Amy Rudberg

Darrell Roberts is preparing for his one-man show, "Luscious," coming to the Hyde Park Art Center early next year. In his work space, he has photos of downtown construction sites and gardens, small canvases stacked like pancakes, large tubes of oil paints, neon-colored stuffed toys, pipe cleaners forming a 3-D structure, colored paper, patterned ribbon, a seed pod and a piece of cement with pieces of steel rods. He turns the radio on and takes a sip of his Diet Coke, and then he methodically starts to squeeze out large dollops of paint on a paper palette. A slight odor of Turpenoid fills the air as he places his brushes, palette and putty knives, and mediums on the work surface.

He has already put on a thin layer of wash on four 12" x 12" canvases and four 10" x 10" canvases, prepping them ahead of time so that they are ready for today's task. He picks up a cerulean-blue canvas, cradles it with his left hand like a musical instrument, and begins to paint pale-green lines vertically over the canvas. He puts the canvas down and then picks up another canvas with a purple and white wash and begins to add yellow dots thickly in a symmetric pattern. Using his brushes, putty knife and palette knife, he continues this process--adding colors, lines, values, textures and shapes on one canvas after another--until he has gone through all of the canvases. And then he starts all over again, in a seemingly never-ending cycle, building layer upon layer and sometimes roughly scraping off paint and rebuilding his layers. And when he's finally done, his group of paintings are singing, telling their story of how they were created, and how glad they are to be alive.

Why is the upcoming HPAC show called "Luscious"?

It has to do with intuition--thinking about color, bringing out a lot of textures, and evoking a desire to touch and even wanting to taste the images.

What influences your work?

I take a lot of photos of Chicago construction sites and gardens. When I had a studio on Michigan Avenue, I observed the construction of Millennium Park while working for my MFA at the Art Institute. It was like my own sandbox. I could see the entire complex being built from the ground up. It was an amazing experience. I also collect things and can't throw them away. In my studio, I had things grouped in piles--toys, things from nature, construction materials, consumer throwaways, and materials like paper. I used them for inspiration, but at the same time it felt comfortable to have them around. Now that I work at home I still collect things but on a smaller scale.

What does painting mean to you?

To me, painting is very spiritual, but not in a religious way. It's being able to express the nature of yourself, explaining your existence here, your true purpose in life. As I'm painting, there's a flow of being in the present. When I'm painting, I'm just uncovering it. I can't visualize it but I'm feeling it--a quietness, like a good sound sleep.

Your work seems reminiscent of the Constructivist movement in Russia in the early 1900s, when artists tried to encompass cognition, materialism and spirituality in their art. How would you describe your style of painting?

They were avant-garde artists. I'm more of an abstractionist. I did figurative work before deciding on abstract painting. Abstractions are representations of an organic form. You still have to pay attention to push-pull, balance, color harmony and placement, among other things. When I'm painting, I'm constructing something, trying to find a layout. I suppose I'm trying to "peel away" the layers to find the innate design. When I don't like something or if I want to show different layerings from above and underneath, I scrape away the paint. Each painting has its own composition. I see it as being organic from the layout of the layers and textures, and I'm not going for geometric shapes; even though there are lines, they are loose and change from thick to thin. I usually paint six to eight layers on average to get to the final stage. I use pumice, which is ground-up lava, added to my paints for texture and it also helps the drying process. I want people to become familiar with my own unique mark and to recognize the paint application and brush strokes I use to construct, deconstruct and layer my paintings.

(2006-10-24)

Also by Amy Rudberg

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