PART THREEEDUCATION, RELATIONSHIP TO NATURE,
ARTISTIC MAKING, TRAIL SIGNS. Betty Soarre: What is your art education? Robert Yates: I studied art history at McMaster. Wallace taught me some technical things about print making. While I was in my mid-teens a friend, Greg DeMarchi, taught me how to mix oil paints, something he had learned from Dave Mitson, a local Dundas painter. I took high school art from beautiful and talented Mrs. Iseler. She was once married to Elmer Iseler, the famous choral conductor. Far earlier, when I was about seven, I took art classes from Madeline Francis at the brand new Art Gallery of Hamilton in the west end by the Sunken Gardens.* I'm not sure how it influenced me, but it is my link to historical mainstream Hamilton art. Robert Yates with Tim Parsons in Madeline Francis's
art class at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (C.1953) [from the Hamilton Spectator] Madeline Francis was one of the Contemporary Artists group, wife of poet/artist Vincent Francis of local fame. She had been a student of Hortense Gordon who was part of Painters Eleven with Jack Bush, Harold Town, William Ronald and others. Hortense Gordon, in turn, was a student then wife of John Sloan Gordon of the Hamilton Art School, where artists such as Casson of the Group of Seven studied. These were all serious artists, dedicating their lives to art. So I have this direct tie into the historic local art scene that pleases me -- an unbroken lineage that goes back over a century. When I worked with Bill Kidston, he had a lot to say about technical aspects of making art, integrity of materials, et cetera. But I would have to say I was, for the most part, self-taught. I spent a lot of time looking at reproductions of the masters and going to galleries to see the real things. And tons of time doodling and drawing, from the time I could hold a pencil. From my earliest memories I have always built ambitious snowmen. Or sand monsters at the beach. Or piled rocks and sticks together to make what in scouts we called "trail signs", any time the spirit moved me. B.S.: There is a photograph of a trail sign at Cootes Paradise in the "Reading The Waters" catalogue, for the exhibition you were in with Canada Inland Waters. It is really an abstract sculpture. Could you tell me something about these trail signs? R.Y.: They're improvisations made with sticks and stones, rocks and bones, leaves and feathers — whatever is handy or just happens to be there. They are always site-specific, made especially for the spot they are to be found in. I tend to leave trail signs behind me wherever I go. On the shores of Algonquin lakes, the Ottawa River, the Saint Lawrence, Georgian Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, farm fields, the Rockie Mountains -- but especially around Cootes Paradise because that's where I most often walk. I left a few in Spain and North Africa back in '67-'68 while I was on the road doing my hippy world tour. There are no rules in building these objects. They are sometimes ominous, sometimes playful, but I try to make them seem "right", as though they belong wherever they are found. They get at the essence of what I am trying to do in my art, but they are pretty temporary. I have photographs of a very few of the thousands I have constructed. They're so spontaneous, they're not easily documented. B.S.: I guess it would be impossible to have an exhibition of trail signs? R.Y.: It would take the heart out of them to see them in a gallery, or to plan a show around them. That'd be like seeing a wild bald eagle in a cage at the zoo instead of free in nature.* But, if you're lucky, an exhibition of trail signs may be seen on rare occasions. For example, we often spend some summer holiday time at Wasaga Beach. A few years ago during the week days the beach was largely empty. There was a random scattering of large rocks in the water. Some were just below the surface. My son Gregory and I set to work and built a few dozen trail signs on the rocks. When we were finished, there were all these sculptures rising from the flat surface of the water, complete with their reflections. It was quite stunning. They were subject to destruction by waves when the water got rough, or by the inevitable young boys who seem to like to destroy. But Greg and I built them up again when we saw them knocked over, or built new ones, so the collection grew. This became a recurring daily pastime for the week or so we were there. People walking the beach would stop and look at them. Many would comment on their beauty. Some would inquire if we knew anything about them or who did them. The appreciation seemed authentic and pretty widespread. Of all the shows I have participated in, this is the one that gave me the most immediate and positive feed-back. It was gratifying in a way my work in public galleries has never been gratifying. One woman said they were spiritual and seemed to be warding off evil spirits. Then a Lithuanian woman came and took many pictures of them. She said they were like the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania, because they kept reappearing in spite of those who would have them destroyed. I took this as a real compliment because I think the Lithuanian Hill of Crosses is one of the great public art works of the twentieth century. B.S.: I'm not familiar with it. Tell me about it. R.Y.: The church was banned in Lithuania under the Russian occupation after the war. The way I understand it, one night someone erected a cross on a prominent hill as a sign of hope and as an act of defiance to the Russian authorities. The cross was removed as an illegal object but soon there were a dozen crosses in its place. When they were removed, hundreds more appeared. And when they were taken away, thousands of crosses sprang up on that hill. The authorities were fighting a losing battle. I have seen only photos of it but it seems the crosses vary from simple unadorned wooden crosses to elaborately carved crucifixes. They are of all sizes and materials. There are so many of them that the Hill has a tremendous texture and is charged with an aura of spirituality. The Russians finally gave up and let them be because this wonderful artistic expression obviously had the moral support and active participation of all Lithuanians.* My wife is of Lithuanian descent and my link to all this.
