More of my Father's Work

My father passed away last week and we had a memorial service on February 3rd at the UU Church of Lancaster in Lancaster , PA.  While I was home for the service I got some pictures of some of my Dad's creative work that I haven't photographed or posted previously.  The first set are all of a miniature scale model church my dad made for me and gave me on my 16th birthday.  I had felt called to the ministry from a young age and so he made me a church which even had my name printed on the wayside pulpit as the minister.  The entire model stands slightly over a foot tall.

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts, for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
 for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts



Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts



Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts, for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts, for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Miniature church by Donald L. Roberts,
for his son Ralph Yeager Roberts

Following the pictures of the scale model miniature church are a selection of Dad's paintings and illustrations.  The water colors are done on paper in a dry brush style.  The one of my sister Donna's Cottage in Mount Gretna Pennsylvania was one he did only a couple years ago.  He was having difficulty controlling his brush for the past ten years or so which prevented him from continuing to work in oils which had always been his primary medium.  He was frustrated with watercolors in recent years and mostly restricted his artistic attempts to did pen and ink illustrations.  This makes the painting of the cottage special since he wasn't even doing water colors anymore but made an exception for this piece.  Ironically it is in my opinion his best water color.
The oil painting of the woman posing with a leg on a stool is in oils and was done before I was born.  It is on canvas paper.  The portrait in pencil is of my mother Joan Y. Roberts.  The other watercolor is from a photo taken of my mother during a trip she and Dad took to the Bahamas in the late 70s.

By Donald L. Roberts



By Donald L. Roberts




By Donald L. Roberts



By Donald L. Roberts

Finally I have included photos of some miniature buildings dad made.  The are scale models showing the facade of three buildings in Lancaster PA.  One is of Wheatland the historic home of President James Buchanan.  In the other picture you can see his models of the Fulton Opera House and the house at 334 Coral St. which my parents owned and rented as apartments (my sister Patty used to live there) but when I was in 6th grade they moved into the building combining the two units as a single residence.  Unfortunately he didn't include the other structure on the same plot as the Coral street house.  The other building was a single story building that originally had a bakery and in the basement was a barber shop.  This building they made a small apartment which my brother Kevin lived in for years including the time when mom and dad and I lived on coral Street. (that could have been explained with greater clarity, do forgive the quick and unrefined verbiage)

By Donald L. Roberts

By Donald L. Roberts

Dad's oil Paintings Part 1 of 2

These are some of my father's paintings.  I have all of these in my house at this point.



The face of Christ, Oil on Plywood
by Donald L. Roberts c. 1970

Inspiration came from a Time Magazine cover of an Anti-War protester or Hippie.  This one often startled friends who came over to the house when I was young.  I suppose the scale (life size) and its placement in a rather dark hallway had them thinking some stern man was watching from the shadows.  He never really scared me.  It is not one of my real big time favorites but I like the glazing work and that it is on a traditional wood base rather than a canvas.
 


Mother and Chilld, oil on canvas board, by Donald L. Roberts c. 1983

 

This portrait is of me and my mother.  I have vivid memories of posing for the pictures dad worked off of to make the painting.  He was recently home from the U.S.S.R. (Russia) and we are dressed to look as if we might be a mother and son who live there.  Mom is shown wearing one of the Ushanka's Dad brought back with him.  Mom's was mink, He had a big grey chinchilla one and mine is made with rabbit fur.  Here I am simply in a knit stocking cap.  The image lets you see the texture produced by the canvas board.  Compare the look to the "Face of Christ" or David and Bathsheba."  You will also see the textured style Dad would often use.  His oils rarely had the the smooth glazed look and those that did tended to be among his earlier paintings.  More and more he used a thicker textured application of the paint.



Harley on Banton sofa with prince Ah-Ha in the foreground,
 Dad's portrait of me and mom on the wall and
my handwoven Red Tensile stole draped on the back of the Sofa. February 2011



What I do like in this image is that it has a somewhat chilling theme.  Amoung Dad's paintings there are a handfull that strike me as more artisticly noteworthy.  Where many works depict meaning full places or people, they are nicely done and for those who he made the piece or for close friends and family etc. they are very meaningful but I don't necessarily find the work possessed of a voice or message that is more broadly pitched.  Similarly many demonstrate fine skill and style choices but are sort of painted snap shots.  This is one that I think employs a more sophisticated and intentionally meaningful composition.

