EAST OTTO COUNTRY
Robin Zefers Clark is a storyteller. But she doesn't
string words together; instead she uses watercolor brushes to tell her tales,
Her paintings relate an ongoing pictorial record of life in rural Western New
York State. At first she worked primarily with oils, but by the time Robin
received her Master's in painting from Rochester Institute of Technology in
Rochester, NY, she'd been captivated by watercolor. For her it's
unpredictability spelled adventure. In 1989, Robin and her husband Tom built
Brookside Studio. Today,
her watercolors, with their haunting beauty, gently blur the line between past
and present. Robin often uses local farms, family and friends as her subjects,
as well as the "interesting faces and places" she finds among the dog-eared
pages of dusty old photo albums.
"I tell myself stories while I paint," Robin
explains, "and before you know it the brush takes over." Perhaps this
storytelling is what gives her work its timeless quality. She says simply, "I
paint the things I've always known." But she does so with a sensitivity and
depth of caring that breath life into each "story." It's a letter that Robin
received from Louisiana though, that best captures the appeal of Robin's art.
The author ignored the dictates of grammar to write straight from the heart,
"It's like you been in my head? like you seen what I
seen."click here
for Brookside Studio