Clem Robins Paints the Bible

Info about Painting 01 here and stuff.

People playing music. In August.

Funky marsh.

Thirsty plants.

Swamp Thing's summer home.

Oil on linen. 2016. 11x14"

This is a watercolor I painted in 1999, as a thank-you for a series of teachings done on the book of Joshua. After painting it, I did several copies of the image, which explains why I have one here.

After clobbering a confederation of five city-states in the Promised Land, Joshua had Israel's military leaders put their feet on the necks of the imprisoned enemy kings, who were subsequently executed. If the ethics of all of this gives you trouble, give me a call sometime, it was all entirely justified.

Putting one's foot on the neck of a king evokes having all things under our feet today, as Ephesians describes. In fact, the book of Joshua is to the Old Testament what Ephesians is to the New Testament.

Here's something fun to do. Put a chicken in your picture of a country road — and yes, there really was one there — and title the picture, "Chicken Crossing a Road". Post it on social media, and then count the number of times people write, "Why?"

I've put in ten sessions on this over the past two years. The quest was to not let the details of trees, bushes and geese overpower the stark orange effect of the setting sun.

An early December picture, from 2012. If I can learn to enjoy the cold months more, I can possibly make pictures of those months which more people will enjoy. But to date, my winter pictures have been basically, in the words of our new Poet Laureate, nothing but desolation row.

Once upon a time, some six years ago, I became fascinated with flotsam like this, and hoped to fascinate others with pictures of flotsam.

I happened upon this long-abandoned package store in Northern Kentucky a few years ago, and assumed that it was a remnant of a community which was started but never finished. After all, it was on a dilapidated road in the middle of nowhere. As I worked on the picture, a man came by and told me the history of the road upon which I'd stood. Actually, I was in an abandoned community which at one point had thrived. Yet another example that life, in the words of the Preacher from Ecclesiastes, is not a conveyor belt, but a merry-go-round.

Shortly afterward, an old pal who grew up in this part of Kentucky recognized the store, and purchased the picture.

A bunch of us hired a model to paint in the open air in June of 2012. I've never managed to do a finished figure painting in one shot, and didn't pull it off here. But the model rather liked the Windsor Violet tonal underpainting, which cast its hue over the picture no matter how much I overpainted it. She suggested the above title.

a scene near the Indiana border along the Ohio River.

this huge checker-shaped object prompts the perennial question, can we put unidentifiable objects in a painting? i don't know the answer, but I always liked this 2013 picture of a section of a farm in Cleves, Ohio. the massive checker is actually a plastic water tank.

a scene along Roundbottom Road in Newtown, Ohio, near the Farmer's Market.

there's an area in Newtown, Ohio off Roundbottom Road. It's a couple of hundred acres owned by Martin Marietta and walled off by KEEP OUT signs and a warning not to drive around the gate. I spent a very happy summer ignoring the warnings. Inside the property are a series of ponds, lakes, hills, and other delights. It's a sort of MGM backlot for landscape painters, with a little piece of every sort of vista one might wish to use to build pictures. It was a sad day when a security guard found me and told me that I was highly and hugely unwelcome.

Winter scenes are tough for me; my breathing goes funky on me when it’s cold out. But winter scenes, especially those painted on or near the solstice have a marvelous sense of desolation and rebirth about them. And winter skies, once you begin to understand them, have their own kind of beauty. The sky is a fluid medium every day of the year, but come wintertime that fluidity is particularly lovely. It’s like pouring a shot of cream into black coffee. The two liquids, like winter clouds, dance around each other.