PART TWOTHE ARTIST, INFLUENCES OF CHILDHOOD,
FAMILY, & OTHER ARTISTS. Betty Soarre: Are you a full-time artist? Robert Yates: It seems it's necessary to put labels on things. If I have to be called something, the word "artist" is ambiguous enough, I don't mind it. A full-time artist? The answer could be yes if you're not a stickler for definitions. My life and my art are not separate things. B.S.: Do you make a living by your art? R.Y.: I am alive and I'm an artist, if that's what you mean. Surely you don't want to talk about money. . . B.S.: What do you mean, your art and your life are not separate things? R.Y.: My art, what I make and do, my calling, my intense and compelling interest in life, my focus or lack of it, my relationship to my family, friends and Mother Earth, are all part of the same movement. I am that movement. B.S.: In your cubistic things of a few years ago, I could see the influence of Picasso and Braque. And I can imagine the influence of both Henry Moore and North American Indians in some of your sculptural and totemic things. Who do you consider your big influences? R.Y.: Real influences? The serious ones? This is going to sound like an Academy Awards acceptance speech. First, my parents and family. I also have been blessed with good friends at each stage of my life. Early friends of my teenage years and even my pre-teenage years, some of whom I don't see for years on end, are still friends even in their absence. That is a tremendous comfort, and influences me for the good. Some people who were close to me are now dead, but I still think of them. Their integrity or freedom or madness and humour give me necessary moments of insight and support. But in this I'm not that different from anyone else. B.S.: Could you be more specific in relating influences to your art? Where did you study? R.Y.: I don't want to tear apart the intricate warp and woof of my life and art. It is one fabric. But I'll gladly name names if that's what you want. Chronic artistic making -- which seems to be my condition — comes out of a certain attitude to life. We could try to go into the origins of that. B.S.: Okay. R.Y.: When I was a kid my older brother Jim was a big influence. He is two years older than I am. When I was six or eight and ten, grown-ups seemed to have a two-dimensional view of the world compared to him. I could sense his off-hand explanations of the how and why of things were always more complete and satisfactory than any adult's. If there was an official "correct" answer, it was always accompanied by a healthy skepticism or an alternative answer. This by someone with absolutely no authority. I learned early that for the sake of truth, authority was to be rejected -- not in a criminal or mischievously rebellious way, but just that the real answers were elsewhere. I thought of my brother as more reliably intelligent than any of our teachers at school, or any adults in the neighbourhood, with the exception of my father. B.S.: When were you born, and where? R.Y.: 1946, in Kingston, Ontario. B.S.: Tell us more about your childhood, your education and influences. R.Y.: I did most of my growing up in Dundas. Five kids. My family was musical and homemade music has always been important to us. When I get together with my brothers there are always musical instruments in our hands. Our conversations often tend to be musical sounds rather than words. Music is second nature to me, not as a skilled and serious performer up on a stage for the benefit of an audience, not like a great orator addressing an important message to a wide and anonymous public, but more a casual sitting around the kitchen table, talking and chatting, sharing with fellow beings of like mind. Music to me is really an activity more about uncritical and loving participation rather than a well-rehearsed and seamless performance. When it is done with musicians it is called "jamming". That is all I do. I don't like "performing", I can't read music, and my approach to making music is as wide-ranging and varied as any other conversation. B.S.: So you're a musician as well . . . ? R.Y.: That's not what I would call myself, but music is certainly an essential part of me. It is definitely part of my on-going and chronic process of artistic making. It is part of my day-to-dayness. I find it meditative. Like visual art, it is a way of situating yourself beyond words and language. I write about one song a year . . . and after twenty-five years or so, it starts to pile up and actually seem like something. I love messing around on musical instruments. Let's just say I'm a serious amateur. B.S.: Tell us more about your upbringing. R.Y.: My upbringing was undisciplined and loving. The perfect combination for a kid. I was very lucky. My family had no television so pop-culture did not inform my personal mythology. We kids spent a lot of time in the woods. Out of a glowing observant silence, with no preconceived notions, we learned the basic workings of the world first hand. Listen to the frog sing like a bird as it is being eaten by a snake. Don't be startled by the scream of the scared rabbit when you pick it up. Offer the raccoon your gloved left hand and when he bites it, grab him by the back of the