Laura Vahlberg: Hi Rob! Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

I came across your work during a workshop with Ken Kewley at the Mount Gretna School of Art. The other students and I were on a lunch break at MGSOA and we went upstairs in the attic to look at the work that was there in preparation for Mount Gretna's yearly auction. There were so many treasures there- works by Abigail and Holly Dudley, Ying-Li, and Amanda Case Millis stand out in my mind. Your large landscape paintings also really stood out- I had never seen your work before and it's really beautiful. Can you talk a little bit about those paintings in particular? (See below)

*Corner Home* 20”x30” Acrylic and Oil on Board

Rob Werbicki: Sounds like a good time, the workshops with Ken hold a special place for many people, me included. I got to take one in 2015 as a student when he came to MGSOA and it was super helpful, especially to be able to go right back to painting the next day...

Yeah those are some good painters you mentioned. You should do an interview with them! As far as the landscapes go they were from the Four Pillars residency at MGSOA. It is an amazingly motivating place for me to have been able to paint, alongside friends, teachers, visiting artists and students who are all pushing hard. It's interesting to me how people can be in the same landscape and have different parts of that experience filtered through a pictorial expression.

I began the residency painting in and around the homes in the Mt. Gretna community and that started to open up questions and possibilities. I had always been excited by looking and driving through the fields and found a place where I was able to access that kind of subject directly. There is something about the big space, clear light and broad shapes that is appealing to me, maybe related to the kind of kinesthetic gestures that I am wanting to make.

Another element of the landscape I wanted to incorporate in those paintings is change. In this case I had been painting in a parking lot where the cars were always coming in and out- it could be a nightmare if you were set on completing anything. I loved that if a car was there one day the space would be blocked, and if I painted it out then that space would open up, although it could be just as flat. So I was able to work with that same idea with cows in a field, with the clouds blowing over.

And of course painting multiple sessions every day for a sustained period has its own way of allowing things to come into the work that were unplanned. After the residency I was seeing a very tangible relationship between light and color in my paintings that was taking me longer to access before. There is something very particular to that Pennsylvania air that is compelling to try to get into paint.

LV: I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about this part of your email:

In this case I had been painting in a parking lot where the cars were always coming in and out, it could be a nightmare if you were set on completing anything. I loved that if a car was there one day the space would be blocked, and if I painted it out then that space would open up, although it could be just as flat. So I was able to work with that same idea with cows in a field, with the clouds blowing over.

What do you mean by the space could open up if you paint out a parked car?

A couple more questions:

If a painting day was both sunny and cloudy, did you include both light situations in the painting or did you choose one?

Did you show up to work on a painting at a specific time of day?

I watched the recording of the talk you gave with MGSOA. You said that you started out making your paintings in one session and then at some point you started making long term paintings over the course of many days. Can you talk about your journey from one-shot paintings to longer term paintings? Do you still make one-shots?

RW: Well, I guess in part I was thinking about the particular shape a car would take up in a painting. Or the patch of asphalt that sits in that spot if the car is gone. Like a door. Whether the door is open or closed, you will end up with a door like shape you have to put in your painting. But the meaning of that size shape is going to be very different spatial readings for your painting.. this can force me to be thinking about the intention behind some of my decisions about what to include, what is best for the painting? which type of relationships feel like they are working? So on a painting level making this kind of change can shake up composition again.. If you look at other artists that include figures in their landscapes, there can be a certain feeling of correctness to the placement of the figure, and a volume that exists between the figures. How did they decide where to put them and what distance of space to put between?

In a way I do a similar thing with the light. I block in shapes and then work lighter or darker shapes on top or around them. I change them as I develop the painting and the light changes. I change them back. Trying to develop a set of relationships. So if a day is both cloudy and light there is a good chance both of those things will be happening in my painting. I don't believe I have the technical facility or know how to pull off good studies of lighting situations one after another. But what I do find is that a particular time of day lights the subject in a way that is compelling for me to paint. So I work during that period. There is usually so much work to do in terms of setting up the painting that the light can wait to get developed. The magic can happen when its ready. Sometimes the changes benefit my painting and I come up with something better than what was happening when I began. This is why I like painting from life more than photos. I usually see something that gives me an idea for the painting I want to make, but during the process am able to search, change, find things so the idea of what the painting is evolves. There usually comes a time when the trajectory of the painting seems set and I do have to follow that, so if the weather is off, I will draw or work on something else. Over the course of a 3 hour session the light changes alot, so I might work on one section of the painting for a set amount of time and then another section and try to build them up consistently. That process kind of guides my daily activities. I tend to show up on time once I have something going.

