Robert F. Gross (Artist)
BIO
Robert F. Gross currently resides in Rochester, NY. As events recede further and further into the past, autobiography seems more and more irrelevant to him. One-time teacher, published scholar, theatre director, sometimes poet, and on rare occasions, performance artist. Has been given the title of professor emeritus by some academic institution somewhere, but it seems totally irrelevant to his current sense of identity.
Has neither resumé nor curriculum vitae, and is very bad at assigning dates to his life experiences; arranges what memories he now has more by association than chronology.
He has judged cattle, taken boxing lessons, and has participated in one of John Ollom’s week-long movement retreats. He has had more psychotherapists than Henry VIII had wives, and has more tattoos than psychotherapists.
At present: lone wolf, voracious reader, explorer, delving more deeply into the workings of his unconscious. Favorite authors: Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Cowper Powys, Heinrich von Kleist, Sophocles, William Blake. Favorite artists: Max Beckman, Ludovico Carracci, Marsden Hartley, Anselm Kiefer, William Blake. Is glad to be able to say that he has seen Eve Arden, Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns, and Irene Worth perform onstage. Has been visited by Errol Flynn, Noel Coward, Elaine Stritch, William Butler Yeats, Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Wedekind, among a host of notables, in his dreams. Has appeared as Joan Crawford and Julie Andrews in two very memorable dreams.
His contributions to Landscapes, are those of a rough, unpolished, and largely solitary geezer artist. They are abrupt, immediate, gestural, and have no aspirations to permanence or to public recognition. They hang on his studio apartment walls with tape. These Self-Portraits with Blindfold, of which these are but a few, display and withhold. The landscape is kept behind the blindfold. I suspect that when he discovers why he is so compulsively involved with this series he will send them to the recycling bin, and move on (which is his way).
20th Anniversary Celebration
The landscape of a self-portrait is perhaps the most intimate of landscapes. But a self-portrait with blindfold . . .how can that be? Am I staking out an intensely private zone and posting the sign that says Keep Out? Or am am I admitting that I have no idea as you stand there, what you are up to? Or . . .?
2020 Haus of Ollom
The Play Room
Come explore the Play Room when art is an adventure. No theme. No primary focus. Just playing with thoughts, ideas and mediums. Click on an image to start slideshow that you control. Hit escape to view the gallery again.
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