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How and
why did Bob Heatly became an artist living in Southern France doing paintings as
abstractions of reality?
My answer is much longer
than the question. It functions as my biography or resume.
Well in all started in
February of 1943. I weighed almost 10 pounds and was symmetrical in
all directions at birth. It took place on a kitchen counter by my aunt in
her house behind her corner grocery store in Mangum, Oklahoma, USA. My
parents were R.W. Heatly, a share cropper and Marge (Boyd) Heatly, 9th
of 9 children who lived with their parents on a small peanut farm. I spent
my first year and a half living in this small wood farmhouse with no running
water and a single coal burning stove. There were four generations of
HEATLY living together. They tried to raise peanuts and cotton on soil so
sandy you would have thought we lived on a beach. It must have been a hard
life for the adults but, it was fun.
1946 is a
part of my life that I do not remember. I was told by my parents we left the
farm and moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA where my father tried to find
an occupation that could support his family. To give you an idea how poor we
were, their wedding dowry was a mule and two chickens. The smells of beer
and sounds of crowds (Professional Wrestling) are memories I have of
Oklahoma City. Other than that, I can only remember my home and parents and
their friends. I do not have a single memory of another child. The first
three years of my life I was the only child in an adult inhabited world.
Maybe that explains me.
In 1947, we
moved to Altus, Oklahoma. My parents were now a Bond Bread salesman and a
Baptist Church secretary. They did this for the remainder of my childhood
and in the same small town 13 miles from Texas. As a result, I was brought
up with more religion than most. It had an effect, just not the one my
parents wanted. Altus in the 1940’s and 50’s was still the Oklahoma John
Steinbeck wrote about in the “Grapes of Wrath”. We had dust storms that
turned day into night and tumble weeds larger than people. The main
spectator sport in the Spring was watching the thunderstorms and tornados
roll in from the West. It was and remains Tornado Alley. School really
opened my eyes to my true interest in Art. They actually asked us to create
something using our imaginations. It was wonderful. I began to draw in all
my classes no matter what the teacher was talking about. The other great
thing was really learning to read. Books opened a whole new and equally
wonderful world to me.
I grew to be
short with a persistent pot belly. I sometimes wonder how much being one the
smallest effects your motivation to succeed in other areas. Art was that for
me. I can remember working or more than a month on a drawing larger than I
was. I probably was everything my parents wanted in those pre teenage
years. My only unusual interests continued to be art and reading. In the
summer months, I used to bring four or five books home from the public
library each week. Edgar Rice Burroughs, particularly his Barsoom Series,
was one of my favorite writers. I lived about 100 yards from my first
school and still ate my lunch at school. Both of my parents had full time
jobs from the time we moved to Altus. In fact, my father left home 6 days a
week at 4:00 am and didn’t return until 7 or 8 at night. He never attended
any of the activities I was involved with. My Mother was a bigger part of my
life. Altus was such a small town that it only had one art teacher who went
from school to school. In 1953, I started going to his house for four hours
every Saturday morning. The way I remember, I continued doing this until I
was in High School.
At twelve, my
parents working all of the time became a blessing. I was changing and
started doing all of the things my parents had forbidden. I was cursing like
a sailor, smoking, drinking, stealing hub caps and other forms of teen age
vandalism with my friends. With them gone, I could live a completely
different life. In Junior High School someone finally realized that I could
not see the same as everyone else in my class. I didn’t. I was so
nearsighted that I did not realize you could see leaves on trees. Mass-space
and figure-ground have always been strong compositional tools for me. Does
my affinity for strong form relate to the way I saw the world?
In High
School I was always on the fringe, an observer, not a major player in social
and sport activities. Basketball was the one exception. Even with my size, I
played well enough to be on the varsity team. This exposure to team sport
helped me learn how to motivate myself as well as others. In May of 1961, I
graduated from Altus High School. School had been easy for me and it’s a
good thing, because I did not try very hard. I wanted to leave Altus and my
rigid religious upbringing. I knew that to be happy in life I needed to
pursue a career that fed my soul not my pocket. Art or Architecture? Which
one?
Architecture
looked at that time like a way to earn a living doing art. I did not forget
about pure fine art. I took the same amount of studio art classes as majors
in art. The draft had something to do with that. I did not want to leave
school while there was a Vietnam. Bachelor of Architecture, Oklahoma State
University, 1967. It took me 6 years to finish this 5 year professional
degree. The extra year and every summer I spent at school were due to the
extra art courses. They were worth every minute. My biggest influence was
Dale McKinney, kinetic sculptor and painter, who shared his knowledge with
me.
When you were
25 in the 1960’s and male, the Vietnam War influenced most of your
decisions. I was still trying to avoid the draft. The best way looked to be
graduate school until I was too old for the draft. That one decision, to get
a Masters degree, determined much of my life direction. Without it, I never
would have become a teacher. I was 26, married, had a daughter, Masters of
Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Illinois and an
instructor at the U of I and the draft got me. I was sent to Vietnam after
training as an Artillery Ballistics Meteorologist but, I was one of the
lucky ones and wasn’t an infantry grunt fighting in the jungles. The year
plus a little more that I spent in Vietnam seemed at the time to be a total
waste. I was angry about missing this time with my daughter and frustrated
because I wasn’t being creative. Now when I look back on it, it is where I
developed a healthy fear of hard drugs. I saw too many young 18 year old
boys waste away on heroin.
