A nationally recognized artist, Singleton, 85, has been a
full-time practicing artist and painter for over 60 years.
He moved to West Virginia in 1978 in search of privacy,
time, and space.
He designed and built his home and studio
and has since called a remote mountain top home.
His early work focused on abstract expressionist
imagery. In
recent years, the dedication of his work has been
“to the joy and poetry of light in the form of clouds,”
the shape of which is “an abstract, ever-changing vessel
for me to transport light, shared astonishment
and hopefulness coming from within.”
The Works of Robert Singleton
Florida - 1963 ~ 1974
Gallery I Finding A Way
Gallery II Diverse Works
Screamer Mountain – 1973 ~ 1978
Gallery III Mystical Meditations
Gallery IV Hard Edge Pastels
West Virginia 1978 ~ 2012
Gallery V
Quest For Grace
West Virginia 2012 ~ 2023
Gallery VI Romanced Horizons
Ambient Music by Dan Morro
From the Galleries,
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Life's Connected Events . . .
Now,
that
I
am
in
my
85th
year,
I
can
only
look
at
my
previous
work
as
a
preamble.
I
work
daily,
exploring,
discovering
new
inspirations
for
new
images.
Knowing
the
vastness
of
the unknown becomes ever clearer.
The
lifelong
story
of
my
artistic
approach
is
to
question
creativity
itself
and
where
it
comes
from.
Is
it
really
about
the
artist/creator
as
the
author
of
metaphors;
the
biographer
of
illusions?
Or,
is
it
more
about
life
and
the
influence
of
life's
connected
events
which result in the measured evolution of the imaginative act?
In
the
mid-1950's
I
studied
painting
under
a
professor
who
was
a
disciple
of
Hans
Hoffman.
In
the
sixty
some
years
since,
my
art
has
passed
through
many
transformations.
In
the
same
way
I,
as
a
person,
have
evolved.
Life
and
Art,
the
two
are
still analogous paths; side by side, my work has always reflected these many passages.
One
of
the
journeys
of
great
impact
in
my
artistic
development
took
place
in
1960.
As
a
young
adult,
I
traveled
across
the
United
States
and
saw
for
the
first
time
the
great
expanse of the plains of the Midwest.
Visually
what
I
experienced
was
profound.
The
Horizon
Line.
I
wrote
in
my
sketchbook,
"You
can
turn
360
degrees
and
see
nothing.”
From
Kansas
on,
this
line
spellbound
me.
A
line
that
was
the
division
between
sky
and
the
wide-open
prairie;
uncluttered space, empty space with this hard, crisp line intersecting.
Continue to Next Page
As
a
child,
on
many
levels,
I
was
accustomed
to
loneliness.
Visually,
what
I
witnessed
translated
to
deep
emotions.
I
saw
what
I
as
a
child
had
felt.
I
found
in
the
natural
world
a
human
emotion.
In
the
years
to
come,
this
emotion
would
translate
into
images
of
empty
space
divided
by
a
single
horizontal
line.
The
tie
between
the
visual
and
the
emotional
self
would merge.
Creativity
has
been
a
voice
expressing
a
deep
personal
desire
to
speak
of
the
broad
spectrum of human emotions. Our state of existence . . .
The
creative
process,
as
often
as
not,
is
cluttered
with
human
frailties.
Still,
art
is
a
subjective
manifestation
of
those
frailties,
an
expression
of
both
the
pain
and
the
joy
of
life.
The pain of the internal search and the joy of the found.... expressed!
The
one
absolute
truth
of
my
life
has
been
my
art,
a
visual
communication
of
poetic
perception,
a
reflective
state
of
an
authentic
search.
At
a
given
moment
in
time
that
creative
expression
becomes
a
composite
of
the
entirety
of
this
person’s
being
.
.
.
bringing
all
the
creator is to that discipline.
In
the
mid-1970s
looking
up
towards
the
sky
my
imagination
was
captured
again,
this
time
by
clouds.
Images
we
often
take
for
granted,
seen
every
day;
above
the
horizon
line
filled with abstract forms of light and atmosphere, the ever-changing poetry of clouds.
Creation
is
often
described
as
a
movement
from
an
eternal
unformed
and
unchanging
dark
chaos.
Sky
and
earth
lie
together
in
a
changeless
embrace
until
forced
apart
by
their
offspring,
who
drive
a
wedge
between
them
producing
light
and
movement.
My
paintings
explore
these
creation
dynamics.
Why
did
our
early
ancestors
pick
the
meeting
of
sky
and
earth as a creative beginning?
Each
of
my
later
paintings
is
a
creation
whose
subject
is
creation.
Sky
and
earth
are
usually
male
and
female
in
myth
and
from
this
polarity
all
other
things
derive.
