Robert Sullivan: Encontra

Solo Exhibition at Aplomb Gallery

Opening Sep 9, 2023 from 5-8 PM

Free and open to the public with advanced registration requested

On view through Oct 28, 2023

About the Artist

Robert Sullivan possesses an expansive range to his artist’s career, with painting, digital media, design, illustration, critical theory, and writing integral to his educational and professional experiences. Currently a lecturer at Lesley Art+Design, Sullivan specializes in seminars related to visual culture. His art is exhibited in galleries and collections from New York City to Boston and beyond. Sullivan maintains his art practice at his home studio in Portland, Maine.

See the vibrant solo exhibition featuring oil paintings by contemporary artist Robert Sullivan. Juried by Julie Hamel, she reflected:

"It is almost like you could lose your breath with how striking some figures are but then the viewer is simultaneously pushed and pulled with the tension of colors and shapes."

Artist Statement

Working with oil as my primary medium, I place a contemporary lens up to the traditions of figure painting and narrativity. Color theory, transparency, and conceptual frameworks embedded within the imagery push the expected conventions of the genre towards unfamiliar, allusive meaning. My technical facility with paint is a product of traditional training in the craft, but the conceptual platform of my work is wholly modern, drawing upon the pictorial zeitgeist of visual culture. This creates a working duality within my pictures, allowing figure painting’s storied history to have a dialogue with the discourse of the present.

I have grouped this collection of paintings under the title “Encontra.” This Latin term can be parsed to mean both “encounter” but also “on the contrary.” When a viewer engages with these paintings, they are faced with a figure or portrait that initially feels traditional, yet at once shifts away from prosaic interpretation. Whether communicating through optical effects, or the juxtaposition of flatness and form, I employ a variety of devices within the picture plane as windows into unexpected encounters and implied narratives.