After I
returned from Vietnam, I began to feel the full weight of responsibility
parenthood brings to everyone. I felt that I had to have a job that would
support and provide for my family. I returned to Illinois as the designer
for Glen Frazier, Architects and Visiting Associate Professor of
Architecture at the University of Illinois. Art had to wait. In 1975, Keith
Peterson and I opened our own architectural firm, Peterson-Heatly,
Architects in Urbana, Illinois, USA. The project we opened the office with
was not architecture, but instead, art. Our first paying client commissioned
us to do the illustrations for a book they were writing on police guidelines
for the federal government.
As the
architectural practice grew the less fun I seemed to have. A lot of time is
devoted to non creative things in the practice of architecture. As a
Professor teaching design and only doing the design work in an architectural
office, I had not seen that aspect of having an architectural firm. I
decided to accept an offer from Texas A&M to teach design full time. In
1978, I was recruited by my alma mater, Oklahoma State University to return
and help rebuild the program to the strength it had when I attended. I
accepted and along with many others were successful in making it one of the
major architectural design programs in the United States. I remained there
until 1999 when I gave up teaching (my day job).
In the first
year I taught at Oklahoma State University, one of my students, Roger
Robison won the most prestigious student design competition in the United
States, the Lloyd Warren Fellowship or Paris Prize. He was the first of
about 150 students under my direction to win or place in National and
International Design Competitions during my years at the university. Art
does have a place to play in architecture. Jim Knight, Fellow AIA and I
began to do small projects under the name of Atelier, Architects. We entered
and won the Southern Regional Passive Design Competition of 1980. As a
result of this win, we began getting the kinds of clients no one else
wanted. They were exactly the ones that I wanted to stretch my
imagination.
There are
many benefits to being a university professor. Not the least of which is
time for other creative interests. We got 3 months off each summer and a
full semester every 7 years. In 1985, I spent 4 months traveling and drawing
in Europe. This rekindled my interest in painting. I began to paint
seriously again upon my return. I was painting about 30 hours per week. I
had a one man show in 1986 of my new work and many of the really old pieces
from the 1960’s and sold almost every piece. I had another outlet beside the
students to pour my heart and soul into and people bought them.
I received
the Outstanding Teacher Award for Oklahoma State University in 1988 and the
ACSA Distinguished Professor title in 1997.
Painting and teaching design worked well together. Really, the thinking, the
conceptual ideation, everything was exactly the same in my mind. In all of
my teaching (one on one), my role has always was to motivate the student to
be as creative as he or she could be. Things could not have been better in
my professional life in 1990. My personal life had been bad for many years,
but I had resolved myself to the situation and was pouring all of my time
and energy into my art. Over the years, the only one who suffered from my
actions was my daughter, Kim who was just leaving home. Teaching
architectural design is similar to the process you would use in art. The
biggest difference is scale and the fact that people move though the work.
To teach someone to design is impossible. To help them learn to think is
possible. The same design principles apply to both. Basic design courses are
the same.
Don’t be
deceived by the title, University Professor. I have never stood behind a
lectern and given lectures on some subject. I only taught design in a studio
setting (15 students in one space for 20 plus hours per week). Everything
was one on one just 15 times. My role was to make each of their solutions as
good and creative as possible.
My painting subject and style had changed. In 1992, I lived
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA for 4 months and became intrigued by the
massive walls and importance of light on a person’s perception of place. I
had also made contacts in Santa Fe and found a gallery, Houshangs to
represent me in that area. My daughter had gotten married, was happy, and
had moved to Nebraska. 1994 was very different. I had a slipped disc in my
neck and was unable to raise my arms to shoulder height. I could not
physically paint so I learned to paint on a computer and explored the
potential of this new kind of brush. It is just a tool and not some magic
device for anyone to create with. Talent and ability still control the
result.
1996 was a year of hospitals and ultimately death. It began
with intensive care (heart) for my wife. She needed a transplant. It ended
with death. My mother died in her home surrounded by her friends of colon
cancer on November 2. I was in a car on the way to see her when I found out
she had died. My wife’s health continued to decline and my father died on
October 26, 1997 in Oklahoma City Baptist Hospital of pneumonia with only
me present. Most of my year had been spent in Altus with my father. He had a
very difficult time coping with mom’s death. She had done everything for
him. He didn’t even know how to use a can opener. My wife, Linda died of
cancer on August 6, 1998 at home with her mother and I present in the
bedroom. She was diagnosed with cancer on the lung, brain and bones in
April. Her health failed rapidly due to intensive radiation therapy and soon
her mind began to regress. She had the mind of a child when she died.
