A
day with abstract artist Robyn Andrews
 |
| Robyn Andrews |
It
took me fifteen minutes fiddling with my out-of-data cell phone and forty more
to get to where I needed to be to meet abstract artist Robyn Andrews for an
early lunch. I was late, but she graciously welcomed me with open arms, and we
chatted almost non-stop about our respective art, children, and food
preferences. We had met about a month ago during the Resistance art show at The
Union in Jacksonville, Florida, where she had sparked my curiosity about her
work. We had set up a lunch date at Uptown Kitchen and Bar and she offered to
show me around her solo exhibition called Change
and Permanence, showing several abstract series at the Karpeles Manuscript
Library Museum. To top off the afternoon, she invited me to her studio in one
of the buildings of the CoRK Arts District’s many warehouses. Both these venues
are also in Jacksonville, Florida.
 |
| Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum |
Robyn
Andrews is the new kid on the art-block. After recently having left a
physically and emotionally abusive relationship, she needed time and means to
work through the various levels of emotional impact on her psyche and life.
Deeply engaged with her subconscious and complex dreams, she started creating
her stark and often geometrical abstracts with acrylics, oils, and mix her
media freely when called for. Inspired by Greek Mythology and the philosophy of
human nature and centuries tried diction of ancient philosophers like Plato,
she shares her most inner pain with us through her perceptions and uses color
and composition to interactively stimulate emotional reactions of the viewer.
Robyn recently studied at the Fare Pittura Atelier
e Scuola d’Arte in Milan, Italy under the personal direction of master
watercolorist and oil painter Francesco Fontana. Apart from the odd lone piece
of abstract mastery, she prefers to work in series of three or five harmonizing
panels to emphasize her stories and accounts of human suffering. The venue of
her solo exhibition, running through May and June of this year, is a force of
architectural nature on its own and a suitably sultry locale for explorations
of the human essentialities of being.
 |
| Inside view Karpeles - The Reflections series below |
One of ten such museums in the
United States, the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Jacksonville, located at 101
West 1st Street (formerly 1116 North Laura Street), was constructed in 1921 and
mostly used by the First Church of Christ Scientists. The building was
constructed in Neo-Classical style with smooth Doric columns, wide entry steps,
and an imposing Greek architecture-style façade. In 1992 the congregation sold
the building to David Karpeles, a former math professor who had made millions
investing in real estate and then taken up manuscript collecting. In 1983 he
began opening museums across the country to house his collections which are now
one of the largest in the world. The Jacksonville museum features three or four
exhibits a year, mostly from the private collection of David and his wife Marsha
Karpeles’ collections. The museum also exhibits material from other collectors.
The archives include literature, science, religion, history, and art.
Throughout the year, artists of various disciplines are invited to exhibit
their work either in solo or group shows. In April of this year, the board invited
Robyn Andrews to hold her solo exhibition at the museum. She exhibits five
series and a few large, single canvasses in her show titled Change and Permanence.
 |
| The Dissociation series |
 |
| Dissociation II |
Robyn led me through the exposition
going clockwise around the room. Since her work is based on personal experience
and philosophically based stories, she had made a map for the viewer with brief
explanations of the influences and thought-trails leading up to the final work.
In Change and Permanence, Robyn mostly
explores the philosophies of Plato. Within four of the five series, she conveys
abstract representations of rational platonic concepts like his Theory of Good and Evil, where the
essence of being is goodness, or The Good, in which virtues provide the right
relationship between all that exists and the mind of the Divine and where evil
is simply the absence of The Good and thus described as immoral. In her “The
Dissociation” series, Robyn addresses her personal tribulations relating to the
absence of good and explain her frequently occurring dissociative episodes,
which she translates into geometrical basics and textured black on white.
 |
| From The Trilogy of the Indfinite Dyad series |
Walking on, we see her “Trilogy of
the Indefinite Dyad” series. She expresses her view on the totality of reality
derived from the interaction of multiple realities, where the more chaotic
something is, the stronger the presence of the Indefinite Dyad is. Throughout
her work, Robyn explores Plato’s Theory
of Forms, or Ideas, where non-physical forms represent the most accurate
reality, and she makes a brave attempt to communicate her existential
reflections during her recovery through her series called “The Divided Line“.
