Robert Ferguson Profile

Robert Ferguson

Becoming an Impressionist

“The results of his ancestry search reads like a veritable PBS miniseries cast including cousins Jane Austen, Sir Winston Churchill, and James Dean, as well as the Austin family that founded Texas, Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as well as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.�

Robert Ferguson Becoming an Impressionist

View from the newly acquired acreage in the Santa Rosa mountains near Palm Springs and la Quinta.

F

rom his vantage point high in the Santa Rosa Mountains, Robert Ferguson enjoys a panoramic view of the Coachella Valley — northwest to Palm Springs and the San Jacinto Mountains, out to the Chocolate Mountains and Indio Hills, and southeast to the beautiful but beleaguered Salton Sea. He drives about 90 minutes from his Escondido home in northern San Diego County to plant his easel in the ground and paint the desert landscape. He enjoys working en plein air, or outdoors, capturing the dramatic light

and moods with exacting color, swift brushstrokes, and great passion and respect for his natural surroundings. He purchased two acres here and plans to build a studio — a modernist structure with a 14foot ceiling that defies his traditional, Impressionist style of painting and his obsession for plunging into history.

Robert traced his middle name, Alberic, to one of the rebellious monks in the Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain. And later, he mustered the determination to pull up the deepest roots of his

family tree. The results read like a veritable PBS miniseries cast including cousins Jane Austen, Sir Winston Churchill, and James Dean, as well as the Austin family that founded Texas, Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as well as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He also learned that two of his collectors are cousins. “I was so blown away,” he says. “I never knew anything about our family. My grandmother didn’t even tell us she had a sister.

I must have looked at the ancestry documents 15 times. I was in denial. I thought, ‘This can’t be true. ’ I kept looking and scrutinizing.”

When painting his canvases, Robert is always mindful of how future generations will view his landscapes, just as he looks at 100-year-old works by California Impressionist artists such as Edgar Payne, Maurice Braun, and others he admires. “My paintings are windows to a place in time,” he says. “Two hundred years from now I want people to view my works and experience what I experienced while creating them.” Robert also counts among his influences Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cezanne. He’s especially affected by the way they achieve the luminosity that draws him into those places and moments in time. Incidentally, Robert’s paintings hang in collections alongside several of these artists.

Painting by Maurice Braun.

His appreciation stems from a visit more than 20 years ago to the Impressionism wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — with his wife Sachiko Kawano and then-baby daughters Sasha and Tiffany. It inspired him to return to Southern California and paint. He had been living in New York City, working as a graphic designer and art director for about 15 years following his studies at Parsons School of Design, where he spent much of his studio time painting nude models. He continued painting nude subjects when he began his fine art career in 1998. But when he exhibited a canvas at a community gallery, “All hell broke loose,” he says.

One of Sir Winston Churchill’s Paintings.

Jane Austen.

Painting by Robert, Bermuda Dunes in Late Afternoon Light 30” by 40” Oil On Canvas

“It never occurred to me that there would be a problem with that painting. There was this puritanical denial of our sexuality, and people were accusing me of corrupting their children. It took me a while to understand where they were coming from, and once I did, I was no longer angry about it.” In his dive into his ancestry, Robert discovered lines to William Austen of Yalding, England, and the Rev. Stephen Batchelor of Wherwell, England, both of whom had fled Europe as puritans seeking religious freedom. A religious rebel himself, Robert in the 1970s joined the Unification Movement, which combined Eastern and Western philosophy and instructed that the ultimate artist is the creator.

Robert continues to paint nude figures, as well as still lifes of flowers and fruit, ballet dancers, and Roman centurions. “I got the figure down and I had to figure out how to put clothes n it,” he says.

“I spent about $4,000 for the costumes from the Starz cable TV series Spartacus. I love the reality and the dialog. One minute they’re having an orgy, and then they’re cutting each other’s head off.

I liked the idea of the idealized male form as a protector. I thought this is a good way to decorate the male form like I have painted the ballerina to express the female.” Robert found a model in friend and patron Kevin Somps, who posed in exchange for a painting, and a new series was born. “He’s holding a sword, but he’s naked,” he says. “It’s flesh and metal. I like the vulnerability.”

