Art for Art’s Sake

By Tomm Carroll

August 26 -- Many a person -- artists as well as ordinary people -- has been inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece “Irises.” But perhaps none more so than John Robertson, whose work has recently graced a Santa Monica gallery and a nightclub. That painting changed his life. Literally.

When Robertson, then an executive in the retail furniture business with no knowledge of or interest in art, heard that the J. Paul Getty Museum had paid more than $50 million in 1990 to purchase the Van Gogh work, his curiosity was piqued. He couldn’t imagine anyone spending that much on a painting, so he went to the Getty to see what all the fuss was about.

“It literally brought me to tears,” Robertson recalled. “Somehow, I connected with that work in a way that I had never connected with anything before.”

After spending about two hours transfixed by the color and power of “Irises,” Robertson knew then and there that he had to paint. He immediately drove to a Standard Brands paint store and asked the clerk what tools he needed, then came directly home with some colors and canvas and got down to business. (Pictures by Tomm Carroll)

“I just started painting, and I painted every day from that point on, five or six days a week,” Robertson said. “I realized that this is what I loved to do.”

By the following year, the aspiring artist had dropped out of the corporate world, gotten divorced, paid off his kids’ college bills and decided to pursue his newfound passion full time. He escaped from his previous life with enough money to buy a car and a mobile home in a Pacific Palisades trailer park with a view overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the beach. He still lives and works there today; his “studio” is his carport.

Completely self-taught, Robertson’s approach to painting is as unlikely as his decision to devote his life to it. “I started painting for the fun of it because I just loved the process,” he explained. “It made no difference what I painted, and to this day it still doesn’t -- on my carport now I have two dog paintings, a superhero and a New York Yankees logo. It’s really about the paint and the colors and the shapes.”

But mostly, it was about his discipline and dedication to the process. “Like they say, the Indian rain dance works because they dance until it rains,” he analogized. “It’s the same thing with painting -- I painted until I could paint. If you paint enough, and do enough of them, you’re bound to make a decent painting.”

Robertson confessed to not knowing much about art history’s great painters or movements or even to being inspired by any of them. That said, the Van Gogh influence is obvious in the early paintings that adorn one wall of his home, mostly small-scale, primitive landscapes with bright, conflicting colors. There are even some pointillistic qualities to them; all of which would classify him as an impressionist.

However, despite retaining the same brush stroke and bold use of color of his earlier paintings, Robertson’s more recent work -- which favors larger format conceptual portraits (people and animals) and social or political statements -- seems to be moving more towards a Jackson Pollock approach with its splattered and dripping paint.

“The sloppiness started because of the way I was painting,” he explained. “It started to slop up and I couldn’t keep it neat. I wasn’t purposely doing it, but I thought it kind of worked because it’s organically part of the process.”

So what’s it like making one’s living as an artist? “I still don’t really think of myself as an artist,” Robertson said. And as for making a living?

"Just barely. I’m not getting rich, but I have no debt whatsoever,” he said of his somewhat modest lifestyle. “My expenses are as minimal as they can be. So consequently, I can paint. You can’t have a better life than to get up in the morning and do exactly what you want to do.”

Which is exactly what Robertson does -- from “anywhere between 7 and 8 a.m. until 2 or 3 p.m. every day. After that, I’ll do some sort of marketing aspect of the business, showing work to somebody or selling a painting,” he said, delineating his daily regimen. Yes, he sells his own work too.

“It’s sort of the last of the free enterprise system,” he explained with a laugh. “I sit here and create something, and then I get to try to sell it. I don’t have a gallery that sells for me; people have to find me.”

Thirteen years after his “Irises” epiphany, he’s not that hard to find. Robertson’s art has appeared in various movies and television shows (“Grosse Point Blank,” “Will & Grace”) and his portraits of musicians continue to adorn the walls, including the stage area, of Santa Monica’s Temple Bar night club.

Exhibited mostly around the Westside and Pacific Palisades, his work includes landscapes, portraits, socio-political art, religious iconography and, most recently, his series of dog paintings. They are often displayed in storefronts. “I’m very public with my work,” he proclaimed. “I create interest in a frame shop, a flower shop, any place that will put my paintings up. I’m in the windows of two locations right now (Village Books in Pacific Palisades and Temple Bar) where people can see my work from the street, without having to go into galleries.”

Robertson does, however, occasionally agree to the odd gallery show; an exhibition of his large-scale puppy portraits was mounted at Off Main at Bergamont Station, the Santa Monica arts complex, last fall. His paintings can also be viewed on his Web site, StreetCredArt.com.