Robert James Foose Sink Hole
Main Nicholasville, KY oil/alkyd on canvas; 44 x 40; 2002

Light Spill; oil on canvas; 40 x 42; 2002

 For me, all painting is abstract. The idea itself is abstract. I make paintings that can be easily named…. that is, the viewer knows what the content is. I am interested in showing the structures and forms (abstractions) within those parts of nature that I am continually drawn to. These oil paintings….my first after a twenty-five year hiatus….are fleshed out versions of earlier concerns. Continuity is not only important to me, it is unavoidable. The agitated frenzy of nature itself barely hides the violence and hope. Though contradictory, both are also very attractive.

As a painter of easily identified subject matter, my goals are clearly different than they were to the 19th century or even to those for most of the last century, who made landscape paintings. We see differently now, if for no other reason than we are, on a daily basis, inundated with uncounted images which are trapped in little rectangles, frozen in time, severely edited, and for the most time uninteresting. The painter has something that other image makers do not have, and that is chance, or the unexpected accident or gesture.

Robert James Foose is one of the region's most celebrated artists. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky, where he formerly served as Chair. He maintains active memberships in numerous art societies, his name is included in several art directories, and he has created and illustrated many books and constructions. Over the past twenty-five years, he has had more than fifty solo exhibitions, and his work has been included in over one hundred group exhibitions. He is the recipient of more than one hundred and fifty first-place awards for painting and printmaking. Foose's work is included in numerous public, corporate, and private collections throughout the United States, including the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, and the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Mo.