Photos by Isadora Pennington
Transmutation and Evolution
Matter painter Bob Landström changes the game By Isadora Pennington
O
n the outside, Bob Landström’s house is a nicely updated midcentury ranch like many others on the block. Large picture windows reveal a modern interior, and the walls showcase vibrant paintings everywhere you look. When I arrived on a cool winter day, I was greeted by exuberant dogs before being led downstairs into Landström’s bright studio space. There, in the welcoming and cool space, completed works grace the walls. Evocative symbols and high key colors entice viewers to draw near. Up close the texture of the material of Landström’s paintings adds a sort of energy to the space. Considering himself an abstract painter, his works often contain a mix of segmented lines, partially obscured figures, both existing and imagined symbols, and snippets of prose and formulae. The numbers and words in a given work might not always be related, explained Landström. He often uses these components alongside his own language of invented symbols as graphic elements within the plastic space of his composition, rather than all directly related in an effort to express a complete thought. Leaving phrases and computation unfinished lends an added evocativeness to his pieces, asking the viewer to seek out their own interpretation of the story and meaning of the work. “I am interested in the things behind things,” explained Landström. “I like to take
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what’s normally unseen and make it seen.” His interest in metaphysics and alchemy comes to life in his art. Landström’s current body of work “Multiverse” plays on the concept of multiple realities coexisting outside of our ability to perceive them, so in his paintings figures are often mostly obscured, existing in two places at once, and layered atop and between symbols and iconography. “It’s almost impossible for it not to be the case,” he continued. Captivated by the idea, he has been “playing” with the concept in a series of between 35 to 40 finished works. The curiosity and playfulness that Landström brings to his paintings also pushed him to consider alternate materials beyond the typical paint and brush. For many years he used traditional mediums to create his works, but increasingly he felt compelled to infuse pigment with soil in a way that more accurately spoke to his interest in transformation and transmutation. Oftentimes that meant that he would literally collect dirt from wherever he was painting and mix it into his paint. “Thinking about it and developing the technique and everything, I came across the idea of using volcanic rock, igneous rock, because of the state change that’s involved. It’s sort of an alchemical process because at one point it’s liquid inside the earth, and now it’s a solid as I hold it in my hands,” explained Landström. “The state change and that alchemical nature of it really resonated
with me. I’ve painted that way ever since, and that was 25 or 30 years ago.” Sourcing from deposits deep underground beneath the Navajo Nation
lands in the American Southwest, the igneous rock Landström uses in his work is estimated to be around 30 million years old. While the material is typically used At l a n t a I n t o w n Pa p e r. c o m