Working this way allows me to follow through and tackle the complexity in what I am wanting to paint. I started to find this out during my time at Boston University. I would want to paint what was out the window, but my habit was to do a quick painting, and they were always unsatisfying. It's a complicated mishmash of buildings, windows, poles, wires, streets and trees. I was encouraged to work on projects for longer, and so I started drawing what I was looking at, working on a single drawing for weeks or a month. Then I could start a painting and know how things needed to fit. I still do this, not really making thumbnails but just drawing as if I were working on the painting. One of the ways this carries over into the painting is that if I am short on time I will start with acrylic,whether its black and white or a limited palette, and then continue with oils. Acrylic feels closer to drawing to me. I guess I am still searching for a balance in what I make, so that I can do longer paintings working with complex subjects and shorter paintings that have immediacy and elements of the unexpected or experimental. Some of the works you saw were one shots- although long sessions like 4 or 5 hrs, and some were week long paintings. They both allow me to do things that wouldn't otherwise happen.

LV: When you start a painting do you know if it will be a one-shot or a long term painting?

RW: Yeah I basically know what amount of time is going to be involved. Although it is true that everything takes longer than I expected it to. What varies is my intention in setting out.

LV: That makes sense. How do you know when a painting is finished? Do you have certain goals in mind for a completed painting?

RW: I would say it's less true that I know if or when a painting is finished, and more true that I have certain goals in mind for a painting. It is probably fair to say that my paintings lack a certain kind of finish. I actually dislike that part of the process, things get too dense, tight, cluttered, and I am not sure how to resolve them. It's something I am working on, but I much prefer starting. So what usually happens is I aim for a balance, where I want to leave the painting in the best state I can, at this point in time. This means that I have taken areas past the point I thought they would go, that I have probably seen some parts of the painting fall apart and have to rebuild them, and other parts of the painting got dense, and I had to group those decisions and open up the painting again. The silver lining for me is being able to understand the value range of the different areas of the painting in relation to one another and finding an extra few steps to make everything within those ranges snap into place. I want both my experience of making and the painting to feel full.

Hopefully over the long term that kind of pushing and finding my limits will allow me to get further in my starts, so that they embody more of the qualities that I look for during the longer paintings. There is a certain kind of growth that is possible within the time frame of a single painting and a different kind of growth that is possible over the duration of a series of paintings, or a residency, or a year. I am aiming for both.

Because I paint outside, my studio area is more like my corner to be able to assess and plan for each painting. I can have goals for things I want to incorporate long term and session to session. I am able to see a painting in the context of other works and the preparatory drawings. I might make some changes after painting, cut and paint paper to try out, mix different palettes, or put down a color note that I want to start with. I might think the painting is going awful when I am out there, but then see it more clearly inside. I'll see that one area of the painting is really not working and focus my energy there. Of course sometimes things don't go to plan, and when I take the painting back out, I can just look and start painting and find out that was exactly what needed to happen.

LV: You mentioned cutting and painting paper- do you mean collage? Is collage part of your practice?

RW: No, not really. I prefer the immediacy of paint and get too distracted working with collage for it to form a large part of my process. But as an editing tool it can help me see what a change in color or shape might mean for the painting I am working on. Because the paintings are made using fairly solid blocks of color, the language is similar and doesn't seem to disrupt the surface too much.

LV: So do you add painted paper pieces to the painting itself and then keep painting with oil paint on top? Do you make a small collage picture parallel to the painting in progress to test out ideas?

RW: I would paint a couple different pieces of paper specific to the shape that I want to investigate for the painting, try them out, take them off, and then paint the changes I wanted to make.

I currently don't make any side projects that are running alongside the main painting I am working on, to try things out, that may be a time factor but is territory I would like to get into.

Right now the most I have time for is to do a drawing, a small version with a more limited palette and then a larger version with richer color.

LV: Fascinating.

What art are you looking at these days?

Also, where can readers see your work online or in person?

RW: Well, there are a lot of artists that are always on my mind, like Corot, Constable, Poussin..I can get lost in their paintings. I enjoy drawing from paintings also, it can help me work through ideas and appreciate the work even more. So I would look at old master paintings, impressionist, cubist and the painters who came after them who were trying to pick up the pieces and make something.. Their work feels accessible in a way. The Mount Gretna school went on a trip to museums during the residency and I was really drawn to a Diego Riviera piece- Cubist landscape and a Braque, Landscape at La Ciotat , they both spoke to something I wanted to do. So painting is a big source of nourishment for me...as I had been thinking of your question about the moving cars and space, I looked at Sassetta, Corot, and Morandi.

Alongside looking at other artists, the other source of ideas comes from conversations I've had with teachers, peers, friends and students. I always want to feel like there is part of a bigger dialogue taking place and that can happen in the painting. So these conversations and experiences are something that I want to continue to turn over and over again.

There is not much of my work to see online, I am part of a painters collective that has been really generous to include me, called Perceptual Painters. There is a website that should be up and running by the new year (2023) and you could see works by all the members of the group at perceptualpainters.com

LV: There are so many wonderful painters in that group. I look forward to checking out the website!

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, Rob. You've given me a lot to think about and I'm excited to share this.