About the Artist Robert Tharsing is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky where he began teaching in 1971. He was born in Santa Monica, California, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with BA and MA degrees. He married Ann Tower in 1973 and they have a daughter, Lina. Mr. Tharsing also has a daughter, Annika and a son Behr, who are both grown and married, with children of their own. Tharsing is known for the breadth of his artwork, making both abstract and representational paintings and sculpture. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Phelan Prize at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Al Smith Fellowship, presented by the Kentucky Arts Council. In 1998, Tharsing was the subject of a profile produced by Kentucky Educational Television entitled Master of Art: Robert Tharsing, and in 1999-2000, he conceived, hosted and co-directed a series for KET entitled "Looking at Painting." Tharsing's work has been shown regionally, nationally, and internationally and is included in many private and public collections, such as the University of Kentucky Art Museum, the Kentucky Clinic and the College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; the J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; the Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV; Dollar General Corporate Offices, Goodlettsville, TN; Alabama Power Company, Birmingham, AL; and the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Owensboro, KY
Artist's Statement I am fascinated by the wealth of possibilities of what painting can be, as well as by what it has been. Artists of the past have established the boundaries, much as early explorers mapped the continents, but we are still finding new ways to make paintings and likewise, we continue to learn about the Earth and our place in it. I see painting as the search for meaning -- the meaning of the painting and the meaning of life. I am interested in a variety of ideas regarding the nature of painting, and I have developed several ways of working to address these ideas by using realism, abstraction, and often a mixture of both. Color and the processes I use to arrive at an image are the common threads that run through my work. Robert Tharsing, 2005 |
