From The Artist Magazine, Great Britain, August 2007

Artists of the World:
Lessons Learned from the Masters

Robert Liberace has an old-school approach to painting and drawing the figure and portraits with both panache and artistry. Sandra Carpenter discovers the inspiration behind his classical style.

by Sandra Carpenter

Figure drawings with movement and character, portrait paintings with dazzlingly lifelike skin tones and personality. These are just a few of the hallmarks of a classical realist painter. And these are also just a few of the terms you can use to describe Robert Liberace’s work. It’s easy to see this Virginia artist admires and studies the work of the great master artists and applies their lessons to his work. “We are all dependent on those great master artists who preceded us,” says Robert. “I always try to develop and improve my personal style through them.”

In particular, Robert admires the work of Michelangelo and Raphael. “Their work showed feeling, emotion, poetry, and movement through the body. I have an affinity for figures–particularly an energetic portrayal of figures–and these masters took energy and gave it feeling. They had a sort of poetic dynamism in their paintings, drawings and sculptures.”

Adding life
To render and understand the figure so well, you have to intrinsically be fascinated by the look and movements of people. Robert’s goal is to represent people as they are in their energy, emotion, and feeling. With portraits, he’s especially drawn to painting eccentric and physically unusual people. “I like to see something a little unexpected, some unusual physical detail such as the beard on Charles at 00. Through their age, older people have developed a complexity that expresses the weight of a lifetime and I like to paint them as well. With figures, I love athletic types that move well and seem to understand the movement of their body–a dancer or an athlete understands how to exploit the potential of their body.”

Robert credits his detailed studying of master works as a key inspiration for his artwork. “Somehow the master artists understood the dimensions of the human figure,” he continues. “Michelangelo and da Vinci have that instinct, that deep feeling for the portrayal of the human body, it’s strong and can carry all those elements that make a work of art moving.”

Medium notes
Much like the old masters, Robert has developed a deeper understanding of his subject by working in multiple genres and mediums. By doing sculpture, he says he found a more concrete idea of the fullness of the form and also gained more plasticity in his drawings. “Those artists that I love all did sculpture and it gave their work a greater breadth – they seemed to get more convincing and dramatic portrayals of people. And sculpture has definitely helped me as well. It gives my painting more dimension and helped me with form.”

Robert works in almost every medium, but he finds oils to be the most satisfying as he can explore the fullness of paint. He also admits to loving the ‘sprightliness’ and luminosity of watercolour, while pastel provides a nice crossover from drawing. He uses watercolour when he travels and for quicker drawings. “What I love about Rembrandt’s drawings is that he can give you the full sensation of that person – a personal human moment–in just a few lines in a very authentic way. Pencil needs more time, but ink and watercolour go right down. When I have time and want to explore form, I use paints, pencils or chalks as I can allow the three-dimensions to emerge in the picture with them.”

As for subject preferences, Robert says that still lifes don’t interest him as much as figures. As for portraits, he feels more freedom in working with figures as they are less restrictive. “You can make errors in drawing figures that you just can’t make in portraiture.”

Breathing lessons
In the classes he teaches, Robert tries to encourage students not to draw just what’s there as he feels it’s the artistry that makes a drawing or painting breathe. One of his favourite techniques is to teach them to oscillate their lines so that the figure becomes animated. “Medical illustrators just describe, while da Vinci makes it a living organism by using quivering lines,” says Robert. “In drawing that’s one particular way you can suggest that you’re portraying something that exists. In painting you can use bleeding edges in the same way–the sfumato or fine, delicate shading that da Vinci introduced us to.

“All great artists, even someone as smooth as a Vermeer, understand there has to be a little agitation in their paint,” he continues. “I always try to be aware of whether a stroke or softened edge maintains that gesture and animated life from the beginning of a picture. You risk killing your painting when you keep working, but I try to carry that initial energy from the first few strokes right up until the end.”

