Crawlspace Painting

Robert Stone grew up in Southern California. He received a BA from Northwestern University, where he tried to beg his way into art classes; but since he was not an art major, he was never successful at getting in. After a disastrous love affair, he bought a canvas and paints, and started to paint the feelings he did not have the words for. The second painting he ever made was accepted into the prestigious 1975 Finger Lakes Exhibition at the University of Rochester, which encouraged his newfound passion. He remains self-taught. Upon moving to the Bay Area in 1978, he tried to find representation in an art gallery; but having at the time completed only four paintings and having no art education, of course no gallery was interested, so he resorted to a career in construction to put food on the table. After one of his paintings was vandalized at the 1981 Artisans’ Guild Fine Art Show at the Marin County Civic Center, he stopped showing, and with a marriage and new responsibilities in his worklife, he nearly stopped painting altogether for the next twenty-five years. He is now retired and finally able to paint the images that have fermented in his head for most of his adult life. While he started with acrylics, he now paints exclusively with oils on canvas. He feels a kinship with Bosch, Breughel, and the Surrealists, but he loves the handling of light and color of the Impressionists. Among contemporary artists he admires are Kathy Calderwood and Tina Mion. He has traveled extensively and has had many exciting adventures, including having a pistol cocked and held to his head on a beach in Nicaragua, being hunted down by half a dozen men with bush knives in Papua New Guinea, spending time in the jungle with rebel armies, and being arrested by military intelligence in Rangoon at the home of a future Nobel Peace Prize winner. Besides painting about ordinary life experiences of heartbreak and joy, he is painting about these other experiences of a full life. Most of his paintings can be characterized as Surrealistic and unapologetically narrative. He likes to see the humor in the dark side of life, and the darkness that lies just below the surface of the bright side. He delights in portraying light and in the feeling it invokes when he hits just the right note. He has resided in Santa Cruz, California since 1978.