However, Robert is best known and collected for his realist landscapes that capture the ever-changing light of Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley, the moodiness of Napa Valley, and the coastal splendor of nearby La Jolla and San Juan Capistrano, as well as locations in Europe. His experience with the Unification Church steered him

toward nature. “That is the foundation of my existence as a fine artist,” he says. “My inspiration came out of this religious rebellion. It all ties together.” He paints only from life and from his plein-air studies; he never refers to a photograph. He also uses a color checker to be true to what he sees and what he refers to as the ”color of the air” and its effects on his subjects. The result is rugged and rich, direct and indirect, and without pretense. Ultimately, Robert’s paintings exude the classic swift strokes, abstract gestures, and precision color that reflect the “quick draw” nature of plein air. “From a distance the paintings are highly realistic, as is the case with classic Impressionism,” he says.“My collectors want to go to the places I go and see the things that I see,” he says. “I love the 3-D effect of painting. It’s like you’re there. You can almost smell the air.

Props from the Starz Television series Spartacus and one of his paintings done with them.

“A couple walked into my booth at the La Quinta Arts Festival and saw my paintings of Europe,” he continues. “They immediately show me pictures of where they were in Plesio in the Italian Province of Como.

II was in the exact spot — and had a painting of it.

Of course, they bought the painting.”

Robert’s first Europe painting trip took him to the Cinque Terre, a rugged seaside village in Italy. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter purchased most of those paintings. On another trip to Venice, he took Kevin, who had posed for Robert’s bronze Icarus sculpture and several paintings in exchange for a canvas for his own collection. Robert also stayed about 30 days on Lake Como in a villa owned an Italian woman named Lucia in the town of Rezzonico. She introduced him to a friend of Andy Warhol who was the art director for Interview magazine and to the writer of a local newspaper who published an article about how he and George Clooney affect culture on Lake Como. “I went to places Americans love to go,” Robert says. “I was out there, out in the open, painting. Clooney’s friendinvited me to her mother’s castle, and [her mother] invited me to have a show there.

And the woman that owned the villa where I was

Robert’s painting Santa Rosa Manzanita in Summer Light 20” by 24”

Robert stayed at the large white building at the top of the hill owned by Lucia.. One of George Clooney’s friends mother invited Robert to have a show at her 12th century castle in Rezzonico.

staying knew the editor of the local newspaper.

I spent six hours with a gentleman who was asking me questions about my life and why I came to Lake Como. Our dinner went on for five hours, with waves of food. We kept eating and talking and eating and talking. But the article was written in Italian.” In 2004, Robert built a log cabin studio on 11 acres next to the Clark Fork River between Thompson Falls and Plains in Montana. “It was amazing,” he says. “My family lives up there, and a gallery represented me — that is one of the reasons I wanted a studio up there.” He found the perfect home site while exploring the land. “I was out getting lost in the area.

I stopped when I’d see the light and paint it. At one spot where I was standing, which was fabulous, I saw “for sale” sign in the dirt, and there was a phone number on it. I called and worked out buying it. When we designed it, wherever there was a view, I put a window. It’s like having live paintings.” When his octogenarian dealer closed her gallery in 2009, Robert sold the studio to renew his focus on Southern California. He cultivated a large following in the Greater Palm Springs area by showing at the La Quinta Arts Festival and the La Quinta Art Foundation’s Art Under the Umbrellas events. He won the Civic Purchase Award whereby the City of La Quinta purchased one of his paintings. Robert became a juror and adviser to LQAF, and the festival became the No. 1-rated show in the country.

Robert in the Union Tribune discussing the commission from the Inn with Kerman Beriker and Murray Hutchinson.

The Montana Studio.

Since he began painting full time, Robert has numbered and made notes on the back of every canvas.

“The first painting I sold was 0001 in 1998. I remember writing that on an 8-by-10-inch painting of a eucalyptus tree. I always write the names of roads unless I’m in the middle of nowhere. Collectors will sometimes drive to these places. But I’m obsessed with history. With the numbers, I know exactly when I did them.” For the record, he won his first award when he was in the second grade. It was for a painting he made depicting a black and yellow leopard on a deep blue background. He can also remember his New studio location in the Santa Rosa Mountains built in the 1930’s located near the famous Garner Valley.

Wendy Ballet Sargent Red 36” by 36” Oil On Canvas

mother, Beverly Ann Ceiplis, charcoal sketching the trees in their back yard.

collectors include actor Bill Murray and Duane Roberts, owner of Riverside’s iconic Mission Inn.

A fixture at the annual art festivals in the Southern California cities of Escondido, Beverly Hills, and La Quinta, Robert has placed more than 2,000 paintings into private, public, and corporate art collections, including The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, which in 2007 commissioned 40 paintings for its main hall, restaurant, casitas and guest rooms. Other notable

Now Robert is focused on building a studio in the Santa Rosa Mountains near Palm Springs. “I want to paint big canvases of the sun coming up over the mountains,” he says. “I really love it up there.”

Citrus and Sunflowers 30” by 40” Oil On Canvas

Robert Ferguson Fine Art rfergusonart@gmail.com 858 705 0814