Located in Downtown Grand Rapids, The Intersection has been providing West Michigan with the best local and national live music and entertainment for over 40 years. The comfortable atmosphere at The Intersection is like no other place in West Michigan. It is a place where you can enjoy a drink during Happy Hour, an intimate [...]
Specifically, the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce created the Diversity Visionary Award in 2003 as a way to honor individuals in the community that should be recognized for their efforts, advancements, and contributions to ensuring diversity, inclusion, and equity within their own organizations and the community. The 2013 Diversity Visionary Award winner is Faye [...]
Diversity Visionary Award Winner, Faye Richardson-Green of Steelcase, Inc. is an article from: A Healthier Michigan
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Reb Roberts, a well-known Grand Rapids-based folk artist, debuted a painted portrait series at the Fire Barn Gallery in Grand Haven on Thursday night.
GRAND HAVEN, MI — Reb Roberts, a well-known Grand Rapids-based folk artist, debuted a painted portrait series at the Fire Barn Gallery in Grand Haven on Thursday night.
Reb Roberts transformed the Fire Barn Galley space by creating huge paintings on the windows of the gallery.
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For the show, Roberts created 13 portraits of friends and family that were a combination of two panels placed side-by-side. The first panel was a depiction of the person and the second was an assortment of images that represented the spirit or personality of the subject.
Roberts also utilized the three large windows in the gallery space to create gigantic paintings to go along with the portraits.
The folk artist has been a fixture in the West Michigan art scene with his artwork being displayed along city streets and gallery walls in his hometown and neighboring cities.
“I think Reb is a grandfather in the area of outsider folk art,” said Chris Protas, a fellow painter and curator of the Fire Barn Gallery. “He is kind of the soul representative of it, too from what I’ve seen.”
The portrait project began with a question that had been percolating in Protas’ mind: “What would a Reb Roberts portrait look like?”
Protas posed the question to his friend to see if he would be interested in trying something different from the work that he is most known for creating and displaying at his Sanctuary Folk Art gallery in downtown Grand Rapids.
“He can switch genres and he is extremely open to it, to trying something unique, and the results are pretty fantastic,” Protas said.
He was curious to see how Roberts would approach making portraits since it was something he had never done before.
“I was challenged basically because Chris wanted me to do portraits, which I don’t normally do, so it’s outside my normal realm,” Roberts said.
Typically, the artist paints animals, specifically chickens and cows, and human figures with vibrant colors in an expressionistic style. The idea was for Roberts to do a series of portraits of friends and family in his own signature style.
“I love to paint so for me that part wasn’t a chore,” Roberts said.
According to the artist, it was an enjoyable process to picture the people he was drawing and “think about how to represent them symbolically.” He said there is a story behind every piece and the reasons why he painted them the way that he did.
In keeping with the spirit of outsider folk art, which emphasizes unfiltered self-expression, Roberts didn’t overthink things too much and let the portraits evolve as he applied his brush to the blank canvases.
“It’s something that’s intuitive and not really thought out or planned,” Roberts said. “That’s why I like painting because the medium itself, the paint does something for you too.”
Roberts summed up his creative process as a way to “squeeze everything in that I can without thinking about whether it’s supposed to be there.”
This is the first time in his career that he has attached the name of a real person to one of his pieces and he is hoping that no one is disappointed that his or her portrait is not an exact representation of what he or she really looks like.
Regardless of what family and friends think of their portraits, Protas felt Roberts’ portrait series “showed a real mastery over his medium” and was impressed with Roberts versatility in being able to switch genres so effortlessly.
“I’d say that there’s a directness to the work. There’s nothing in between the thought and the action, it’s not filtered through any language,” Protas said. “He really deserves the recognition, he’s earned that reputation very much.”
More information about Reb Roberts and his outsider art studio can be found at the Sanctuary Folk Art Gallery Facebook page.
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