Robert Bateman chats about the influence of
his world travels on his future art.
On a walk-about at the exhibit in the morning, Robert said the old sketchbooks — filled with detailed drawings of birds, landscapes and animals from his 1957 world tour in a Land Rover — where more important to him than his iconic wildlife paintings. The sketches are spontaneous and varied, the result of an instant of light, shadow and form.
“To me the sketchbooks are more important than the major paintings because I can’t do them again,” he said. “I can’t redo a sketch but I can redo a painting.”
Robert Bateman with his wife Birgit and RRU president Allan Cahoon.
Standing in front of a four-panel sketch of forest villagers in what was the Belgian Congo, Bateman said his driving trip across Africa in the late 1950s opened his eyes to the variety of ecology, geography and cultures. “It evolved my philosophy of vive la différence.”
“The thing about nature is its variety and surprises. Where I live the trail through the forest is different every time,” Bateman said. “It only gets bad when we’ve got bland uniformity — it is boring and dangerous.”
For better or worse the way Bateman paints seems to epitomize variety. He develops five to 10 paintings at a time, none with a completely envisioned final image. Bateman says he’ll start new paintings to cheer him up from earlier paintings that seemed to go awry. “By the fifth painting the first one starts looking good again, so I kind of leapfrog to the finish.”
The sketchbooks show a raw impulsive side of Bateman, the exhibit paintings show the breadth and depth of his work, and his shift from a geographer and landscape painter in 1962, to wildlife and ecological artist. As his travels formed his environmental and cultural consciousness, his paintings now punctuate an urgent message that nature can’t be taken for granted.
Denali Sweep, a majestic image of Alaska’s Denali Park, contrasts with Serengeti at Dusk, a golden panorama of White Storks, or Red-Winged Blackbird and Rail Fence, an country image that holds the shadows of Japanese calligraphy . Bateman admitted Red-Winged Blackbird was technically incorrect — an ornithologist friend pointed out the dominant male blackbird would never sit below his sub-dominant feathered friend.
“It didn’t bother me enough to change it,” Bateman laughed. “It’s my painting and I can be wrong if I want to.”
Robert Bateman speaking on his sketchbooks.
Robert Bateman speaking on his paintings.
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