"Bamboo", 2007 acrylic & pastel on paper 35.6 x 35.6 cm 14 x 14 in
Retail Value: $1,500 USD €1,100 Euro
CURRENT BID : $300 USD €216 Euro
Gail Roberts Artist’s Statement For eighteen years, I lived in a small rural community in Southern California surrounded by open land. The immediate environment was a significant source of inspiration for my work as a visual artist, primarily a painter, and I absorbed and interpreted the conditions that continued to alter the terrain. One of the examples of my previous work is a multi-paneled project entitled Nothing is the Same which is comprised of forty-five paintings of a repeated panoramic view of a mountain range and valley located in Southern California painted over a period of seven years. The paintings reflect changing conditions in light, weather, time, seasons, natural catastrophes, and urban development. As the encroachment of housing developments and casinos in the community caused more traffic congestion, it no longer seemed feasible to have the best of both worlds and in 2006 we moved back into the city of San Diego.
In the past eight years, I have continued to reflect on the passage of time as both accumulative and subtractive. The most recent paintings have focused on an investigation of books and book titles as subject matter juxtaposed with images of birds’ nests. In addition to collecting paperbacks of classic literature, I have also acquired a large variety of birds' nests over a period of about twenty years. In the paintings, book titles and passages of text are paired with the birds’ nests because I am visually responsive to this intersection, but also because it provides a means to tackle concepts that I find engaging, consuming, and perplexing. The paintings are a vehicle for inquiry and commentary regarding my reflections on nature, culture, and our temporal existence.
Since 2005, I have spent time at three international artist residencies - Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, Brittany, France; Julia and David White Artists Colony, Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, and Ballinglen Artists Foundation, Ballycastle, Ireland. The artwork donated to the Ballinglen Fundraising Auction was completed during my stay in Costa Rica and selected from a series of mixed media works on paper depicting magnified details of the textured surfaces of individual trunks of indigenous trees in the immediate area. The concept of a subject matter remaining constant to reveal the subtlety of changes is related to other bodies of work, but I was inspired by the exotic and foreign nature of the surrounding trees which included mango, coconut, banana, bamboo, and papaya.
Biography
Roberts’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Galeria Nacional in San Jose, Costa Rica, Musee Rochefort-en-terre, Brittany, France; The Ballinglen Gallery at The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Ireland: Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, CA, Oceanside Museum of Art, CA; Riverside Museum, CA; Fresno Metropolitan Museum, CA; California Center for the Arts Museum, and Madison Art Center, WI. Her work has been represented in galleries in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Fe and included in permanent collections at the Oakland Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, as well as numerous corporate and private collections.
Roberts has received numerous awards including a 2010 San Diego Art Prize, a California Arts Council Fellowship and residency fellowships in France, Costa Rica and Ireland. She has completed public art commissions at the Chicago Public Library, Lux Art Institute, and the San Diego International Airport. Gail Roberts received her BFA and MA at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and is a Professor of Art Emerita at San Diego State University. Her work is represented by Scott White Contemporary Art in La Jolla, CA.
The painting Bamboo is a mixed media work on paper (acrylic and pastel) completed in 2007 during a residency in Costa Rica. It depicts a magnified detail of the surface of a bamboo tree.