NYAB Event - Robert Robbins “Frondescence Paintings”

Robert Robbins “Frondescence Paintings”

Bowery Gallery

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Robbins began this series of paintings seven years ago, and has shown these works throughout the country, but this is his first showing of this body of work in New York City.

These large paintings are spectacles of activity filled to capacity so the paintings feel as though they absorb and surround the viewer.

The Frondescence series is a group of large paintings of rather small bit very densely filled natural spaces. When hung as a group they are somewhat overwhelming at first, but slowly dissolve into a quiet hum. Unlike many traditional landscape paintings, these do not put the viewer in front of a grand vista of sublime and romantic terrain. These are much smaller places. The viewer is part of the place, rather than looking upon it the viewer is in it. The awe of the work comes from the density of energy and activity in these small places.

“There is a painting by John Frederick Kensett of Eaton’s Neck, Long Island. It is a quiet little painting portraying an enormous emptiness that pulls the viewer to the horizon and into an elegant void. My paintings are the exact opposite of that experience. They are large paintings of small densely packed and overgrown places. The viewer must push their way through just to find the ground. ” —R. Robbins

Robert Robbins received a MFA from Yale University in painting and printmaking after receiving his BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design. He has twice been a MacDowell Fellow, and he has been a resident of the Chateau Rochefort-En-Terre Artist residency program in Brittany, France. His work has been seen in galleries and museums across the country including the Butler Institute of American Art, The Chateua Museum in Rochefort-En-Terre, France, The Springfield Museum of Art, Sears/Peyton New York, the Carnegie Center for the Visual Arts, The MacDowell Colony in Perterboro, New Hampshire, Moorehead University, the Florida State University Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland State University, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work is in various private and public collections including the Ohio State University, the Nord Family Foundation and the Columbus Metropolitan Library. He has received several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.