It seemed like all my responsibilities had been lifted from
my shoulders. I felt free! I still had time to live the way I had always
wanted to. I let my hair and beard grow, bought a new black Ford Explorer
Sport and began to live. I finished 1998 spending Christmas alone in a
rented room in Santa Fe. Upon my return to Stillwater, I began to change
that situation while planning my future. Europe, then on to art alone. 1999.
I walked into a bar in Oklahoma City, ended up talking to the owner and
closing the bar together that night. As I prepared for spending the summer
in Europe, we began to see each other. We are from radically different
backgrounds but right for each other. Soul mates do find each other.
I spent the first 2 months of the summer in Italy and France
sketching with students and doing the French Postcard Series. Terri came to
Paris to spend a week. The week turned into a month as I began to fall in
love with this fun, world wise, smart, beautiful, sexy woman. I will always
remember the month at Hotel du Pantheon. There must be something in the air
of Paris. We walked the streets of Paris oblivious to the people around us.
We talked about our pasts, our hopes, and our aspirations. In that month,
Terri was able to learn more about how I feel than anyone ever has. From
people watchers we became people who others watched and envied. Every couple
must have a special place in their hearts. The Moulin Rouge in Paris became
that place for us. Terri had been a dancer, so where the Can Can was born
was perfect. We drank with the students, smashed plates in Greek
restaurants, tumbled down a Paris stair, had a hotel call by a French doctor
and returned to Stillwater a couple.
When we returned, Terri stayed with me instead of returning
to Oklahoma City. She sold her bar, furniture, car and we moved the rest to
Stillwater. I started working on the Oklahoma Series at school and larger
pieces at home in the evening as we planned our future together. Our future
did not include Oklahoma. Quit teaching. One decision made. This would be
my last semester and we would spend New Year’s Eve under the Eiffel Tower
and then find some place to live. House, car, furniture everything would
have to go. Both of us started framing the summer’s work for one last show
in Oklahoma before we left. In November, I asked Terri to marry me and leave
for France not as a girlfriend but, as my wife. She said yes. She is my
wife, my girlfriend, my lover, and my best friend.
1999 was a very good year. My last show had sold all of the
big work and some of the new French Postcards. We were standing under the
Eiffel when the fireworks went off to welcome in the new millennium. House
was on the market, car on a lot, boxes in storage, four more days in the
hotel and off to find a home somewhere in France.
When we left the states, we
thought we would end up living in Paris. The cost was just too much so we
headed south for warmer weather. As we drove through small villages, we
begin to think a place like that. Finally, we came around a bend in a
mountain road and laid out before us was paradise, Provence. We stopped.
Shipped our boxes. (the short version)
It has been 7 years since I became a full time artist and
each of those years just seem to get better and better. Lot of work. Lot of
really good work. No serious exhibits but, I haven’t tried. My life with a
“muse” gets better by the minute. I live in France, don’t speak the language
and still spend each day to its fullest.
This web site would have been misleading and incomplete if it
did not contain references to the 21 years my day jobs (student, soldier,
architect, architectural professor) were using all of my creative energy.
The time period : 1964 to 1985 Both architectural firms that I had
were small and seemed to attract clients that had very little money to spend
and had heard we did good work with low budget projects. We did do good work
and won a few awards. Strong emphasis on order, layering, and pure geometric
form. Work with the environment. Architectural firms? Yes! Architect? No, I
really was a teacher of design and architecture who did not like the real
practice of architecture. I was better at paper architecture than real
architecture and it was more challenging to design buildings and cities that
were not possible in the present. My strength was conceptual ideation.
I was part of the best architectural school, Oklahoma State
University, in the United States. I really believe that and the sheer number
of competitions my students won bears it out. I have always been competitive
and they were a good way to measure our school against the rest of the
world. We won by being more creative and working harder than anyone else.
Teaching was as natural as breathing for me. I expected only one thing from
my students, their absolute best and they gave it to me. In a way, the
students were like extensions of me. With them, I would explore multiple
solutions to the same creative situation and carry each idea to its limit.
The hard part was convincing them it was their idea.
I am a very lucky person. I have
spent my entire life creating art. Buildings are just large pieces of
sculpture. Day job or night job? They both fed my soul. Putting this
together has forced me to take a look at my life and I have come to realize
that the 21 years of inactivity as a painter may be making me a better
painter now.
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What are found compositions?
My most influential art teacher, Dale
McKinney showed me the benefit of looking at the world around you with a
creative mind not just your eyes. One good way: Make yourself small.
Focus on smaller and smaller juxtapositions of different elements. Look for
the quality abstract compositions just laying around being called trash or
at best ordinary. Maybe, just a small piece of something already small.
Recognizing quality when you see it is part of the talent an artist must
have in order to judge their own work. Many an abstract expression
painting had its beginning in found compositions. Just the color was changed
to protect the innocent.
These are just a few of the many examples of what I mean
when I use the term "found composition". They are there,
just look.
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● What do you mean by "layered
abstractions of reality with a clock"? Click on
Concept.
Layered abstractions of reality with a
clock
(evolution of a kinetic concept)
to read my long winded explanation. I welcome comments on my comments.
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