B.S.: So your trail signs are related to the Lithuanian Hill of Crosses as well as inukshuks, totems and Stone Henge . . . R.Y.: I think so. The same spirit is behind all of them. Trail signs have a presence and an aura which is my idea of good art. B.S.: What makes an art object charged with spirituality? R.Y.: Good question. I don't know the answer, but for me I can often feel it with my trail signs. We were watching a beautiful sunset -- a flat distant horizon behind the strongly silhouetted trail signs which emerged dramatically from the water. A woman who was a permanent resident of Wasaga approached us and thanked us for building them because she thought they were beautiful and appropriate. I thanked her for saying so, and she seemed she wanted to say more but she turned and walked on up the beach. On her way back, she approached us again. She said, "Do you mind if I ask you a silly question? Why do you always build two sculptures on that rock out there?" She pointed to the largest rock and the farthest from the shore. I answered in a way that demonstrated I didn't know the answer -- "Because it is large and can take two, I guess." She said, "That rock has a name. You should know it is called Gull Rock. It was a favorite playing place for my two children. They died in a car accident. The other day my husband and I looked out and saw the two sculptures on that rock together and we felt the spirits of our children. And then each time they were destroyed you built two sculptures there again. I was just wondering." I don't know the answer. B.S.: You have said you think of your trail signs as more a part of nature than a representation of nature. R.Y.: Yes. I have been accused by nature-purists of tampering with nature. My only reply, which is delivered in a voice of distant thunder, is that I AM NATURE. B.S.: You are a naturalist, but your art is not what you would call naturalistic. It is not realistic. R.Y.: When I was young I would do realistic pencil drawings of birds, and people, but especially birds. I didn't know of Robert Bateman in those days, but that's probably the type of art I would have aspired to. My mother believes in me as an artist because she fondly remembers my realistic capabilities, which are now invisible. Almost more than anything else, I like to walk in the woods, just to be there and look. But I feel no drive to capture a scene of nature in paint and bring it home to hang like a moose head on a wall. I would rather just be there, part of it all. I would rather see a loon on a lake than a painting of a loon on a lake. If I am going to make art free in nature, I would rather it fit in with the trees and sky and waterline. I would rather it was more a part of nature than something apart, trying to capture it. My love of nature and my instinct for artistic making are one and the same in my trail signs. I think they are as natural as birds' nests. My sculptural wall hangings were my way of transposing trail signs to the indoors. And I think of my paintings as something that through me have sprung out of nature, a presentation rather than a representation, a production rather than a reproduction. I don't know. I may be fantasizing. I didn't know I could talk so much. |
PART ONE
Making Art; For Whom & Why PART TWO The Artist, Childhood Influence, Family & Other Artists. PART THREE Education, Relationship to Nature, Artistic Making, Trail Signs. PART FOUR Further Influences & Education, Signatures & Definition Problems. PART FIVE High Art & Folk Art, Snobbery, Colonialism, Roots, Nationalism, Canada. PART SIX Culture, Tradition, Ancestry, The Importance of Art. PART SEVEN The Art World, Hierarchies, Comparisons, Juried Shows & Fashions. PART EIGHT Perception & Conception, Critics, Words & Seeing. PART NINE Art, Beauty, Meaning, Opinions, Judgement. Trail Signs
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