Robert Roane Beard » Profile

Location

Region

United States of America

City

Albany NY

Profile

Website

http://home.earthlink.net/~rrbeard/

Personal Statement

ARTISTS STATEMENT

I create little personal private worlds in my work. The paintings are realized from observation and memory of architectural details, landscapes, colors, shapes and feelings picked up during my travels.

Most of the work is done from memory on a very small private scale, and mostly executed in watercolor and ink on fine hand made paper. They run the gamut from the illustrative to the completely abstract.

Always drawn to the smallest objects in an exhibition or collection, my work can only reflect this tendency. It is the private and personal qualities of small scale objects which I am drawn to.

The larger Installation work is based own my own personal life experiences, interactions and observations of people who I have come in contact with over many years. The over overwhelming sense of loss I feel for the people I loved, respected, or found wildly talented in every area of the arts proved to strong to ignore.

Through the people I have selected as subjects in 'Thinking of You', the audience also learns a great deal about the artist. This personal but larger scale work always takes into consideration the scale and Architecture where it will be installed and the audience to which it speaks.
I have also designed many large scale outside environmental works which have not yet been executed.

I hope you are able comprehend and appreciate these private little worlds both large and small.

"THINKING OF YOU"
an installation by Robert Beard

My installation, "Thinking of You" is a meditation on the lives of ten friends who have died of AIDS.

As the enclosed photos show, the work consists of a circle of ten piers,
each surmounted by a white plaster head
and bearing handwritten text that winds around the pier.

The text takes the form of a letter to the deceased
with news of people, places and things that were of particular interest to him and to me.
Because the text winds around the piers, the viewer circles each one while reading,
thus gaining a spatial feel for what I intended to be a peaceful circle of remembrance.
Among the ten subject are
the art dealer Aladar Marberger,
magazine editor Duncan Stalker and
landscape architect and designer of Strawberry Fields, Bruce Kelly.

This installation was shown at:
Spazio Opus, an art gallery in Milan, Italy
and the Museo del Po in Turin
Studio 241 in Hudson, NY.
It has been written-up in the Italian Journal of Art.

History

Member for

3 years 30 weeks