So what meaning to I ascribe to it.  As I said it produces a bit of a chill for me.  I see a driven woman who is navigating toward the future in her work of steering or driving this child.  She sees the child and exists independent of him but also sees and operates through him.  I guess part of the artistry I appreciate in this work is in that it evokes a feeling and captures a moment in some story that is not really me and my mom and yet it is also very much a portrait of us.



2 Oils by Donald L. Roberts c. 1985



These Two smaller works, shown hanging above each other, are perhaps my all time favorite paintings I have of my Dad's.  Both are oils, both depict life in Lancaster county Pennsylvania, both are on a much smaller scale than most of his work, both are decidedly impressionistic in style, and both employ some degree of drama in the composition.



Studdy in oil on canvas paper, by Donald L. Roberts c. 1980

 The painting of an Amish man and his son is on canvas paper and I believe was intended as a small sketch of what was to be a much bigger piece.  My Dad seems to be enamored and certainly admires those who execute realism effectively.  It is not like him to have a faceless figure.  It is this hurried and effortlessness, creativity in the raw that I like and it is to me a masterpiece in its own right and lacks nothing for having never been employed in the production of some grander work as was intended.

The other small work is on canvas board and though a completed work it was also produced quickly and with little detail.  The barn is centered horizontally but not vertically.  With nothing but snow the barn seems the obvious subject or focus for the work and yet it is almost escaping off the top edge of the canvas perched far closer to the top of the images vertical access than we might expect.  The snow was largely achieved by flicking wet paint from a tooth brush.  It has been yellowed over the years from cigarette smoke but it works.  Aside from any visual merit I must recognize that part of what I like is that this is Mrs. Whitmer's barn and this is what I might have seen from an upstairs window in the first house I remember growing up in. 



Mrs. Whitmer's Barn in snow storm, oil on canvas board
by Donald L. Roberts, 1984



Night at the Mulan Rouge

My friend and housemate performing as Tina Turner during her step down show in 2008 ending her reign as the first Miss Crusin 7th.  The theme for the show was a Night at the Mulan Rouge.  If you are familiar with the film you will see how close to the images and set we where especially with the papier mache windmill.  This was in Jay's apartment for months and took up a good portion of the living space.  The roof was a separate piece as are the blades to the windmill.  It could not be assembled until we got it on stage since without the roof the windmill was only about 11 inches from the ceiling.  I will share a funny story at my own expense which is that when Jay initially proposed designing a replica of the windmill I tried to steer us in another direction.  I had watched the movie so often and hardly registered the windmill.  The elephant seemed a better idea to me.  Jay seemed to think the windmill was significant.  I took to the Internet and did a bit of on the spot research hoping to find out some other possible direction by relying less on the film and more on the history of the club.  Many will already be smirking, aware how little I took away from my grade school french classes for of course in little time I read that Mulan Rouge means red windmill and it was this for which the club was named and to this day the theater can be found by following the red windmill perched over the entrance.

Dad's Russian Market



detail of Russian Market,
 Donald Lee Roberts c. 1980

 

detail of Russian Market,
Donald Lee Roberts c. 1980

Here is one of my Dad's paintings.  It is oil on watercolor canvas paper.  Usually this was how my Dad would paint a sketch in miniature before taking up some larger oil piece on canvas or wood.  In this instance I don't think his plan was to expand on the work.  Over the past decade all of his paintings have looked like this one and been done on similar paper though mostly with a dry brushed watercolor over pen or pencil.  I see much of my dad's work as illustration and that feel has become more pronounced over the years.  Regrettably his choice of medium and even subject has been much more guided by his increased physical limitations and loss of muscle strength and control.  The scene is a Market in the former Soviet Union where he spent significant time over two years while working for RCA.  As difficult as these assignments where taking him away from home for up to 4 months at a time, I think they made possible a real cross cultural encounter which he found among the most meaning full of his life.  I am unsure just how many paintings and drawings he did of people and sites from his time in Russia but I can easily remember 10 which hung in our home and know he made gifts of others to various friends and family.

