Robert Barnes
I have known Robert Kingsley since 1974 when he was a student of mine in the graduate program at Indiana University. He was one of the most talented and impressive young artists I have encountered in 35 years of teaching.
Now after almost 30 years since our first acquiantance I still maintain contact with him and have followed his carreer as an educator and an artist.
A promising entrance into our field seldom guarantees success, and yet Kingsley has maintained a continuous and steady course towards excellence. Despite the demands of a career as a teacher of the craft, he has maintained a constant exhibition schedule through which he has demonstated his consumate skill as a painter. As a professor of painting he has proven that an artist practicing his craft on the highest level is truely the best teacher...acting as an example for his students.
He has built a strong program at Depaw University, one for which he can rightly take a lion's share of the credit.
The painter-educator has become more the norm in our profession, but few demonstate such excellence and dedication as Kingsley.
–RMB
Gabe Bakker
There is no one more disparaging about the work of Robert Kingsley than Bob himself. The first thing he will tell you is how badly the painting is going. Then he will tell you how bored he is with the idea. He will go on to tell you that he is not sure why he ever even started it, and when it is done it will be terrible.
But you can be sure that he will do all in his power to get to his studio and work, and paint as much as he is able, producing a multitude of different types and sizes of paintings, ranging from still lives to landscapes, to portraits, to multiple figured allegorical paintings.
Despite being a full time professor for many years, he is productive, enthusiastc and has a natural ability that is really delightful and enviable.
A number of years ago I saw a large exhibition of his work in San Francisco, and what still sticks in my memory is the clear light quality, the tactility
of the paint and the underlying warmth of the paintings.
Bob uses a method similar to my own which is a combination of reality and invention. Although he uses many more models than I do, he manipulates the color and lighting to suit the idea.
One of the most appealing aspects of his work is how the well understood directional lighting creates a definition of space. Though many of the form and subject elements are invented, and poetically composed, the paintings attain a quiet believability.
He has an 'Italian' color sensibility, and a kind of 20th century realism that are markers of his style.There is also a lot of subliminal Piero
della Francesca lurking in his pictures.
When I think about Bob, I can almost hear his bellowing and
infectious laughter in my head. He loves humor even when he is despairng, and prides himself on remembering a multitude of what I call 'clean' jokes, which are generally incomprehensible to me.
Every so often I will counter with one that is off-colored just so I can have him say, "Gabe, You are really terrible". But then he laughs.
I don't know anyone else like Bob, and an important aspect to our friendship is to just be able to dicuss the painting process in depth while it is happening. He has an unflagging desire to make his paintings and they reflect his humantistic and truely life loving spirit.
–Gabrielle Bakker is a classical painter who lives in Seattle, Washington. She recieved her M.F.A. from Yale in 1984, and has shown her work in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She currently is represented by the Earl Mcgrath Gallery in New York and L.A.
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Catherine Fruhan
I have watched Bob as a teacher and as an artist for almost twenty years. In both of these areas he is one of the most passionate and dedicated people that I know. After a full day of teaching, administrative work, advising, he drives home to Bloomington and puts in a second full day at his studio. This fills me with awe and admiration.
Bob’s work is beautiful—full of limpid light (no one does effects of light better than Bob), buttery brush strokes, lush color—but it also offers visual challenges in the combinations of flatness and depth; density and openness; low and high viewpoints, opacity and luminescence.
As a historian, I often favor Bob’s paintings that create a dialogue with art history—the ones that engage in a productive re-imagining, in modern terms, of the work some of my other favorite artists: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Chardin, Manet, Velazquez, Piero della Francesca. He did a whimsical little self-portrait in which he shows himself peering at us over his glasses (a la Chardin) which seems a beautiful metaphor for the intimacy, acuity, and steadiness of his gaze as an artist.
Bob is also an inspiring teacher; his students learn quickly that studio art is a deeply serious field with its own language and intellectual challenges, and they learn, most of all, that it requires a lot of hard work. (Woe to the student who takes up painting as a way to “take a break” from the rigors of their “real” courses.)
As a teacher, Bob insists on focus, self-discipline and creative risk-taking; he simply won’t settle for anything less. He is one of those teacher/mentor/dads who can turn a young person’s life around and I have seen him do it many times.
His generosity with his time, his willingness to critique work, give advice, offer encouragement to students for whom his official responsibilities have long been over is legendary; in Bob’s world, there are no “former” students—just a lot of promising young people whom he’s happy to help.
–Catherine Fruhan is a Professor of Art History at DePauw University.
David Herrold
Bob Kingsley has been my friend and colleague for over twenty five years. During these years he and I and our friend, Catherine Fruhan have collaborated on all things effecting the department. Through all of this there has been more than one occasion when one of us got so pissed we threw the other out of our office. But when ever this happened we invariably made up the next day and went back to work as usual. Bob was almost always the one who found the way to heal the breach. Only a man of good character would know how to do this and only a true friend would go to the trouble.
–David Herrold is a Professor of Art & Sculpture at DePauw University
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Karen Connell
Kingsley is a generous spirit who has been a great mentor and inspiration to countless students and professional artists. His dedication and discipline to his art is enviable. I don't think he has missed an evening at his studio! His art strives for resonance in the field of art history and the contemporary art world, and does so with intelligence and great skill. He researches and conceptualizes each painting before beginning, but remains flexible in acknowledging "happy accidents." His work reflects this relationship between action and reaction.
He alone is the reason I continued to pursue my own art career. He was more sure of my ability than I was at 18, and I needed that reassurance and guidance. I will forever be grateful to him for steering me on my way. He has been a steady hand along my art path, and I am grateful for such guidance.
–Karen Connell is an artist and teacher living in New York City.
Wendy Wing
Due to my propensity to avoid any type of mental exertion in my late teens, I avoided Kingsley's art classes for the first year and a half of my college art career since rumor had it he was tough and made girls cry– some unsuspecting boys too.
Finally, I had no choice other than to enroll in Kingsley's classes. I remember those first classes fondly, like writing his commentary regarding my sketch's merits across one of my figure drawings, or making me scribble through nearly an entire pad of paper in one class to get past my issues with the pricy nature of drawing paper. Or telling me countless times: "Don't try, DO", or the copious looks of complete disappointment and disgust after viewing my work.
But what I remember most and take away from Kingsley is how he saw something in me nobody, not even I, ever saw in myself. He was the first person to see my potential and not only motivate me, but insist that I rise above my complacency and strive to be my best. Kingsley did more than teach people or pat students on their backs for merely showing up for class. This man expects no less of his students than what he demands of himself.
So when you view his work you see what determination and talent can achieve, and sit back, shaking your head in complete awe and dare I say more than a pinch of envy. He is a man who doesn't just try, he does.
–Wendy (Raber) Wing is a former student of Kingsley, though still haunted by his words when she paints:
Don't try, DO. Composition, composition, composition. That's a great rendering, too bad the composition sucks. You're a smartass, aren't you?
She is a writer and painter living with her family in Colorado, and still remains a smartass.
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