John Roberts THE LONG PASSOVER
InTHE LONG PASSOVER, John Roberts paints memories of youthful experiences, shared identity, and memories of loved ones that express the extraordinary within everyday moments. Roberts gives an intimate look at generations past and present who inhabited his family farm in Weakley County,Tennessee. He joins regionalist painters likeThomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Carroll Cloar who’ve shared life in MiddleAmerica with mythical, fable-like imagery that reveals a more honest and dark, yet tender endorsement of the heartland.
“With my oldest son's first breath, I began a journey shared with my ancestors: the journey of a parent. Living in the century-old farmhouse they once inhabited, I often consider the struggles and uncertainties of their lives, especially as mothers and fathers. In these works, symbols of physical and spiritual harm, frailty, hope, and transcendent love surround both my ancestors and my children. Each painting and drawing is a visual prayer and a confession of fear and doubt from the journey of a parent.”
Can you tell us about your artistic background?
What are other influences in your life that have sparked your career as a painter?
It started with second place in the Halloween poster contest in second grade. My best friend won first place, he was a genius. He's a pretty famous artist in California now.
I've always known there was something inside of me that I needed to express through art. I tend to lay everything out on the tablesort of tear my heart out of my chest and hold it there for everyone to look at.
Early on, I didn't really have much to say.As a teenager I struggled with it. I began to find something in graduate school. But then I stopped painting and drawing for twenty years. I created music at home by myself for a while. I had some surprising success during that period but financially it didn't work. With life happening very fast all around me I had to support my family with a full-time regular job as a tombstone etcher.
These twenty or so years away from painting were filled with the sort of drama you might expect in a family with eight children. Very tough years, mostly. Some real trials.Throw in a move to a favela in Brazil and several years of charity work with orphans in India and I believe I finally had something in the well to draw out.
I've always been fascinated by the American Regionalists, they seemed to make the boring Midwest look so interesting. My dream vacation, which probably won't happen until my kids are all grown, would be to buy a nicely detailed paper road map and use it to explore the seemingly mundane areas of MiddleAmerica. I'd take only back roads and find old farmhouses, diners, grain bins, railroad tracks and vast open spaces. I'd ponder all of the lives spent entirely in one place. I might even see a tornado.
There is a reverence for people that Roberts emphasizes in his work. Within the celebration of the land, which has been in his family for eight generations, the people - daughters, uncles, grandmothers, sons - are the cornerstones, centerpieces, and foundation of his paintings and life. Cedar, a sixteen-year-old with shaggy hair and a slight smug smirk, patiently waits for a parent to snap her picture before hot rodding out to meet friends. Moses confidently prepares for a hunting excursion - hopefully one less jarring than an earlier experience.
Can you speak to your approach to developing a piece - the choice to draw or paint, responses to a specific event or feeling?
My approach to developing a piece is very loose. Usually, I have a vague idea of what I want to say, or the story I want to tell.Then I'll look through old photo albums or even photos of my kids in my phone. I have to find a figure that lends itself to telling the tale. I don't do preliminary sketches or plans. I build and add as I go. Sort of an exciting thing for me.Aproblem to be solved. Sometimes it's really difficult, but so far it has always worked out.
When I'm tired of painting, I'll draw. It's a very nice change to not have to think of color and how to achieve it. Just to think in lines and shapes and light and shadows. It's sort of a working vacation to just draw.Then, when my arm is sore and my hand goes numb, I'll paint again.And somehow, that's a vacation, too.
Your work incorporates nostalgia and a reminiscence for yesteryear, usually from the setting of your family farm with distant grandparents - in their youth and in old age. Sometimes the drawings feel like black and white photographs. How often are you working from memory, using photographs, or any other mementos as source material for your pieces?
I've got quite a treasure trove of old photographs. Some of my ancestors I find particularly interesting, usually depending upon how much of a ruckus they made with their lives.
I always find photos, whether old or new, for the figures in my work. I paint them first.Then it's easier from there as I'm free to create the surroundings from my imagination or memory and somehow tell the story.
The subjects in this body of work feel more contemporary than others we’ve seen. We still get the grandparents, but they’re not included as often in their youth as they are in their old age. Can you describe the connection between painting them as adults and your children at their current ages? What are ways that painting ancestors reassures you as an artist and a parent?
I like to paint or draw what is happening in my life. The current struggle, usually. I think I find comfort and encouragement looking to my ancestors.They all experienced what I'm experiencing.And it all happened within the walls of my house. I also believe some of them act as intercessors on our behalf from the afterlife.
The Middle Fork Devil seems impish more than fierce. Can you tell us about that cat?
I love local legends or reports. So far, three of my immediate neighbors have seen big cats lurking here. One black panther and the others were normal tan mountain lions.
There's a river bottom just beyond the back edge of our farm, the Middle Fork of the Obion River. I believe those big cats roam through here once in a while. Our neighbor to the East had one jump over him out of his barn door and run off through the corn. He found deer carcasses in the barn.
I love cats. I mean really love them. It's difficult for me to paint one to look scary. But sometimes I reckon there is a bit of a risk letting my little kids play in the woods or in the crops in the fields.
John Roberts was born in Memphis,TN, grew up in Searcy,AR. He lives in Sharon,TN, on land that his distant grandmother bought and settled in 1838. He holds a BFAin Painting and Drawing from Harding University and an MFAin Painting and Drawing from the University ofArkansas.As a long-time tombstone etcher, he comes by supernatural encounters honestly. He lives and paints on the family farm with his wife and eight children.
