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
“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
Next Page
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.
Two paintings commissioned by the Orlando Sentinel represent the artist personal statement and not a
compromise. The first painting seems to suggest the Influential nature of newspapers and the danger
present in the, "facts" presented by the editors reflecting the "opinions" of the publisher.
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?''
WHY? - Panted at the MacDowell Colony - 1969 - 82” X 92” Oil on canvas
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.