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Robert
K. Roark in his studio.
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Bob Roark sits by an easel in his airy studio on
the second floor of Winstanley-Roark
Fine Arts in Brewster, MA., prepped, ready to get on with the
interview. It’s a sunny mild day in May, and we’re both enjoying a
reprise from the spell of cold weather that has clung to the Northeast.
Ominous signs of an early drought are evident everywhere, though, and we
talk of how this concerns us this early in the season.
We’re surrounded by perhaps two dozen paintings
that are either in progress, near completed, or finished, waiting to be
framed. We’re just beginning our interview and he smiles modestly when
I ask my first question: How many paintings do you produce each year?
He starts, philosophically, speaking with a cultured,
articulate, baritone Mississippian accent:
“If I could do forty a year that would be ideal.”
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I start to
write, and wonder if that’s even possible, given the high quality of
his work. I know a lot of talented artists, and even those who produce a
volume of work would say forty is a mighty effort. I suspect that he
senses my astonishment. “Well” he adds, almost as if he knows I’m
on to his humor, “twenty five is probably closer
to the truth.”
That sounds
more like it, I think, as I cross out forty and write in twenty-five.
But then he adds, nodding at the walls and floor, “Actually, I’ll
start a lot of paintings, as you can see. Who knows when they’ll be
finished?"
I smile.
But the fact
is, I do know how prolific Bob Roark is. I collect art and own two of
his paintings. He’ll produce whatever it takes, year after year,
because it’s what he does, and he does it as well as the best. He’s
at the top of his form.
The early years:
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Bob Roark grew up in a working class environment in
Laurel, Mississippi, a place we northerners refer to as the Deep South,
but he affectionately calls home. His earliest recollections of
developing an interest in art center around his frequent visits to the
local museum. “The kids I knew were not encouraged to go into the
arts,” he muses instructively of his teen years, so his visits to the
museum were usually solitary affairs. As he says this, his voice becomes
almost melodic, suggesting ‘I
think you know what I mean’. I do.
But that didn’t matter to Roark. “The town
had a wonderful
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"Homeward
Bound", 24"x 30", o/p,
© by
Robert K. Roark
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museum that kept me going back,” he recalls. “The
museum was filled with beautiful paintings. I lived in that museum just
looking at art.”
At an early
age, Bob Roark had developed a keen eye for what constituted fine art.
For in a small town whose second highest achievement may be that it is
located 30 miles N.E. of Hattiesburg on I-59, its shining point of light
is, indeed, that “wonderful museum” that fascinated a young Bob
Roark.
In fact, it
is the town’s sole museum, The
Lauren Rogers Museum ¾
renown for being the repository of the works of some of the finest
artists in the nation: Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Charles Peal, John
Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, to name a few.
The teen years passed uneventfully and quickly for
Roark. He maintained his interest in art, and enrolled immediately from
high school at the University of Mississippi where he hoped to pursue a
BFA. It didn’t turn out quite as he expected, however. It was the late
fifties, a turbulent time for some southern campuses, where, he says
“disruptions and demonstrations made things a little dicey.”
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“I decided that if I was going to be around
tear gas canisters, I might as well join the Army”, not an uncommon
choice for boys in those days. Rather than face the uncertainties of a
draft, now that he had left the University and was eminently eligible
for it, he entered Army Intelligence, and quickly became a crypto
analyst ¾ “deciphering codes and all that kind stuff”, he
says, dismissively. It was a choice, however, that kept the creative
juices flowing for a while.
But the Army
was not to be his life. After serving his three-year term, he packed his
belongings and headed quickly and excitedly for New York, where he set
his sights on emulating the artists he admired as a teenager in Laurel.
It was a big gamble for a kid from
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"Contemplation",
6.5" x 6.5", o/p,
© Robert K.
Roark
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Mississippi, one that, against all
odds, was about to pay off “big time”, as Vice President Cheney
might say.
At
21-years of age, he set himself up in an apartment and immediately
enrolled in classes at the Art
Students League and the National
Academy of Design. “Because I never considered going into any
other field, I never considered any other jobs. Besides, I figured if I
was going to study art why not enroll in an art school where that’s
its only focus.”
As
for a job, he had only one criterion: the job he took, he says, had to
be near the arts community. “Coming from a working class background,
the first thing you learn about surviving is that you have to be able to
make a living on your own. So I worked at the student art store where I
handled supplies and did other odd jobs.” It didn’t matter what
other jobs he had to perform, he says, so long as he was near art and
the artists who created the paintings
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"Indian
Summer", 21" x 18", o/c
© by
Robert K. Roark
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Working at the Art Students League had other advantages as well, advantages that an
aspiring artists found ripe to exploit. “Because I worked there,” he
says, “I was able to write myself passes and attend any class I
wanted.” He did this as often as he could, in addition to paying his
monthly fee for regular classes. His training had begun in earnest.
Whether through his own natural talent, or because of
the constant exposure to art at both schools, Roark found that he had a
happy talent for illustration and portrait work. For the next fifteen
years he kept himself gainfully employed while perfecting his skills as
an artist. “I was a free lance artists, and in those days, although
the competition was fierce, I could almost pick my own jobs.”
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Roark’s resume attests to how quickly he learned
and how much his work was in demand. He worked as a portrait painter and
an illustrator for such periodicals as the New
York Times. He did mural work for the Pierre
Cardin Resorts in Palm Springs, CA. He was a personal friend of Andy
Warhol, and met Norman Rockwell and Salvadore Dali. He studied under
artists William Draper, Daniel Greene and Henry Hensche, and as a result
of his work, the awards and scholarships flowed. “If you
combine skill
and common sense, you should always be able to make a living as an
artist,” Roark says, attributing his success to his drive and singular
focus on what he wanted to do with his life, a lesson he says should not
be lost on aspiring artists.
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"Boxing Day", 14" x 20", o/p,
© by Robert K.
Roark
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It was during
these busy New York years that Roark began to travel back and forth to
Provincetown on the Cape, where he mixed easily with the established
arts community. At thirty-six years old, he was honing his skills as an
artist who could paint whatever was asked of him, in any medium. “When
I was working as an illustrator,” he says, “I had to be prepared to
do what the art director wanted me to do.”
It was a skill that would come in handy years later allowing him
to experiment with
considerable success in fantasy art, a subject matter
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says that is sought, “by people who are a little different in their
art tastes. They’re not the type of people who buy art to place it on
a wall in their Cape home.” But they do come to the Cape, and they do
buy.
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