Robert Rector new horizons
Over the course of his five decade painting career, Rector has explored the relationship between the natural environment and human experience. In NEW HORIZONS, his monochromatic sculpted canvases include dimensional color palettes, curving lines, and sharp projections.
Of his paintings Rector says, "Through the use of color, textures, and shapes the viewer becomes aware that the piece is as much a sculptural object while the elements of painting in the traditional sense are still evident."
Capturing the tones, textures, and rhythms of his surroundings in his paintings' sensuous surfaces, he saturates the canvas with prismatic color. Rector’s paintings take on a landscape-like quality, calling to mind taupe and lavender mountains in New Mexico, lush green rolling hills in Tennessee, and murky blue marshes of the Delta. Layers converge to give a sense of these serene atmospheres.
Speaking to Rector’s emphasis on abstraction, the tonal paintings find their strength in organized sections and defined lines.
Rector furthers his study of color, abstraction, and structure in his works on paper. In some ways, they could be blueprints for the engineered canvases.
In a 2019 catalog essay celebrating Rector’s 45 years of painting, Fredric Koeppel wrote, “A constant motif, though, is Rector’s deepening concern for the meditative value of abstraction and his ability to convey the sense of inevitability necessary for viewers to accept the notion of non-representation.”
Robert Rector received his BFA and MFA from Louisiana State University. He has shown in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including a recent retrospective at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge, LA. He lives and maintains a studio outside of Baton Rouge.