Life is complex and sometimes perplexing. Beauty remains. Order can be comforting. Wild is necessary and freeing.

These are things about life that I know more clearly and deeply because the studio is a place where I meet life, and have visual conversations about it.

Also I love color, line and the feel of forming shapes.

I’ve been artistically active all my life. I try to keep a playful mind; I enjoy engaging with many materials working through the different challenges, delights and surprises.

My experiences in fields that create in light (live music lighting design and computer games) along side my work in traditional media (oil paints/pastels/sticks, watercolor/guache, printmaking, drawing, soft pastel) have helped develop my fascination with color. Working in 3 dimentions through a variety of sculpture materials (stone, wax, clay, plasticine) comes to me naturally. I find as I age, these two are coming together in my mind and work, now having a sense of sculpting in paint. A new, joyful sensation.

My professional work is being with people in their most human moments. With a masters in a practice known as Spiritual Direction, I have worked in hospitals as companion and Spiritual Care Provider for those in Palliative Care and Hospice. Serious illness, end of life and bereavement can focus our attention, possibly distilling and crystallizing the glimmers of meaning we find. This experience brings tenderness for life and the living into my work.

I use my art work as a way to engage with life and a tool for exploring its experience. The results are snapshots of this experience, moment to moment.

-Gayle Robertson Studio