SOLD ARCHIVE

Robert Chapla Biography

Midwest born and raised, East Coast educated, long time San Francisco Bay Area and Vermont teacher/painter, I have experienced and enjoyed many landscapes. My painting style, originating in the midwest and the East Coast, was developed and reached maturity in Northern California. Moving to Vermont 12 years ago has been a return to my painting ‘roots’ and to the seasonal changes and scenes that are so important to my painting.   

Most of my paintings are developed and finished in the studio, but occasionally I will plein air paint because of the unique light, mood and ideas a specific setting affords. This helps to rejuvenate my interior work, giving it a freshening of color. For the most part I attempt to impart to my paintings an expressive power, texture and fauve-like color which can most effectively be done experimentally over time and rework in the studio. Lately I have added fluid acrylic effects to the work to get a stronger rhythm and movement to the pieces in ways that I cannot realize with a brush. This is done over fully developed paintings. For example, the painting, Glory to Glass was abstracted (using the fluid effects) from a painting of two glass blowers working around the furnace fire hole at a Benicia, Ca. glass works. Having read much in the area of science, my latest work attempts to express the idea that everything on a molecular level interacts and flows into everything else – essentially developing an interconnectivity.

I have always been moved as much, if not more so, by woman painters as men. I started painting large, full sheet watercolors of flowers in the style of Georgia O’Keefe and selling them at street fairs in the 1970’s and 80’s in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the late 80’s, some friends and I started a plein air group that would meet on Saturdays (we all worked regular jobs during the week) at various locations around the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Though I still paint realistically, I am working as much now in abstraction. I was initially drawn and influenced by Clifford Still, Joan Mitchell, Arthur Dove, Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner at SF Bay Area shows.

Robert grew up in Lorain, Ohio and graduated from Columbia College in New York City with a degree in Art History. He has taken numerous graduate classes in fine art at several institutions including Cleveland Art Institute, Washington Univ., St. Louis, SF Academy of Art and others and taught extensively over the years, including 6 years in Yosemite Valley. He teaches painting at SPA Gallery in Barre, Vt. , and summer adult program at Putney School, Putney, Vt.