The art of Robert Ransom
By Sarah GianelliEBS ASSOCIATE EDITOR
BIG
SKY – There are two kinds of artists. Those who will pontificate about the
meaning behind their work, and those who, despite all attempts to coax them to
do so, will not provide any insight or commentary on the deeper significance of
their creative process or the finished piece.
Sacramento,
California-based painter Robert Ransom is among the latter. The artist, who has
been called “the Andy Warhol of the American pastime” by Chicago Art Institute
Curator Mark Pascal, would not waiver from his position that, “Those are just
labels people put on my work; they’re not mine.” This, contrary to relentless prompting
with words and phrases like “art-deco,” and the “American Dream” that buzz
throughout the lofty commentary on his work.
“Most
artists are like that,” he said. “When you get them aside they’ll say, ‘I don’t
know why I did that.’ Then the art historians will make up stuff about what it
means.”
Such
nonchalance can be infuriating when you’re profoundly attracted to an artist’s
work—as I am to Ransom’s sleek, stylized snapshots of Hollywood-era Americana.
But it’s a reminder that the host of associations a work of art can evoke are
our own, and one function of art is to express that which eludes verbal
interpretation. Ultimately, it forces our gaze back to the work itself, or toward
other people who enjoy meaning-making as much as we do.
Colin
Mathews, who represents Ransom at Big Sky’s Creighton Block Gallery, said he
was captivated by the artist’s work the first time he laid eyes on a painting
of a flame-decorated racecar zooming by a snow-capped mountain backdrop.
“To
see the Wasatch Mountains and the Bonneville Salt Flats squished together in
that compressed perspective brought up happy memories of childhood road trips,”
said Mathews, who’s familiar with the long stretch of Utah highway between the
two regions. “Ransom’s paintings will engender those feelings in lots of
viewers—whether it’s a backyard barbecue and palm trees, longhorn steers or trout
fishing.”
Ransom
would concede to talk basics. His subject matter can be split into two distinct
categories that the artist says draw from his Southern California upbringing and
the years he spent in the Southwest while earning an MFA at Northern Arizona
University in the 1960s.
His
Western motifs often feature cowboys on horseback, gunfights, desert-scapes and
wide open spaces.
The
rest of his work has a distinctly California aesthetic. These pieces are
populated with retro diners, motorcycles, dapper golfers and lots of martinis.
All of it has a whiff of historic Route 66 running through it, perhaps not
surprisingly since the old highway connects the two regions that have been most
influential in the artist’s work.
On
the surface Ransom’s work may appear deceptively simple. His lines are clean
and angular, his figures blocky and often portrayed in profile, and engaged in
mundane leisure activities like eating, boating, walking the dog, or having
cocktails.
But
beneath the almost comically exaggerated figures depicted in quintessentially
American scenes, lies an ever-so-subtle narrative that each viewer is left to
surmise—or not.
And
while the work may have a pop culture aesthetic, which implies mass production,
Ransom has adopted the time-consuming oil painting technique of the Flemish masters
of the 15th and 16th centuries. He applies the Dutch style of glazing and
layering to achieve a lustrous depth of color he found missing in the
contemporary art of the 20th century.
“It’s
the best of both worlds,” Ransom said. “Reaching back to the old masters gave
me a means to develop the kind of style I wanted and the direction I wanted to
go.”
That
direction continues to deliver paintings that are immensely delightful at face
value, but that offer as many nuanced layers of depth to probe as one is
inclined to find.
A version of
this installment of “In the Spotlight” was first published in the July 7, 2017
edition of Explore Big Sky.
