Robert Poplack
Eduardo Carrillo Prize in Painting 2007 Nominee
View Paintings by Robert Poplack
Artist Statement
The process that I go through in my paintings and drawings is that of a search--a search for meaning, a search for form, a search for color and light. The art that I make works on an intuitive level, a dialogue between the canvas and myself. As I paint, the shapes coalesce into things like rocks, cliffs, heads, boxes and other subjects. These suggested entities appear, and at times, combine together. The images represented may be almost graspable, but not quite. This appeals to me as a metaphor for my own state of uncertainty, at times even panic, until the image becomes detectable.
Rough, clumsy and somewhat inelegant, I sometimes feel as though I sledge hammer the work into place, trying to get the right or even "wrong" in the right sort of way. One question that I ask myself is whether a painting convinces me. Can It make me believe, when it is done, that it is authentic? I ask myself if all the elements sit in the right place, and whether forms conjure up associations of interest that may imply more than one level of meaning. Occasionally, there it is, something that has come into being, a painting or drawing, not so clumsy as I had thought-- but true. It seems to hold up and I can observe some bit of an idea, some moment of realization, that didn't exist before.
View Paintings by Robert Poplack