Art Quench Presents; Fire Art Studios & Gallery Artist Robert Lait

I began drawing at a very early age, spending countless hours with my tightfisted and myopic pencil renderings. I started art lessons at twelve, learning oil painting from the local Grumbacher dealer and began learning about the renaissance. My first visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art featured an exhibition by Vito Acconci. (Google him) In high school I studied Escher, Duchamp and Vasareli. By the time I saw the images of a wheel-chaired Matisse happily tapping his toe on the floor as he scissored his shapes, I knew that painting and the visual arts were what I wanted to pursue.

I’ve used watercolor and acrylic paint, but from high school all the way through graduate school I worked primarily in oils, always feeling that as a medium it provided for the most brilliant colors and the highest contrasts. I love the glow of sunlight on the surface of oil paintings. The reflective and refractive light gives great variety to tone and texture. I enjoy the way oil paintings, whether representational or abstract, take on the atmosphere or sheen of the room they are in.

I try to make my images as if I’m going to be living with them for a long time. I want them to reveal themselves over time and to forge different and multiple connections between the subject matter and the matter in which they are painted. I think realism has much to do with the passivity of the viewer.

I typically work on three to six canvases at once, each surface gets covered in succession and the schedule is determined by drying times. I put on many layers of paint, with different medium recipes throughout the process. I use palette knives to apply paint directly to the canvas. This gives me a… [READ MORE]

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