neck with your right hand. But be careful. Coons bite like a machine gun, an action that is related to how they sound. Not once did the schools require this knowledge of us. They would rather fail you or pass you on your answer to who first discovered America. It was Columbus when I was a kid. Any other answer was wrong. Later on it was Lief the Lucky and his Vikings. Now I suppose it is Asian immigrants from across the Bering Straight. But as kids we secretly knew -- though the archaeological evidence isn't in yet — that the cradle of civilization was the Dundas Valley. Its Biblical name was Eden. From here humankind went out and populated the earth. [laughter] Does it make any difference? Later, in university art history classes, we would study Roman copies as great Greek art, and we'd admire Rembrandt paintings that have subsequently been determined by the experts to be not by the hand of Rembrandt. When I hear the qualification "expert opinion", if I can't get out into the fresh air, I get out a clothes-pin for my nose. What is education all about anyway? We mustn't take the word of authority as truth. It cannot be truth to you unless you see it for yourself. The official school system was not really compatible with my spirit. It was a good place to meet people, but any talents I may have developed, or any knowledge acquired, are almost in spite of rather than because of school. There are exceptions. In High School I had an exceptional English teacher by the name of John Bell. The system had us traveling down a paved superhighway, but like a quiet Zen master, Mr. Bell pointed off the highway into the pathless woods. That was the way some of us chose to travel. Another influential English teacher was Miss Simpson who introduced me to Dylan Thomas (outside the course of study) and generously told me I had “the makings of a writer.” I was in Boy Scouts -- a very good, active troop. My scout master, John Macintosh, was an influential example of honour and nobility. I look forward to shooting a game of pool with him soon. In the fifties, early sixties, we were planting trees, and learning about conservation, recycling and the evils of pollution. We went on camping trips and tried to leave no evidence we had been there. That type of thing. Ways of being one with the landscape. Things that should be compulsory education for any sane citizen of this earth. At McMaster I had the good fortune to study under philosopher George Grant. He had a beautifully tangible aura of meaningfulness that was a joy to enter into. He managed to get a certain national recognition, which in one way is not surprising because he was such a deep clear thinker, but in another way it is very surprising because we live in a society and a world that doesn't seem to give a damn about justice and the good. My father, of course. I don't think of him so much as an influence as something I am part of. And my mother. My brothers and sister. My grandparents, and even my grandmother's memory of her father, an Upper Canadian Methodist minister who rode his preaching circuit on a horse. She told me many times I was the spitting image of him. There were family stories about this strong, upright man, and since I was supposed to be like him, I think that probably had some influence on me. What really influences my thoughts and activities these days are my wife and two children. Family is like a tree you are a leaf or a branch of. And really the branch is the tree. And the family is the family of humankind. You are part of something bigger, and you are that something. B.S.: Any artists? R.Y.: Yes, two of the best. The sculptor and printmaker George Wallace, who also taught at McMaster. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work along side him as his assistant. I helped install some of his welded sculptures and cast his large Milton Court House bronze. It was an honour. He is a refreshing person to be around. His work should be better known in the art world. It deserves more recognition. But the art world is full of crap anyway so it doesn't really matter. B.S.: You wrote the introduction to the catalogue of his works produced by the Hamilton Artists' Inc. in 1983? R.Y.: Yes. Once in a while I participate in the official art world, and on occasion I might even believe it has something to do with art. B.S.: Who was the other influential artist you were going to mention? R.Y.: A local painter, Bill Kidston. Friend and mentor. I met him when we both got a job working for a theatre company. We built and painted sets and props. We developed a comradery working together. Later, we shared studio space. We had what seemed to be endless conversations of such intense interest that it is hard to believe they actually took place in this world. Kidston was one of the great primal characters of all times. No recognition. Always poor. A balanced and complete person in an off-balanced, incomplete sort of way. An artist who always found life interesting and new. But he up and died, and I am thankful I knew him. |
PART ONE
Making Art; For Whom & Why PART TWO The Artist, Influences of Childhood, 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. Bob Yates held by father,
with mother and brother Jim. |