WALTER ROBINSON
2016-08-01The food, clothing and consumer products in Walter Robinson’s paintings are instantly familiar. Cheeseburgers, gin bottles, swimsuits and donuts are the stuff of life, or at least somebody’s. Is that a Whopper or a Big Mac? Gordon’s or Beefeaters? A Lands’ End one piece, or is it from Target?
Advertisements, product packaging and catalogues provide Robinson with unlimited source material. Yet, keen editor that he is, each painting and its subject becomes an archetype: there may be lots of polka dot swimsuits out there but Robinson’s seems like the one.
The subjects in Robinson’s acrylic on linen paintings fall under two broad categories: still life and portraiture. Art historical references abound: the brushwork in a painting of an Excedrin bottle may call to mind a Manet still life; the soft surface of a men’s tattersal shirt could be from a Fairfield Porter portrait. Yet Robinson makes them all uniquely his own: the banal becomes something more, and maybe that model in the Macy’s insert really does have something to say, after all.
Opposite – Yellow Stripes, 2015
Exhibition runs through till August 7th, 2016
Jeff Bailey Gallery
127 Warren Street
Hudson
NY 12534