In five panels, she takes up the visible and intelligible realms of the psyche
divided into four consecutive stages: conjecture, belief, thought, and
understanding. The fifth panel represents the sum of all these parts in an
off-centered perspective of squares.
 |
| The Divided Line series |
 |
| Conjecture |
 |
| Conjecture and Form |
Robyn prefers to work mostly with primary
and secondary colors, which she decisively renders in prismatic and saturated
values. When entering the room, it is immediately noticeable, that she has a
strong fondness for reds and oranges. Each individual piece is laden with symbolism,
mainly understood through her excellent storytelling and relay of her personal
pain and musings on reality and emphasized by the flaming hues. Although Robyn
feels a deep connection with the multitude of platonic theories and allegories,
she is very much a contemporary abstractist and clearly understands the potential
effects of creating art, harmonizing colors, and using hand-eye coordination on
the subconscious of a person.
 |
| Robyn at work in her CoRK Arts District Studio |
One of her larger panels called "Mother,
A Study of Death in Red and Blue," for which she won an Honorable Mention
in the Art-N-Jax Juried Art Show of
November, 2016, is proof of such psychology at work. When she was a young
child, a teacher concluded, based on a blue and red crayon drawing she had made,
that she had a deep hatred for her mother; words that had a deep impact on
Robyn for a large part of her life. When her mother passed away in 2002, she not
only came to grips with the knowledge that she, in fact, did not hate her
mother, but also that she can put the colors red and blue together however she
right-well pleases. This new and assertive realization also echoes through in
the work that she showed me at her studio, where she took me next.
 |
| Mother: A Study of Death in Red and Blue - Honorable Mention Art-N-Jax, 2016 |
In
2015, Robyn was fortunate enough to bypass the long waiting lists to become a
resident artist of CoRK Arts District Studios by occupying the vacated space of
a close friend. CoRK consists of a community of seventy artists in working
studios and exhibition spaces housed in abandoned warehouses in Jacksonville,
Florida. The studios are closed to the public, except for special shows,
exhibitions, and an annual open house in November. After she gave me the tour,
she visibly relaxes in her personal surroundings and tells me more about her
mother and grandmother. Tubes of paint, pots and jars of used brushes, dried up
palettes, and a vast variety of cans and bottles with a multitude of medium
substances are spread around the room. An old but comfortable divan protrudes
into the room. Old work is covering the walls and I study them while listening
to Robyn telling me some of their history. The bustling of other artists in the
building is quite present, so she puts on some music. New oeuvre is abundantly
in the making, and it involves paint on nudes and printing bodies on canvas. It
is exciting to see the process in various stages of progress. We hug, promise
to see each other again, I thank her for everything and leave. The art-block
can definitely expect many more inspirational creations from his small but
emotionally courageous woman and artist.
For more
information:
Robyn Andrews
website: http://41art.godaddysites.com/
Change
and Permanence - Solo Exhibition Robyn Andrews
Karpeles
Manuscript Library Museum
101 W. 1st
Street
Jacksonville, FL
32206
Closing Reception Friday, June 23rd,
2017 from 5-8pm
Sources:
Andrews, Robyn. Artist, CoRK Arts
District. <Instagram.com/41artlife>. <http://41art.godaddysites.com>. Photographs for this article.
Cerri-Bartels, Sylvia. Photographs
for this article.
Karpeles Manuscript Library
Museums. The Karpeles Manuscript Library
Museums. RAIN. Web. 20 June
2017.
Plato. Republic. Trans. Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993. Print.
Wikipedia
contributors. "Plato's unwritten doctrines." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Dec. 2016. Web. 20 June 2017
