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“You don't need twenty brushes, sometimes just the bigger ones, maybe 3 or 4. I'm used to doing things quickly. I'll throw down some color, anything. If I don't like it, I can immerse it in a bathtub overnight, or scrub the watercolor off and have a whole new texture to paint on.” Texture, too, enhance character and tension. My Hero, Washington Wizards, which captures a player dribbling down the court, is underlain with paper towels. “Rice paper also works,” he notes. Or gesso, whose consistency suggests either plaster of Paris or Elmer's glue. Bob's BA and MA in architecture, his professional life in the U. S. Air Force, where he retired as a colonel, followed by a vice presidency at IDS Financial in Minneapolis, have matured in his art. Amid starkly massed buildings, a keen, appraising eye surges through his darkened streets, the bleak night-lighting of city life, to catch the emotion of an artist anchored by his former career as an architect. Given the stark energy of the structures he paints, his human figures seem fluid and alive – the speed and finesse of sports figures in action, the stride of passing pedestrians, portraits which evoke less a pose than a mood.
BOLD and POWERFUL
BY NEDDA DAVIS
Bob Gilbert's forceful and dramatic color work in City Bridge and Enter my City, the intense blues and violets, a well-balanced hint of ochre, shows his gift for intensifying the impact of architectural compositions with an aura of oppressive power.
Times Square plays a concert of broken light against precipitous planes where buildings lean into a central landmark as if possessed of their own raw energy. This boldness may be Gilbert's hallmark, what propels him forward and keeps him unstuck. Not that a picture always develops the way he first conceives it.
“You can take your worst painting and make something good of it. Never be afraid to make changes.”
With rapid strokes he'll put down some ultramarine to suggest a tree or slope, a bit of brown for clouds, maybe a few pencil lines to profile geometric forms. Be it a city scape at night or a floating market in Bangkok, sports figure caught in an instantaneous flash of action or a quiet garden path, he begins with a swift, perhaps 5-minute vignette to get his bearings.
He may flip a piece over and do something else on the back. Toss table salt into the wet paint, or a spoonful of cooking oil. Use the edge of a credit cared to scrape things flatter. Run a comb through, or work over dry areas with tea or coke for tonal variations.
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As free as he feels about reshuffling his scenery, Bob's output is formidable and diverse. Shore vistas ranging through Italy, the far east, and two American coasts, may lose the observer in their charm, but the geometric of mast, the strong vertical of trees and pilings, even sea grass show his instinct for linear breaks that reflect back |
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on the slick surface of the water. This subtle detail adds depth to excellent marine paintings, so that we nearly smell the salt and feel the rock of the boats in their moorings. Purple Sailboats and Downtown Checkers, with different subjects and moods, show the same sure strokes, the |
| interplay of light and shadow, the proclivity for burnt sienna and ultramarine amid nature's extravagant canvas, which mark his paints as “Gilberts”.
To Bob , a city may feel heavy, dirty, oppressive at night, so he'll use browns in a myriad of tonalities to suggest this interior response, He may rearrange the perspective as he works, remove elements he doesn't want . Some preliminary penciling may be left visible. He isn't shy about working through the knots. “That's where the license comes in. You can do anything with anything, because it's your world.” “Good art,” he says, “is not a replication, it's an interpretation.” Starting with a watercolor base, he may lay in a foreground with acrylics using a knife, then finish with two or three coats of high-gloss urethane for an instantaneous aging process. “I want people to know you don't need glass.” |
| These stunningly finished surfaces are one of the surprises of his work. They may also explain his earlier avoidance of slower-drying oils, until he was encouraged and praised by the highly-regarded landscapist Howard Behrens. Bob then branched more boldly into the medium, though his approach and emotions about color remain his own. |  |
If he's ever intimidated by a blank canvas, he moves through it. “I put down paint quickly, just do it, get down that first layer. Then I've started, I've got something and I've got to go on. Later I'll come back and look at it, maybe that night, but not touch a paintbrush. Next morning I'll know what to do.” |
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For an artist who got serious about watercolor at age eighteen, the discipline has struck. Each day Bob paints – maybe scenes for practice, or a few of the 4x6 inch cards he sends friends at holidays. He paints on airplane trips appropriating his tray as an easel; sometimes selling pieces to fellow passengers enthralled watching him in flight. Bob, who grew up in Seattle, has lived in Virginia for 17 years. He studied at the Alexandria Art Institute and elsewhere, but a workshop at Taos helped him focus on what really “floats his boat,” the excitement of creating once he's into it, the adventure of the unexpected. “I'll get to work and hours go by. I forget to eat, a cup of coffee sits there untouched.” He enjoys teaching – private lessons, sometimes a class. For commissions he takes into account what clients want, always making a few preliminary sketches to be sure they're happy. His present exhibition at Washington's landmark Old Angler's Inn led to another “unexpected” when he was invited to remain as artist in residence. Bob has won numerous awards and shown his work at the Art League Gallery, the Capitol Hill Art Gallery, Strathmore Hall, the Sperone Westwater Gallery (NY); the Children's' National Medical Center (DC) and others. You can see more of his art at; www.robertgilbertsart.com |
