by the richness of colors, contrasts, and expressive subject matter of skateboard graphics, punk and metal record covers and fliers, I began making art in the mid-1980s.
These influences led me to undergraduate art school at the San Francisco Art Institute, an environment where low and high-brow art were intertwined. There I studied mostly under Bruce McGaw. Under his guidance I grew to love painting and drawing even more than I did before art school.
Influences include: Louise Bourgeois, Ken Price, Goya, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Franz West, Picasso, Edvard Munch, the Bay Area figurative movement of the 1950s and 60s, Robert Crumb, Ed Hardy, William Blake, Paul McCarthy, Barbara Kruger, Van Gogh, tattoo art, and outsider art to name a few.
For me, technique is a mix of control, where objects are rendered, and giving up of control, where drips, accidents, erratic drawing, and scrawl marks are allowed to happen. I use various perspective techniques to ground forms. Bright colors and black allude to toxic, poisonous or attractive elements, like an advertisement or a poisonous insect. Black acts to create contrasts and to give the work a unifying element that constrains color.
Subject matter is decided almost randomly. I usually start by thinking of something I’d like to draw, and then I search the web for references. I make a drawing of the idea with the references directly off the computer screen. Works cover psychedelic, surreal, abstract landscape, abstract figure, or a combination of some or all. My interests lie in keeping a kind of record, as dating the work is important to me. It gives me a way to identify what was happing at the time. I find it interesting to see the works arranged next to each other.
My intent is to leave people feeling excited about painting, and mark-making in general; to feel my excitement of rich darks, bright colors, and scrawls. My desire is to convey my emotional state authentically and to touch on personal and spiritual subjects. I hope that others feel something when viewing my work.