SOLO EXHIBITION | FALL ARTS FESTIVAL, JACKSON WY
Altamira Fine Art Jackson is pleased to welcome Mary Roberson for a new exhibition during the annual Fall Arts Festival in Jackson Hole.
Please join us and Meet the Artist Friday evening, September 8th from 5-8pm during the popular Palates and Palletes community event.
RELAX
Mary Roberson loves a blank canvas. Wired toward realism but enamored with abstraction, she begins by laying down texture, arriving at the subject matter last. “It’s like a photographer going out and saying, ‘I’m going to photograph hummingbirds today.’ And then a pack of wolves walks by. It never works,” she says. “Even when I make a decision, I’ll get halfway through and the painting will take off in a completely different direction.”
Such detours distinguish her paintings. Like the massive piece she made years ago for the National Museum of Wildlife Art; she finished in time (deadlines a necessary evil in her ruminative practice) only to flip the canvas upside down and see it anew. “Once I turned that one painting upside down, I saw another painting and I redid the whole thing in less than a day. I already had the background and all the texture, which is 80 percent of the painting for me. It was just a matter of changing the subject matter.”
“If I spend a week on a painting, and then it turns out it’s not working, it’s OK because the time I spent struggling is the exact time I would spend doing an abstract background, full of layers and texture. Ever since I was young, I’ve wanted to paint abstractly, but it’s the hardest damn thing in the world for me.”
“I have so much fun, but I’m my own worst enemy,” she says. Hence the title of her upcoming show at Altamira: Relax. “I find titles are usually about the artist. I’m telling myself to relax.”
The friction of creativity fuels her: she thrives on pushing herself to see more and say more, with less — less resolution, less grip. “Whenever I am sketching or painting, I have to remember to use my peripheral vision, which allows me to see relationships, rather than zooming in on one thing,” she says. “The most challenging thing for me is the negative areas. It’s not about the subject, but rather, ‘How can I paint a yellow-headed blackbird without focusing on the bird?’ I like letting texture lead into the subject. The negative spaces say more than the positive.”
Inspired by her yard — its own ecosystem of birds and behaviors — she considers how creatures relate in the natural world. She gives herself the same latitude as an artist; her compositions are less about concepts carefully presented, and more about currents spontaneously conceived. Wise beyond her brush, she shares self-critiques that land more like credos: “Non-creatives may try for perfection, but there’s no such thing for artists. I don’t like the word ‘imperfections ’— we just ARE.”
Pre-sales available. Contact the gallery for details, (307) 739-4700, connect@altamiraart.com.