Rob Vander Zee

Paintings

High Tea, 2012, 75 x 95 inches, oil on panel

Vernal Pond, Panel I201376 x 98 inchesoil on board

Vernal Pond, Panel II201376 x 98 inchesoil on board

Vernal Pond, Panel II, detail201376 x 98 inchesoil on board

Vernal Pond, Panel III201376 x 98 inchesoil on board

Tree Sisters, Cherry201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

Tree Sisters, Birch201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

Tree Sisters, Hawthorne201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

BonsaiBoy I201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

BonsaiBoy II201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

BonsaiBoy III201224 x 24 inchesoil on board

The Princess201338 x 44 inchesoil on board

New World 3201060 x 40 inchesoil on board

New World 1 2010 48 x 60 inches oil on board

New World 2 2010 48 x 60 inches oil on board

New World 5 2010 48 x 72 inches oil on board

New World 4 2010 60 x 72 inches oil on board

Evolution of Plants 1 2009 24 x 36 inchesoil on board

Evolution of Plants 42009 24 x 36 inchesoil on board

Evolution of Plants 2 2009 30 x 30 inchesoil on board

Evolution of Plants 32009 36 x 36 inchesoil on board

Evolution of Plants 5 2009 30 x 30 inchesoil on board

Evolution of Plants 62009 30 x 30 inchesoil on board

Flora 2009 30 x 32 inchesoil on board

Genetic Experiment #22017 The Mating Courtship of the Spiny-backed Flying Frog2009 32x32 inchesoil on board

Mutation 01 2010 12 x 12 inches oil on board

Mutation 022010 12 x 12 inches oil on board

Mutation 03 2010 12 x 12 inches oil on board

Mutation 042010 12 x 12 inches oil on board

The Canopy I 2009 76 x 95 inches oil on board

The Water’s Edge 2009 76 x 95 inches oil on board

Butterfly Boys, 200960 x 80 inchesoil on board

Commentary

Rob Vander Zee’s art is full of enchantment. We are both transported by vivid landscapes and confronted by human-like creatures who seem to have been cast by a spell into fantastic new species. The place where the artist takes us and the flora and fauna there are clearly imagined, but no less compelling for being so.

Vander Zee imagines a whole world in his ongoing series, Visions of Paradise. His new Eden is vibrantly colored, dream-like and populated by life forms who seem to want to make themselves known to us. Rather than camouflaged, they announce their presence with striking hues and patterns. The quasi-humans pose for our viewing, while the sexy plants try to seduce us. In this world, as strange as it might be, we are welcome to explore. Part of the enchantment in these paintings is the artist’s sheer invention with organic forms. In a group of related paintings, The Evolution of Plants, familiar forms like pods or flowers have grown eyes or mouths or limbs. At times, the under-lying plant or animal has combined with other species to create new, mutant organisms. The overall effect is to animate a living world with exotic and curiously conscious beings.

Most striking and unsettling are the beings that have clearly human origins, but are plant or animal as well. Their range is enormous, from the winsome, to the fearsome, to the surreal. Flora and Planta are two portraits of these fantastical creatures. Flora has hair that is a wild bouquet of flowers, while her skin is glowingly patterned, like an amphibian’s. Planta sprouts her own headdress of blooms, and is covered with fine green leaves.

Vander Zee is an ambitious painter who is at home with the cinematic sweep of large canvases. The Water’s Edge is set in a watery swamp of psychedelic greens and blues, on whose mossy tree limbs live unfamiliar life forms. Two naked male figures are each in the act of acquiring a new red and blue skin, while a female figure waits in silhouette. The Canopy l shows two smiling bearded beings, covered with light brown fur, at home in the treetops among crimson blossoms that hang like open mouths. Vander Zee possesses an ecological imagination, attuned to the natural world and to the otherness we experience in our own lives. He shows us an alternate reality that is both a warning of evolution distorted by human agency, and a promise of our oneness with the living environment.

