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Laurayne Robinette
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Urbandale (DM metro) |
interviewed 4-29-1998 | painting, mixed media, printmaking |
artwork
2008 update
interview clips
artist's statement
galleries
| Laurayne Robinette was born in 1928, in Blockton, Iowa. She grew up on a farm west of Blockton with her two older brothers and her younger sister, artist Vicki Adams. After graduating from Drake University in the summer of 1952 with a B.F.A., she taught school that first year, during which she also married. She decided not to return to teaching when she had her first child. | She has three daughters and six grandchildren. She has taken numerous Des Moines Art Center classes, concentrating mostly on oil painting. At times, she has taught students in her home studio. She continues to paint and work in mixed media. |
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| Storm Clouds copyright © 2006 Laurayne Robinette All Rights Reserved |
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| Homage to Cezanne copyright © 2007 Laurayne Robinette All Rights Reserved |
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| Drips and Dribbles copyright © 2007 Laurayne Robinette All Rights Reserved |
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| Blu Viola Chiaro copyright © 2008 Laurayne Robinette All Rights Reserved |
How has your life changed in the years since the interview? |
Instead, recently I have started dripping the paint on canvas, which is exciting and exasperating, since drips are very hard to control. ( I shouldn't try to control, I guess.) Most recently, I did a painting using the side of my painting knife to make short vertical lines on a colored ground - also hard to control. I will probably go back to the brush very soon! Actually, I have stayed with a varied process including scraping, blotting, smearing, scumbling and dabbing, as well as using the brushstroke to define image as well as abstraction. |
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| Two
kinds of work
(25 sec.) |
Abstract
& painterly (41 sec.) |
Visual
statement
(34 sec.) |
Feel
your way
(42 sec.) |
Aging
(10 sec.) |
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(283KB) |
(237KB) |
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The work is two-fold. Representational work is taken from observation; non-representational or abstract work is subjective, with use of various media to produce a visual statement without recognizable subject matter. I find satisfaction in both kinds of work. There is challenge in every undertaking: to keep the work from being merely a record of places/things observed or an echo of other art work. Rather, to make it a personal response to nature and the unseen. |
ART, Urbandale, Iowa
The
Octagon, Ames, Iowa
Saint's
Rest Gallery, Grinnell, Iowa
Wiederspan
Gallery, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I do two kinds of work: One is from observation of things, and I'm painting more or less what I see, or interpreting what I see, and being representational about it. The other thing I do is also, I've figured out, an observation activity, because when I do my abstract art, I'm really observing what happens when the paint is put on.
I suppose it might be helpful if I would concentrate on one or the other, but abstract art is exciting, because it's so inventive, and when you paint representationally sometimes you get too literal and you record things that you're seeing instead of interpreting them. But I love to do things from observation. I love the landscape. However, I like for my landscapes to be very painterly—that brushwork—not a lot of detail and not like an illustration. And not photorealism, for sure. I want the brush marks to show, and to show that an artist has had a hand in it, and that it's loose and exciting.
I enjoy doing the work, and that's my reward. But I also want people to get something out of viewing it. I'm not trying to make a social statement or a political statement. I believe that the visual statement is enough. And that can mean that it should be a clear statement visually, and not be too mixed about what it's saying to the viewer. And it doesn't have to say anything to the viewer, necessarily. If it stays in his mind, then it's successful.
With a scraped painting, or nonrepresentational work, you just have to feel your way through it. I do have in mind what I want to happen after I scrape the paint, and that determines how I lay the paint on the paper, and what I think will happen—it doesn't always happen the way I plan it to. And then, if something happens and you don't like it, you try to work across with more paint, or more scraping or more pressure. Or a different image, a different curve, a different straight line someplace if it needs it, a new color in there, moving the paint around differently with another tool, or something like that.
I know I'm not going to be able to paint forever. I mean, aging is debilitating sometimes, and you have to cut back. I'm not ready to yet….
