The Artist - Robert Leroy Marshall
Robert Marshall was born in Mesquite, Nevada. He attended Brigham Young University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1966 and a Master of Arts in 1968. He began teaching soon after graduation at Fullerton College in California. In 1969, he moved to Utah to join the studio art faculty at BYU. He has served as chairman of the art department for 12 years and as director of study abroad programs in London and in Madrid. Marshall believes that as a professor, he can give back to humankind some of what he has been given. Part of the fulfillment he finds in teaching comes from being able to share in the creative processes of others.
Marshall is an accomplished draftsman and is knowledgeable in color theory, film making, and in contemporary art history. As a painter, he originally was best known for his watercolor landscapes, but after a time he felt the need to grow and progress, and he took a leave of absence from the university and began working in oils on large canvases. Since that time, he has gone from painting his children and patterns and objects in his house, to a series of paintings of pottery, to a series combining pottery and fabric„he felt the need to add some rectangles and sharp edges to the ovals and the ellipses of the pots. He says he got very interested in the folds of the fabric„the paintings became like little landscapes to him. The next move, from painting fabric to actual landscapes, came naturally.
Bob Marshall, unlike some contemporary artists, is convinced "that the landscape tradition is still a viable option and has a justifiable place in contemporary painting." For Marshall,
Awareness of the intrinsic (and I believe lasting) beauty of a particular location is always intensified through private rather than collective discovery. Quiet hikes into the landscape intensify our connection with the land in a way that standing on the periphery and observing the obvious can never accomplish.
In both his watercolors and his more recent oils, Marshall shares his discoveries and invites us into his "private dialogue with the patterns, colors and textures that usually go unnoticed." His watercolors have a sense of intimacy of place that have been intensified in his latest works„large, richly colored canvases entitled The Wetland Series. These paintings are often praised for their beauty, although Marshall says the paintings are of areas many people would pass by without noticing. Unconventional landscapes, they are tightly focused examinations of the cycle of life in the wetlands„growth, death, and decay„an intense look at the natural elements where land and water meet.
Marshall's paintings are influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and Realism. In the simplest sense, Marshall's paintings are about surface, color, and form. On a more complex level, they are descriptions of realities. Through the contrast of illusionary three-dimensional form and the two-dimensionality of the paints, Robert Marshall, Snow Canyon
Marshall hopes to engage and momentarily dislocate the viewer. He tells us,
Interlocking passages of color areas simultaneously confirm and deny the flatness of the picture plane as forms emerge from the paint. I am not however, dealing with contradictions, but rather I want each painting to be delicious and inviting„a confirmation of multiple layers of reality.
Marshall is interested in helping the viewer to meditate and ask questions that perhaps would not otherwise have been asked. This kind of dimensional interplay is one way by which he can accomplish this goal.
The Art
ROBERT LEROY MARSHALL (1944- ) Springville, Utah
Snow Canyon 1984
watercolor, 23" x 33 1/2" (58.1 x 85.2 cm)
SMA 1984.018
Snow Canyon was painted on site during a painting trip Marshall took with students in 1984. It is a delicate but detailed view of the this scenic canyon, just north of St. George, Utah. Although the painting is a watercolor, the rock formations have mass and solidity and a strong sense of agelessness. Marshall has captured both the look and the feel of the area„huge weathered rock faces and dry desert, sprinkled with just enough green to heighten the contrast between inhospitable rock and only slightly more hospitable ground. Marshall says his focus in the painting was on trying to capture the varying textures of the scene. To reproduce the textures he used a technique like dry brush watercolor, with a lot of surface texture, layering of colors, and a little opaque watercolor.
The design of the painting leads viewers' eyes into the rock formation, following what at first glance appears to be water but then becomes clearly a dry creek bed, shaped by the passage of water it once held. The rocks themselves have intriguing crevices, inviting exploration, and the soft complementary colors of the rocks and vegetation produce a richness often missing in watercolors. It is a painting to be lived with, to return to over and over again.
Concepts
Visual Art Core Curriculum - Utah State Office of Education
Under the Standards of Applying Media, Technique, and Processes, this print can help the student:
- Identify the various art forms available to the artist (i.e., painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, jewelry, ceramics, architecture, and textiles).
- Experiment with the media of watercolor to create a landscape.
- Utilize the watercolor techniques of blending, washes, glazes, and dry brush.
- Preplan a landscape by researching and sketching ideas for the final work. Include various watercolor techniques in the preplan.
Under the Standard of Identifying and Using Structures, this print can help the student:
- Identify the elements of art--line, shape, value, color, texture, form, and space--used in the work.
- Create a twelve-step color wheel by mixing the three primary colors.
- Experiment with various color schems (i.e., analagous, monchromatic, triadic, complementary, and neutral).
- Identify the principles of art--unity, balance, emphasis, contrast, variety, proportion, movement, repetition, and harmony--as used in the work.
- Create a painting displaying unity through the use of an analagous color scheme.
Under the Standard of Selecting and Evaluating Subjects, Symbols, and Ideas, this print can help the student:
- Identify the subject matter of landscape and its subcategories of cityscape and seascape.
- Discuss the message or meaning the artist communicates in the work.
- Create a landscape to express a personal idea or subject.
- Review functions of art (i.e., decoration, utility, self-expression, ritual, socail commentary, and documentation).
Under the Standard of Understanding History, Culture, and Personal Experience, this print can help the student:
- Discuss which art movement the work best fits.
- Discuss the development of landscape as a subject matter within various contexts (i.e., Japanese [Hokusai], American [Bierstadt], European [Constable], female [O'Keeffe])
- Assess the historical, geographical, or cultural context of the work.
Under the Standard of Assessing Characteristics and Merits, this print can help the student:
- Recognize which aesthetic theory applies to the work--Imitationalist (Mimetic), Expressionist, Formalist, or Feminist.
- Describe the elements and objects in the work, analyze the principles displayed, interpret symbols or meanings, and assess if the artist's main intent was to create a realistic, expressive, or formal work (or combinations of the three).
Under the Standard of Connecting Visual Arts and Other Disciplines, this print can help the student:
- Examine Utah-based themes of geopgraphy such as location, region, physical environment, land conservation.
- Explore the use of theme in music as it refers to landscape (i.e., composer Frede Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite or Kurt Bestor's Joyspring or Seasons).
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