Robert Sumner
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 6 min read
Robert Sumner works with painting and printmaking to explore the space between abstraction and representation. His compositions often begin as responses to music, literature, or natural forms and gradually evolve through an intuitive, layered process. Ideas from philosophy and experimental language also feed into the work, shaping not only the images but the titles as well. Based in Portland, he has recently shifted to full-time studio practice, giving more space for experimentation and sustained focus in his visual thinking.
Q: You describe your work as existing between abstraction and representation. What draws you to that in-between space?
A: I’m fascinated by the visual ambiguity in the zone between pure abstraction and representation that creates a space where the viewer is on par with the work of art and both parties can participate in an active dialogue. The forms, colors, and textures left by the artist carry suggestions, references, and hints that are open ended enough that the viewer can bring their own personal and cultural experience and knowledge into the conversation. Perhaps a shape reminds them of a creature they saw on the shoreline recently, or the rhythm of a line reminds them of a jazz riff they heard at a club the previous weekend. In this space, an artist is less of a storyteller and more of a conjurer, a partner in exploring those thoughts and inferences that are often unspoken in our lives but deeply meaningful nonetheless.
Q: Music and literature often trigger your compositions. Can you share a recent piece—song, novel, or poem—that set something in motion?
A: There are so many to choose from! Jazz is a constant source of ideas, especially free jazz or jazz/funk fusion, for example Miles Davis’s album "Bitches Brew". Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner are two authors whose prose lights up my brain. I also am fascinated by natural forms, particularly those microscopic zooplankton and deep-sea creatures. Lately I’ve been completely taken by a book-length poem by Stephanie Adams-Santos titled "Dream of Xibalba". Stephanie, whom I was fortunate enough to meet at a reading a few months ago, explores both her Mayan heritage and contemporary life experience creating an ongoing series of striking images that initially appear unrelated but have a deep visceral connection to each other that is beyond the ability of words to describe.
Reading her work for me is like watching a parade of these strange, beguiling, fascinating and terrifying images move across a movie screen in my mind.
Her work, which I have just recently started reading and contemplating, has spawned a number of drawings and small paintings and I feel that there is a rich vein of imagery her work will continue to elicit.
Q: Once the first marks are down, you let the work guide you. How do you decide when a piece is finished?
A: That is a question that has a different answer for every piece of artwork. The short answer is that the forms and colors finally lock into place. It’s like recognizing that a puzzle has, all of a sudden, been completed. The journey to get there, however, can either be relatively straightforward or very labyrinthine. As I work on a piece I often sense what the next couple of steps will be, but when I take the first of those steps things can shift unexpectedly. The green I just added makes the purple too red and it is throwing things off. So, do I change the green or purple, or adjust one of the other colors?
Or the lines I just added to the composition are suddenly pulling everything to one side, so do I paint over them or add something else to rebalance the structure of the composition? Sometimes I have to put a piece away for a while and bring it back out again before I can see what is throwing it off and what is needed to bring it all together. But then when it happens you know. I remember going fishing as a child with my grandfather and oftentimes wondering if the pull on the fishing line was a fish or just a snag.
He would tell me that I might think I have a fish on the line, but when I really have a fish hooked, I will know. It’s the same with finishing a painting. You may think it’s done but realize the next morning that it really isn’t. But when it’s done, you know.
Q: You mention Henri Bergson’s ideas on time. How do those philosophical thoughts influence your visual choices?
A: Bergson’s thinking about the interplay between the past (memory) and current perception is pretty complex and nuanced, but let me share this quote: "Perception and remembering, always interpenetrate, exchanging something of their substance…" In other words, there is no pure perception of the current moment that is completely independent of our past. Nor is there a pure memory of the past that is not influenced by the current moment. One of his simple examples is pushing a thumbtack into the palm of your hand until it starts to hurt a little bit, and holding it there for a few minutes with steady pressure. The immediate perception of the sharp point pushing against your skin is some mild pain. But if you hold it there for 10 minutes, your perception of that pain at the 10-minute mark is markedly different than the initial perception of pain even though the stimuli haven’t changed. This is because you now have 10 minutes of memory of pain coloring your perception of the current moment. As I paint, I am in part responding, both consciously and unconsciously, to what I have previously painted, and what I have previously experienced.
These previous experiences could be from the distant past, such as my early love of the imagery of Joan Miró, or something I’ve seen recently such as a microscopic video of a flagellate I saw on Instagram. But all of these drive the myriad decisions in making a painting. And the end result is a visual image that physically captures intangible memories and experiences in a manner that I hope will enable the viewer to negotiate their own experiences and memories in the context of their current lived experience.
Q: You build titles from fragments of "Finnegans Wake." What do you like about using Joyce’s language in that way?
A: For some time I had found coming up with titles very frustrating and had been looking for a way to bring the titles of my work into conceptual consistency with what I was trying to accomplish with my imagery: something that was on the spectrum between abstraction and representation, and that was suggestive yet open, with multiple and layered levels of potential meaning. Giving my works a specific title undercut that conceptual consistency, seemed to limit the breadth of the potential visual experience, and just calling them all "Untitled" felt unfulfilling.
As a result, I decided to build titles from syllables of words, taking a page from such diverse sources as the Dadaists who used random words for poetry, and David Bowie, who had a "cut-up method" for writing lyrics. This also scratched my latent fondness for the absurd. Joyce was able to accomplish in "Finnegans Wake" using words what I am trying to accomplish visually. The language is complex, layered with multiple references, and open enough for the reader to bring their knowledge and experience to the work. And so, it seemed like the natural partner for me to use when building titles.
Q: You’ve been working full-time as an artist only recently. How has this shift changed the way you approach your studio practice?
A: For me at least, there is something fundamentally, qualitatively different about the experience of waking up every morning and starting the day by looking at and thinking about my paintings while drinking my coffee, as opposed to squeezing in an hour or two on a weeknight and a handful of hours on the weekend for thinking about and creating art. The opportunity for sustained focus, for keeping my brain in the right space consistently, has not only changed the way I experience studio time but has also changed the quality of my work. Not feeling that my time is limited and has to be so strictly focused on being as productive as possible has created an opening for expanding my skills and practice. There is time for experimentation, for trying things that don’t work and learning from them, and also for discovering things that are happy accidents. I’ve also expanded my sources of inspiration to include literature and the forms of the other creatures that inhabit our planet. In short, this has been a seismic shift for me and I wake up every day excited to see what my time in the studio will bring.
