Are you interested in purchasing a painting from sports
artist John Robertson? Do you need a
colorful and creative solution to a difficulty? Would you like to brainstorm?
Any questions or thoughts? I may be of some assistance. You may take some time
with your thoughts and email me using the email address: JohnRobertsonSportsArt@gmail.com
John Robertson's most recent commercial project is paintings
for the new MLB Atlanta Braves stadium opening in April 2017 and the remodel of the NFL Green Bay Packers stadium opening in July 2017. He has created work for the Minnesota Vikings Football Stadium ( U.S. Bank Stadium ) in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
opening summer of 2016. He also created
five large-scale paintings for the new San
Francisco 49ers, Levi Stadium. Sports Artist John
Robertson has created art for Fox Sports, Fox Sports Net, Prudential Sports
Arena (at the time home of the New Jersey Nets and the New Jersey Devils), the
Amway Sports Arena, Orlando
Florida home of the Orlando Magic
and various other commercial projects. He has also created a number of images
for private clients.
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The photograph is of Al Martinez and the painting John
Robertson
created and was used at the Huntington Library exhibit examining
the
six-decade-long career of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Martinez.
It was showcased in an exhibition that looked back at
how the writer has
chronicled the foibles, peccadilloes,
accomplishments, and, sometimes, sad
plights of those around him. “
Al Martinez: Bard of L.A.,” on view in the Library, West Hall, a
t
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The painting was also use as the cover for the
Al Martinez book
"Reflections: Columns from The Los Angeles Times."
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About Sports Artist John Robertson
There is an intriguing article
about the sports artist John Robertson from the Los Angeles Times written by
the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Al Martinez. It was published in the Los Angeles Times,
front page, Southern California Living Section E, Thursday, July 19, 2001. Although the column was written s number of
years ago it certainly captures the essence of John.
Al Martinez’s column
I have a dream tucked away in the
shadows of my mind but I don't know exactly what it is yet. I'm hoping that one
of these days the shadows will lift and the dream will emerge, like an Emerald City glowing in the distance. Meanwhile, it exists out there in the
darkness, a land I've never visited in a world that doesn't exist.
I've been thinking about this for
two reasons. One has to do with ( sports artist ) John Robertson, whom I'll get
to in a minute, and the other with a play at the Ahmanson called
"TheFlight of the Lawnchair Man". It
was in a trilogy of one-act plays about fate and goals and where life takes us.
Sometimes whether we want to go there or not.
In 'Flight," a childlike man
named Jerry had always wanted to learn to fly, but his ambition had been
thwarted for one reason or another. In
middle age, knowing it is then or never, he attaches 400 helium-filled balloons
to a lawn chair and drifts off into a fantasy-filled sky, feeling the sun,
tasting the distance. When last seen, he was floating away in his dream.
It was a lovely little play that I
thought about a lot, because I'm a dreamer too. Most of us are, I think, but we
never get around to living our dreams, except for one or two of us who tie
balloons to lawn chairs and take to the sky. Which brings me back to John
Robertson.
Robertson is 57 and lives in a
hilltop house trailer overlooking the ocean.
He's a slight man with a graying beard and the kind of enthusiastic
attitude that glows in the dark; a guy doing exactly what he should be
doing. Robertson paints. Not with fancy
oils and acrylics on textured canvas but with house paint on those rolls of
canvas you put on the floor when you're redoing the ceiling. It was a question
of economics at first. Drop cloths and cans of paint are a lot cheaper than the
stuff you buy in art stores. Later it became a choice.
He began painting about a dozen
years ago in all kinds of styles and sizes, but what he's become known for are
the faces of musicians and writers he puts on 4 1/2-by 6-foot canvases in a
techniques vaguely reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's. Faces glow through streaks
and lines of color. Mine is one of them.
Robertson heard I was going to
read and sign my novel "The Last City Room" at Village Books in the Palisades and asked if he could paint my face to hang in
the window. He took a photograph first and painted from that. The somber, meditative
visage of a journalist stares out. Me in a darker mood.
I met with Robertson later at his
trailer house on a day as dramatic as any painting could ever be. The expanse
of ocean below us was laced with a mist that shone like a bridal veil in the
emerging sunlight. The blue above it was as pure as heaven. Embraced by the ethereal view, Robertson
revealed his dream.
He was working as an executive for
a large chain furniture store when he became ill. He took six months off then
worked part-time for a year and a half. No one has ever figured out what was
wrong with him. ...(until later when he was diagnosed with Aerial
Fibrillation)... It caused emotional
problems, he says, so he went to a psychiatrist who asked him what he'd liked
to do as a child. Robertson said he'd always like coloring books. So the shrink
said, "Then go color."
A lot of things happened after
that. He was fired from his job, his marriage fell apart and he went to see a
Van Gogh painting at the Getty. It's called
"The Irises,“ and it took his
breath away. "I used to wonder why anyone would spend $50 million for a painting,"
he said. "Then I saw, 'Irises' and broke into tears. I stood there for two hours just staring at
it. I've been trying to create the same emotional feeling ever since."
Offered another job, he agonized
over whether to return to the straight world, the gray world, then took the
advice of his minister who said, "Follow your heart.“ Robertson turned
down the job offer and began living his dream.
He painted
forests and fields of flowers at
first, pursuing the surge of emotion Van Gogh had engendered, like the
lawn-chair man searching for something beyond his range of vision. But it was
mostly the faces on large canvases that Robertson liked doing, seeking the
elusive nature of those whose features he describes in streams of color.
"Life is good," he said
the other day. He meant it. Here was a guy who had walked away from a workaday
world without looking back. Who discovered a talent he never knew he had,
entwined with the dream he never knew he was dreaming. Here was a happy man. He sells enough paintings to pay the rent and
buy food. It takes him about three days to do a large portrait, and he'll sell
you one for what you earn in your own three days of work. Musicians and writers
get them for a little less than, say Bill Gates might pay.
"It's a bohemian life,"
Robertson says, "I only have time to paint. It's nothing great. I'm just
putting paint on canvas. That's what it's all about. That's what I want."
I stopped along the ocean on the
way home to think about that, where sky and sea merge in a wash of gradient
blues. I stared toward the horizon for a long time, wondering about my own
dream. And as I drove away, I couldn't help but envy the lawn-chair man,
colored balloons radiant in the sunlight, soaring off toward the far distance.
