Oil painting

R Sacco Oil on Canvas

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• published: 27 Jun 2014
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http://www.rsacco.com http://www.saatchiart.com/RSaccoOilonCanvas https://www.facebook.com/rsaccooiloncanvas https://www.facebook.com/artalive A 20-minute interview with Rob Sacco, painter and professional chef living in Central Mass., featuring his original, abstract oil paintings in bold, vibrant colors. Email RSaccoOilonCanvas@gmail.com to request a complete transcript of this video. TRANSCRIPT I started painting probably in the early 90s. I always wanted to paint. I was not given the opportunity in school. They told me I was bound for bigger and better things than art class. So my time was taken up with physics and calculus and typing instead of being in a studio. The only art classes I took in school were those that everyone had up to certain point, whatever that is. Middle school? And then beyond that were the classes, from what I could tell, looked like they were a lot more intense and a lot more fun. I did not have those art classes. The desire was always there. And my children were making themselves busy while I was working one day and came home with a learn-to-oil-paint kit that they bought at a yard sale for twenty-five cents. And it spread from there. The outline of two apples was laid out and there was instruction for shadow and reflection and highlights and there were three or four little tubes of paint. That was painting number one, which I don't have any longer. I started buying my own paints and brushes just as soon as those four little tubes of paint ran out. I went to a local shop in Vermont and stocked up on canvases and paints and was looking at paint brushes with no knowledge of what to do. And a sales clerk said, "If you're just starting out, don't waste money on good brushes." And that person walked off and there was an elderly woman in the store shopping. She said, "Don't listen to her. You need good brushes!" I don't know how many years we are from that point now - early 90s - and those brushes are all still my very close companions. Aptitude, I probably questioned. I question everything I try and do. I started sketching, which was disheartening because everything I did was tilted. And a lot of my paintings still are tilted and I've just grown to embrace that as being part of what I put out there. But I think as my drawing ability improved, was about the same time I started painting. So the sketching kind of helped. Early on, I seem to have done a lot of landscapes and especially still lifes. I feel like I still want to do still lifes and landscapes but they take so much longer to paint that sometimes, between working to earn a paycheck, there isn't as much painting time. So that probably feeds into painting abstract. I probably can complete an abstract in an hour to three or four. So they're a done-in-one-sitting thing. For some reason, they're exhausting. I don't know if it's emotional energy? It's certainly not physically exhausting. I've painted a landscape or a still life where I've sat for eight hours and that's kind of physically exhausting. You go to stand up and your joints don't want to do anything. But yeah, the abstracts are fun, but it's exhausting. Are paintings planned? Well, sometimes they have to be. A still life needs to be laid out with some care, building a triangle of components. Stepping up to the canvas after the still life's laid out, it could go in any number of directions as far as color on my palette, or as real as I can get it, or somewhat abstract. If I'm doing a still life, I always... I don't try and copy and I don't even know if I emulate, but Cezanne's still lives just really, really speak to me. So they're there, in my mind. Where do my ideas come from? Sometimes I might see an image and just hold on to it, whether it's sunrise through trees or... it could be anything. Colors. And there have been two times where, with different results, mid-winter I needed a break from snow and painted a landscape: a hillside full of poppies and blue sky. And that was a little get-away from three-and-a-half feet of snow on the ground. And it wasn't any place in particular. It was just warmth and sunshine for that moment. Another cold snap, I did a landscape that's cold and moonlit, freezing, also not any place in particular. Sometimes I am thinking something very specific. Other times I let things go where they will and I don't think there's necessarily any thought process going on in my head other than feeling... if I paint an abstract, I don't know if I've stated this, but I always have music on. So I don't know if I'm reacting to the music but it stimulates something that ends up on the canvas. So there might not be a concrete thought process. [YouTube's description field can't hold more characters. Email RSaccoOilonCanvas@gmail.com to request a full transcript.]