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JOHN ROBERTSON IS A SELF-TAUGHT artist who has
metamorphosed from
a colorful impressionist to social/political and conceptual portraits
which have a razor
sharp messages embedded in the seemingly benign, colorful medium. In his
work for
Community of Family Farmers Alliance, Real Cheap Sports, Earth Services,
and
CROP he addressed issues of hunger in the land of plenty and substandard
health
conditions endured by farmers. In his work for the Palisades Presbyterian
Church,
and Salt The Op-Ed Page of the Catholic Church he has confronted abortion,
the
death penalty, charity, vanity and greed.
JOHN ROBERTSON earned a BA degree in English Literature from
California State University, Northridge. He was a senior executive with a
large
retail cooperation for over 23 years. In 1991 John left the world of
business in
order to pursue his interest in art on a full time basis. His work has
been used
in various movie and television shows and commercials and he has exhibited
in numerous one-man art shows.
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I have a dream tucked away in the
shadows of my mind but I don't know exactly
what it is yet. I'm hoping that one of days the shadows will lift and the
dream will
emerge, like an Emerald City glowing in the distance. Meanwhile, it
exists out there
in the darkness, a land I've never visited in a world that doesn't exist.
I've been thinking about this for two reasons. One has to do with John
Robertson,
whom I'll get to in a minute, and the other with a play at the Ahmanson
called
"The Flight of the Lawnchair Man". It was in a trilogy of one-act
plays about fate
and goals and where life takes us. Sometimes whether we want to go there or
not.
In 'Flight," a childlike man named Jerry had always wanted to learn to fly,
but his
ambition had been thwarted for one reason or another. In middle age,
knowing
it is then or never, he attaches 400 helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair
and drifts
off into a fantasy-filled sky, feeling the sun, tasting the distance.
When last seen, he was floating away in his dream.
It was a lovely little play that I thought about a lot, because I'm a
dreamer too.
Most of us are, I think, but we never get around to living our dreams,
except
for one or two of us who tie balloons to lawn chairs and take to the sky.
Which brings me back to John Robertson.
Robertson is 57 and lives in a hilltop house trailer overlooking the ocean.
He's a slight man with a graying beard and the kind of enthusiastic attitude
that glows in the dark; a guy doing exactly what he should be doing.
Robertson paints. Not with fancy oils and acrylics on textured canvas but
with house paint on those rolls of canvas you put on the floor when you're
redoing the ceiling. It was a question of economics at first. Dropcloths and
cans of paint are a lot cheaper than the stuff you buy in art stores.
Later
it became a choice.
He began painting about a dozen years ago in all kinds of styles and sizes,
but what he's become known for are the faces of musicians and writers
he puts on 4 1/2-by 6-foot canvases in a techniques vaguely reminiscent
of Jackson Pollock's. Faces glow through streaks and lines of color. Mine
is one of them.
Robertson heard I was going to read and sign my novel "The Last City Room"
at Village Books in the Palisades and asked if he could paint my face to
hang
in the window. He took a photograph first and painted from that. The somber,
meditative visage of a journalist stares out. Me in a darker mood.
I met with Robertson later at his trailer house on a day as dramatic as any
painting could ever be. The expanse of ocean below us was laced with a mist
that shone like a bridal veil in the emerging sunlight. The blue above it
was as
pure as heaven. Embraced by the ethereal view, Robertson revealed
his dream.
He was working as an executive for a large chain furniture store when he
became
ill. He took six months off then worked part-time for a year and a half.
No one
has ever figured out what was wrong with him. It caused emotional problems,
he says, so he went to a psychiatrist who asked him what he'd liked to do
as a child.
Robertson said he'd always like coloring books. So the shrink said, "Then
go color."
A lot of things happened after that. He was fired from his job, his marriage
fell
apart and he went to see a Van Gogh painting at the Getty. It's called "The
Irises,"
and it took his breath away. "I used to wonder why anyone would spend
$50 million for a painting," he said. "Then I saw, 'Irises' and broke into
tears.
I stood there for two hours just staring at it. I've been trying to create
the same
emotional feeling ever since."
Offered another job, he agonized over whether to return to the straight
world,
the gray world, then took the advice of his minister who said, "Follow your
heart."
Robertson turned down the job offer and began living his dream. He
painted
forests and fields of flowers at first, pursuing the surge of emotion Van
Gogh
had engendered, like the lawn-chair man searching for something beyond his
range
of vision. But it was mostly the faces on large canvases that Robertson
liked doing,
seeking the elusive nature of those whose features he describes in streams
of color.
"Life is good," he said the other day. He meant it. Here was a guy who had
walked
away from a workaday world without looking back. Who discovered a talent
he
never knew he had, entwined with the dream he never knew he was dreaming.
Here
was a happy man. He sells enough paintings to pay the rent and buy
food. It takes
him about three days to do a large portrait, and he'll sell you one for
what you earn
in your own three days of work. Musicians and writers get them for a
little less than,
say Bill Gates might pay.
"It's a bohemian life," Robertson says, "I only have time to paint. It's
nothing great.
I'm just putting paint on canvas. That's what it's all about. That's what
I want."
I stopped along the ocean on the way home to think about that, where sky and
sea
merge in a wash of gradient blues. I stared toward the horizon for a long
time,
wondering about my own dream. And as I drove away, I couldn't help but envy
the lawn-chair man, colored balloons radiant in the sunlight, soaring off
toward
the far distance.
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