Without
polar
tensions
there
is
no
motion
and
no
story.
Thus,
the
sky
and
sea/earth
are
always
divided
by
a
horizon-wedge
keeping
them
in
tension
and
producing
clouds,
which,
in
their
movement
and
reflection
of
light,
bring
temporality
and
process.
Nothing
changes
more
quickly
than
clouds,
whose
shape
and
color
can
announce
brutal
violence
or
reflect
glorious
spectacular
light through which our consciousness seeks to gain unity with nature.
While
every
work
of
art
has
to
achieve
a
balance
of
the
tension
or
forces
that
motivated
it,
my
paintings
include
a
sense
of
imminent
future
which
is
full
of
potentialities.
Most
of
my
clouds
announce
better
and
maybe
greater
events
are
about
to
happen. The paintings reveal the "world" of our moment in a more relevant way.
Why continue this quest? The answer is not complicated. My art is my Life.
Creatively I see the future of my work/life as a continuation of providing a means of
uncovering the core of our collective evolutionary message; our intuitive understanding
and cumulative experience ingrained and transmitted through generations since the
dawn of time. Creativity is the search for our shared universal aware
R e s o u r c e s
•
The Art of Living: 60 Propositions on Becoming
•
The Cloud Painter and the Berlin Musician
•
CORE of MY JOY / Memoir
Part I - For the Joy of Light - Color Retrospective - 1964 – 2020
Part II – Until I Become Light - A Memoir
•
Until I Become Light
Award winning film documentary aired on PBS
2002 Produced by Real Earth Productions
•
West Virginia Public Broadcasting | By Kyle Vass
Published September 1, 2021 at 12:01 PM EDT
•
The Works of Robert Singleton
1949 ~ 2022
A Matter of Conscience
GUEST BOOK
“War is a place where young people who don’t know each other, and don’t hate each other, kill each
other, by the decision of older rulers who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each
other…”
Erich Hartmann: German fighter pilot during World War II.
*
March 24, 2022: I saw this picture in the news. It collided with me at the core. Bring back images from the distant past.
*
1969 Vietnam
2022 Ukraine
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Casualties of Wars
Romance on Canvas
By Grace Kehrer
Spring 1969
Robert Singleton as an artist stands in the shadows of Romantic, realistic and transcendental
movements where notions like Nature, Man, Society, Individualism and Responsibility are strained
though the reality of two world wars, police actions, a crass materialism and an intensifying
depersonalization. Finding himself caught up in a miasmic atmosphere created, in part, by computer,
"Wagers" and a relativistic viewpoint, Singleton, the self-admitted incurable romantic, attempts to
understand a sick society and bring intelligible order to a chaotic universe.
Singleton's paintings on oversize canvases, done in primary colors, stand testimonial to contemporary
styling techniques executed under the banner of "Art for Art's sake." However, the questions, often
spelled out in block letters, are timeless and universal. While Singleton does not offer a solution to the
problem of man's inhumanity to man, nor locate a center of human spirituality, he does examine the
phenomena, continuing the quest in a personal, thoughtful and sensitive manner.
The second painting develops the idea of journalistic responsibility and influence. Interjecting often ignored,
possibly forgotten notions of equality, ethics, freedom and unbiased news, printed upon a white field
surrounding a patriotically colored centre, one can only hope these subtleties are not lost on the Sentinel staff.
Journalistic Responsibility – 1967 – 78” X 120” ~ Commissioned by the Orlando Sentinel
Singleton's latest work, one produced after much thought, recognizes the reality of the generation gap.
A literary message, in dialogue form over the figure of a dying boy, it exposes the inarticulate nature of
questions, the naivete of answers and the pain suffered by men separated by chronological age and
appetite.
Text as it appearers in painting
IJUSTDEPARTEDWHYNATIONAL
SECURITYWHATTHEYCALLWAR
WHYSOWAGERSMAYLIVEBUTYOU
ARESOYOUNGTHEYOUTHHAVETHE
STRENGTHOFBODYWHATOSLIFE
THATISFORTHEWAGERSWONT
YOUMISSITWHATOFLIFEWHY
WHATOFLIFEWHYWONTYOU
MISSITWHYWHYWHYWHY
Legible
"I just departed." "Why'?" "National
Security; what they call war."
"Why?" "So wagers may live" "But you
are so young" "The youth have the
strength of body" "What of life?"
"That is for the wagers." "Won’t
you miss It?" "What of life?''
"Why?" "Won't you miss it?"
"Why?" "What of life?''
1969 Florida State University
– With WHY? hanging the background; students discussing the responsibility of artist according
to what they believe is morally right, to document their time, to protest, to reflect through their work the contemporary
violent values of humanity and the world. Be it visual arts, literature or music.