I have resided in many cities due to my employment in industry. My art training has been at many centers around the U.S.. including: The Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, Chicago Art Institute, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnetonka Art Center, and Edina Art Center. I enjoy junkets to Europe to paint plein aire. On retirement I returned to my ancestral breeding grounds in Louisiana where I practice art in my home studio in Mandeville, LA.
I worked primarily in watercolors for many years, producing “suitcase sized” paintings in hotel rooms. I also studied watercolors for years with Kay Sharkey, a renowned Twin Cities watercolorist. My painting style is somewhere between impressionism and realism, with subject matter of all kinds. Many titles are whimsical, reflecting a weird sense of humor. Recent works are primarily in oils with an occasional venture into sculpture when I take leave of my senses.
A 2017 Artist Statement discovered during estate cleaning:
I have been painting for over 63 years. Having started in the summer of 1954, I sublet an artist’s studio in Greenwich Village between my two years in graduate school at Harvard. What began as a curiosity became a lifetime of work and study at numerous locales. These include the Chicago Art Institute, the Edina Minnesota Art Center, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, as well as studying with several nationally well-known artists such as Harry Hickman in Pittsburgh, and Minnesota watercolorist Kay Sharkey. The result is a body of work in oil and watercolors of hundreds of paintings. Many are plein aire paintings done in Italy, France, Spain, and Ireland as well as abstracts and occasional whimsical pastiche work.
Of late, I have emphasized a continuing series depiction of inside views of famous New Orleans bars, dance, and jazz venues. I enjoy populating my pictures with people doing or witnessing things rather than just renderings of famous places. My “cypress and pond slime” period ended shortly after I returned to Louisiana in 2002, where I was born and raised in Lakeview, attended Warren Easton High school, and graduated from Tulane. Currently I reside in Mandeville.
Robert Viosca
Artist
May 19, 2017