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Robert Stackhouse Approaching Blue Diviner, 1990 watercolor and charcoal on paper put down on linen 108 x 60 in. I make sculptures to give myself something to paint… I think of them as ideas or as questions, not just as records of things that I built.1 Robert Stackhouse, 1991 In the 1970s Robert Stackhouse established himself as an important sculptor creating temporary outdoor and indoor installations that functioned physically and metaphorically as passageways of discovery and transformation. From the beginning of his career, heroically scaled watercolor drawings always figured prominently. Sometimes they were exhibited on a gallery or museum wall as the central focus of an installation, viewed by visitors walking through an elongated, A-frame structure made from wooden beams covered with lathes.2 In the installation, Blue Diviner (1989-1990), a coiled, vermilion-colored snake, titled Ruby Birth (1987), loomed large through the sculpture's entrance.3 The snake, a symbol of regeneration because it annually sheds its skin, strengthened the concept of a mythic journey through life suggested by the sculpture, whose title hinted at future events. Untitled (Approaching Blue Diviner) was painted after the installation, a practice that enables Stackhouse to reflect upon his work and envision new directions. In the Patton drawing, the artist interprets the architectural forms of his temporary sculpture from a vantage point that captures the abstract quality of the work reinforced by the play of light and shadow on its surface. Stackhouse often uses an intense blue color in both sculptures and watercolors for its references to sky and water. The drawing's epic scale envelops the viewer and reinforces these environmental associations. Nautical imagery, recalling the hulls of ships and the bellies of whales, surface in many of Stackhouse's works. In 1990, the artist made an etching that juxtaposes the sculpture Blue Diviner with the prow of a Viking burial ship. As early as 1974, Stackhouse and his wife, the artist Mary Beth Edelson, spent the summer at Nag's Head, North Carolina, where he scavenged the beach for pieces of sunken ships.4 Most recently, Stackhouse has painted huge watercolors based on his study of historic luxury vessels -- the Titanic, the Normandie and the Queen Mary -- with weighty, riveted copper frames that express both the wreckage of the boat's structure and a sculptural dimension.5 Through the decades, Stackhouse has maintained a consistent vision that can be appreciated on many levels -- from the sheer beauty and physicality of the drawings and sculptures to their ancient and metaphysical associations. Barbara Matilsky |