Rob Stolzer - Paintings & Drawings

I am fascinated by process work, the traces, marks and images that arise out the art-making process, as one dances with the work. For many years I have worked between my oil paintings and sketchbook work, attempting to bring the two worlds together, especially the purely drawn mark into the paintings. That struggle has culminated in my latest pieces, a result of my love of painting, drawing, and the narrative arts. The unofficial title of this body of work keeps changing the deeper I delve. The working title that has stuck the longest is Free Association Funnies, a nod to the cartoon narrative arts that I have loved and studied for decades. There are narrative elements in these works, though they are often fragmentary, standing alone from other narrative elements. I am working as intuitively as possible in these pieces, responding to and from one image to the next, going back and forth, in and out, up and down within the picture. I'm trying to remain mindful of edges and tensions, things that have been components of my work for a long time. There are also repeating images and triggers in the work, some elements, such as eggs, seeds, sacs, and Japanese zushis, that I’ve been working with for years, and others that arise from everyday life, language, and the free associative process. These and future pieces in the series will be featured in a new freeassociationfunnies.com webste, starting in the early part of September 2017.