Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 5, 1990 TAG: 9005050239
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Graham had a tendency toward independence that wasn't always appreciated by the nuns and other students.
The unofficial art therapy may have helped - Graham not only stayed out of trouble, but won a scholarship to high school and finished with good grades - but it hardly left him with a burning desire to become a painter. He didn't make art, study art or give art much thought until years later, when he was a college dropout living in San Francisco.
But today, at 45, Graham is a respected painter and a tenured member of the art faculty at Virginia Tech. An exhibit of his large, forceful works is under way at Roanoke's Harrison Museum of African American Culture and will continue through May 31.
Graham finished high school in 1962. He spent a few years working at odd jobs and indifferent studies in biology and other non-art subjects at a couple of Chicago-area colleges, then headed for the West Coast in 1966.
There, while again supporting himself with a variety of jobs, he tutored Chinatown youngsters in English and discovered a gift for counseling youngsters.
"I was a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none," Graham said in a recent interview, "but for some reason, I guess I was a good listener."
Graham's involvement in street-level community activities included the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He was associated with the Black Panthers.
Robin Leigh, a friend of Graham's at the time, said he was "of the street. He had marvelous anger. Rather than killing somebody, he painted it."
It was Leigh who helped to awaken Graham's interest in art and channel his anger onto canvas. They met in 1967 when Graham visited BlackMan's Art Gallery, which Leigh was running with her then-husband in a Victorian House in San Francisco. There he saw strong work by black artists and spent hours talking to the proprietors.
They believed in the affirmation of cultural identity and were using their gallery to help those who chose to do it through art. Encouraged by his new friends and inspired by the work in their gallery, Graham set out to try it on his own.
He also haunted Bay-area galleries and museums and immersed himself 3 1 ARTIST Artist in books on African-American art and culture.
"I did a lot of reading, a lot of studying and a lot of practicing in those years," he said.
In an effort to save money, Graham did his first couple of paintings on paper instead of canvas. Leigh scolded him for that, paper being perishable, but spotted his raw talent right away.
"I just go by gut instinct," she said in a recent interview. "I knew immediately that Robert had something so intuitive, so deep inside him and so strong."
Graham did 45 paintings the first year, setting a standard of high productivity that has continued throughout his career.
"To me," he said, "an artist is someone who works at it. If anything, call me a painter because that's what I do."
The early works tended to be abstract and full of energy and "aggressive" color. He moved on to faces and figures and urban scenes. His influences were the living artists whose work he saw and such masters as Goya, the Mexican muralists Orozco and Siqueiros, the German Expressionists.
Leigh was a demanding critic. Graham set his standards accordingly high and refused to show his work to anyone else "until I was sure I'd put it up in my own home. I didn't want to look like a fool."
He had his first one-man show in 1968 at BlackMan's. Other shows followed, mostly in the Bay area, as Graham continued his self-training as a part-time painter. His formal training began in 1978, when he entered California State University at Hayward. He earned a B.A. in studio art in 1980 and moved to the University of Wisconsin for a master's of fine arts in painting.
He won that degree in 1983 and joined the faculty of Virginia Tech the same year. There, he directs the Armory Art Gallery and teaches painting.
"He's a good teacher," professor Ray Kass said of his colleague. "He's rigorous and disciplined. He gives lots of exercises. Some of the students don't care for it, but it's what you have to do."
"Students might not like my attitude and students might not like my personality, but they can respect that I teach them to work," Graham said.
Artists need to work hard, he said, not only to learn but to survive. "Society doesn't reward the artist on the level where the artist should be rewarded. It's pretty much a buyer's market."
Graham's own work typically reflects his preoccupation with the way people relate to one another, whether the context is political, social, cultural or sexual. Though he professes to be an optimist, it's clear from the irregular positions and juxtapositions of his pictorial elements that the artist doesn't view human relations as universally smooth.
With the help of a grant from Tech, Graham is at work on a projected series of 13 or 14 paintings based on his memories of Chicago. Six are among the works at the Harrison exhibit, and the complete series is to be shown later this year at the Alleghany Highlands Arts & Crafts Center in Clifton Forge.
Graham, who is single, does his painting in his Blacksburg apartment. He works in the living room and one of the two bedrooms, usually from about 10 p.m. until 3 or 4 in the morning, with recorded music or a TV news network for company.
"I'm intense and extremely focused when it comes to my work," he said. "When I'm in my rhythm I can have four or five paintings going at once."
Graham paints on large sections of unstretched canvas that are hung by means of grommets. The absence of a frame suggests that the images are too strong to be contained. He frequently undercoats with black gesso instead of the usual white, thereby imbuing the work with a dreamlike and vaguely nocturnal quality that can be unsettling.
It's not unusual for Graham to apply 20 or 30 layers of paint as he works toward the effect he wants. He often mixes wax into his paint to enhance its modeling capabilities, and may complete a work with marking pen or other handy tool.
"A lot of my style is technique," he said. "I'm always experimenting. I work out the image as I go along."
by CNB