Rob Vander Zee

Biography

Rob Vander Zee paints fantastic worlds filled with imagined plants and mutant human-like creatures. The work expresses his fascination with how science is reshaping life on Earth. Born in 1971 in Grand Rapids MI, the artist grew up in rural Cedar Springs, surrounded by nature. Vander Zee was a self-realized artist at an early age. He can hardly remember a time when he didn’t have a pencil or pen in his hand during his childhood. He went on to major in both painting and drawing at Aquinas College. There he studied with Larry Blovits, a painter who taught Old Master’s techniques in oil painting. Vander Zee received his MFA from Michigan State University in 1998. His paintings at the time were influenced both by 17th century Flemish still lifes, and by the new figural painting of the 1980s.

Vander Zee began a mural painting business while in graduate school and continued it in Richmond VA, where moved to in 1998. The murals both helped him to develop his painting skills and supported his own work, a series of canvases exploring personal belief systems, followed by a group of large psychological portraits. Genetic Alterations, an extended series of drawings of transformed human beings, introduced a theme which the artist would explore in his current paintings. The landscape as a site of emotional drama became the subject of Vander Zee’s work in the mid-2000s. Referring to these paintings, and the strongly abstract work that followed, the artist acknowledges his debt to a range of artists including Turner, Diebenkorn, Nerdrum and Keifer. In 2005, Vander Zee started the gallery that bears his name in Alexandria VA, and in the following year founded a school at which he mentors 35-40 students each year. In 2005, the artist continued a series of trips that have become important influences on his work. That year traveling to Estonia as a guest of the American Estonian Embassy inspired a series of moody landscapes. In 2008 he painted Sacred Earth/Mythic Body, a series of large paintings based on Greek and Roman mythology. These paintings marked Vander Zee’s return to the human figure, which he immersed in richly colored landscape settings. In 2009, Vander Zee exhibited his paintings in Lithuania at the Arca Gallery. Later that year, he had an exhibition at the The Lithuanian National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. Also in 2009 he visited the rainforests of Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, both of whose landscapes and diverse animals triggered his artistic imagination. Later the same year Vander Zee returned to Ecuador for a three-month residency at the Itchimba Cultural Institute in Quito. There he created and exhibited the beginning of his ongoing Visions of Paradise, a series which focuses on nature transmogrified by evolution and genetic manipulation. Vander Zee has exhibited his paintings at many venues including Gallery A, Washington DC, Trowbridge-Lewis Gallery, Middleburg VA and the Tallin Art Academy, Tallin, Estonia. His work has traveled in group exhibitions to Vilnius, Lithuania, Romania and to the Republic of Georgia.

Rob Vander Zee

Artist Statement

Visions of Paradise, begun in 2009, is an ongoing series of paintings that focuses on an imagined world of vibrant colors and fantastic plants, animals and new mutant creatures. These paintings explore the complex questions surrounding our relationship to the natural world, and the role that science has in shaping the living environment.

The organisms are based on both observation and the artist’s own invention. Different species are combined, with eyes, mouths, and hands appearing where they would not be found in nature. Human-like hybrids, sprouting leaves and flowers or with patterned skin, are an essential part of this new world. The intent is to create in these paintings a complete environment, a liquid and ephemeral atmosphere in which life forms live and evolve. Each painting begins with a sketch of the composition in water-based black pencil, which when painted with gesso results in a grisaille drawing with contrasting tones. A painting consists of approximately 15-20 alternating layers of glaze and thick oil paint, creating a sense of depth and luminosity. A painting changes significantly over the many months it may take to complete. From his original concept, the artist allows a painting to evolve on the canvas. A large scale permits plenty of room for exploring with an intuitive painting process. The painted surface is a living, breathing thing – where a series of battles/maneuvers/love-making takes place. There is a deliberate use of the subconscious in the work, with the human-like creatures emerging as beautifully devious and sexual beings. Both science and human psychology play a role in these paintings. The work asks a basic question about the impact of evolution and genetic engineering on the environment: “What will emerge from our ability to manipulate the genetic code of any species on Earth, including ourselves?”

Rob Vander Zee

For exhibition inquiries contact Katharine T. Carter & Associates

Email: ktc@ktcassoc.com

Phone: 518-758-8130

Fax: 518-758-8133 Mailing Address:

Post Office Box 609Kinderhook, NY 12106-0609

Website: http://www.ktcassoc.com