As for colour, Robert looks to Rubens as he describes him as the first great flesh tone painter and the one that established that colour oscillation is the interplay of strong colour and neutrals. “Usually if I put a particular colour down, I look to evoke a complementary note to it. Sometimes I do it based on what I see, other times I’m more abstract. Rubens threw in an obvious complementary note. Through him, I’ve been inspired to explore and exploit colours. Art is about finding this colour, contour or gesture that is characteristic to a person. With Rubens, I like how he makes sure that you see the subtle happenings in the skin tone, he doesn’t just whisper them.”

Forming a style
Robert first became interested in drawing the figure while studying at George Washington University. There he had a teacher named Frank Wright who had a deep regard for the old masters. “He showed me how to draw with artistry and panache. I was lucky to have a drawing teacher who could show me things in a clear way.”

In addition to Rubens, Rembrandt, DaVinci and Michelangelo, Velázquez has also inspired Robert’s painting style. He feels that Velázquez ushered in a new way of painting the figure. “If I can ever paint something like Velázquez I will feel like I’ve succeeded. In sculpture, Michelangelo was the most powerful and sublime in the way he explored the emotions of the human figure. He could somehow get the feeling and the weight of a person in a sculpture. In drawing, there is one person that inspired me and he is an obscure mannerist. WHAT IS HIS NAME? I don’t like his paintings but his drawings were supremely executed– they leap out of their contours.”

And since Robert’s home is near the great museums in Washington DC, he often drops into them to look at something beautiful, figure out a problem or how to achieve a certain effect. He continually reassesses how different artists achieve their results.

Getting specific
Although he does not use all of these colours for every painting, Robert’s general palette consists of brown, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, cadmium red, permanent rose crimson, manganese violet, dioxazine violet, ultramarine blue, either cerulean or cobalt teal or turquoise light, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, viridian green, phthalo green, ciminize white and titanium white and lead white. To begin a painting, he makes a sketch using turpentine and umber, erratically scrawling the image onto the canvas, working much as you would with a gesture drawing. Then he reinforces the shadows and goes right into the lights and darks. Colour is put on either alla prima where he starts and finishes a painting all in one sitting, or layered where he may apply five to six layers of paint. Always, Robert considers the edges and what needs to be in the painting, asking himself if the edges are round enough, too soft or too firm. As he puts down colours, he tries to simultaneously get the values.

If something in a painting or drawing is not working, Robert will keep working until it looks correct. “I want my sketches to look free, but even a sketch has to have a sense of completion and a finishing touch that says it’s done. I have a lot of works going at once. I always have gallery pieces, figure paintings, commissioned portraits and more – I try to juggle them all. If I was only working on one thing, I think I would loose interest. For me to work on a number of things at once is good. But it is hard to do sculpture and painting at the same time. For sculpture, I do dedicate myself to only that.”

Teaching notes
In his workshops, Robert always strives to get students to see the world as an artist does. He feels there is a particular way an artist develops the three-dimensional world into two dimensions that requires a re-evaluation of how you see the world. “You come in with so many preconceptions of how the world is but these may not always be accurate. I put myself in the position of a student to re-evaluate how I’m drawing or painting. You have to become fluid with your materials and learn how to grab people. I basically try to make my students see like Rembrandt.”

Ultimately, Robert feels that a good painting has to be some sort of accurate portrayal of people the way they are. It doesn’t have to be physically correct, but the painting must touch on the way people are, explain a universal truth or find a way to capture what makes us human. Finally, an artist needs to paint well and have a mix of discipline and regard for their craft.

Future thinking
Robert draws every day, but he does not paint every day. Even so, he says that he is always thinking about painting and tries to get as much time in the studio as possible. “My personal style is continuously evolving. I try to maintain my energy by taking a class or two. Then there’s the teacher in me that wants to share all this knowledge with other people – I want to show them what I think is so great about drawing and painting.”

For the future, Robert says he wants to create visual reality to get a better understanding of his own place in this world. “There is a tremendous sense of satisfaction in doing this,” he continues. “This is my higher purpose. In Rembrandt, I can feel the story of everything that I would ever need to know about anything from how people interact to the way of the world. I am pursuing that same understanding.”

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