Art Talk, The Dairy Center for the Arts, February 13, 2001
In “Visions of the Unseen,” local artist Erin Robbins becomes a tour guide to the mysterious process we call creativity. Using her own paintings as examples, Robbins describes the fascinating and unpredictable journey from blank canvas to finished piece. For Robbins, every aspect of the process is a dialogue, one that begins long before the first brush stroke ever touches canvas. “Something – a color, a line, a gesture – is trying to emerge from deep within me. In the beginning my task is to just listen. Once I have a strong sense of its shape, form or color, I begin to coax it into the light of day and onto the canvas.”
Robbins believes that responding to images as they emerge is a crucial part of the process. “There is a story to be told, one that is encoded in the colors and shapes themselves. The great mystery is that a single piece of art may tell a different story to every person who views it, yet somehow all of those stories are related; they all spring from the same root.”Robbins presentation includes a slide show demonstration of her technique (applying and removing layers of watercolors and oil pastels) as well as a series of photographs documenting the progress of several paintings from start to finish.