Russian Market, Donald Lee Roberts c. 1980

Mager Making Family



Ceramic Nativity Set, Grace Yeager c. 1960



Making my own Nativity Scene was in part inspired by the work of my father and my maternal grandmother.  Two of the Nativity scenes that decorated my childhood home where original one of a kind manger scenes. 





Ceramic Nativity Set, Grace Yeager c. 1960

 My Grandmother painted and glazed ceramic figurines and at my mother's request made her a Nativity Scene.  The figures are each about a foot tall.  In making this set my grandmother chose to paint the people using a dark honey brown color for their skin.  While the look is a bit extreme and looks odd on Mary and the angel whose yellow blond hair with such a choice of flesh tone makes them apear like they over did it at the tanning bed.  However her tip of the hat to a non anglo european origin for this story is effective juxtoposed with the posture and dress of the figures which is clearly modeled on images produced durring the italian rennesance.

While Grammy produced her Scene some years before I was even born I have vivid memories of my Father working on his diorama of the birth of Jesus.  He started out making figures out of plastic army men, whittling off their guns and weapon packs then draping them in glue soaked scraps of cloth.  In fact there is a king with an orange headdress who started out as a Darth Vader knock off from a "Star Battles" bag of plastic soldiers someone bought me as a present.  Later he made the people by bending a wire armature and then covering it with latex caulking, like the stuff in the tube used to close seams around the tub.  The army men demanded accommodation, fitting the scene to the limited range of poses available.  By contrast there was a freedom to present something closely fitting his artistic vision with the new silicon and wire people looked to suffer some serious skin condition.

My Dad wanted to show a scene that was more urban than normally pictured and which located the family and visitors off center and small relative to the overall image.  He also wanted the stable to look like one and modeled the mangers pictured after ones originally used for horses in a barn on our own property which he used as an art studio.  The overall theme you could say was to show the humanity, and humbleness of things as well as the hidden nature or anonymity in which the child is delivered.



Diorama Nativity Scene, Donald L. Roberts c. 1980




As with my own project both my Grammy and Dad set out to invite the viewer to encounter the familiar story with a heightened attention to some historical detail which is often obscured by stylized and sentimental images.  Certainly there is much to be questioned and dismissed in both pieces as far as achieving historical accuracy.  The Magi enter the scene some months after the child is born, there is no word of angels, Bethlehem would have been only slightly more cosmopolitan than Nazareth a town of maybe 50 adults, It never says that they where in a stable only that the child was laid in a manger, the inn was probably a reference to a guest room of sorts on the family property, and of course there is no reason to think this more than temporary housing after all the Magi are said to arrive at a house.  Yet it is not historic accuracy in the actual scenes they produced nor in my own that I think is the goal. 
At  least for my own part I would say the hope of crafting a true to life image of these moments of religious history is unrealistic and fr ought with problems.  However in our own telling of the stories over the years different generations recreate the vital and fleshy truth of the tales in how they depict the story as a mix of the familiar and to that age- every day aspects of life and in how they show in the nativity scene something foreign and other. 


Diorama Nativity Scene, Donald L. Roberts c. 1980



After all it is meant to be something more profound than the historic equivalent of a candid Polaroid image.  I think even artists who wish to shock us with the banal humanity of it all are unable to do so without showing both the grit and flesh of the matter and the ultimate truth that is there the heavenly story if you will.  Angels are used to do this but so too my father's historically tenuous stable scene which reveals a truth of the story which is humility and meekness. 

For my part I wanted to saturate the scene with elements that suggested a context which could explain in almost ordinary terms a child who might grow up and do as Jesus did, a mother who had drive and purpose, resources to allow for an education of some depth, a family located less at the social margins and able to broker the connections as we see in Jesus circle of well off and influential hosts and followers, and so forth.  It is a bit grand in aim granted but it is a grand story and when seen in person it is a rather grand final piece.

Original Nativity Scene by Ralph Yeager Roberts, 2008-2011