On the Move Acrylic on canvas • 48" x 60"

Circular Relations Oil on panel • 19" x 15"

Entropy sold Oil on panel • 19" x 15"

Over the Top Acrylic on canvas • 60" x 54"

Sedimentary Oil on panel • 15" x 19"

Let's Talk Oil on panel • 23" x 19"

Creatures of the Deep Carved & painted wood • 27" x 36" x 22"

Stream of Consciousness Oil on panel • 23" x 19"

Hi There Oil on panel • 19" x 23"

A Two Columnar Look Acrylic on canvas • 66" x 54"

Double Take Acrylic on canvas • 54" x 40"

Current Acrylic on canvas • 48" x 60"

Circling sold Acrylic on canvas • 54" x 48"

Tongue and Groove Oil on panel • 15" x 19"

Three Sets Oil on panel • 19" x 15"

A Blue Note sold Oil on panel • 15" x 19"

Life at the Bottom Carved & painted wood • 29" x 37" x 30"

Windows Acrylic on canvas • 60" x 48"

Jamaican Holiday Carved & painted wood • 30" x 34" x 4"

Move it on Over Acrylic on canvas • 54" x 60"

Sunset Acrylic on canvas • 36" x 36"

Here's Looking at You Oil on panel • 19" x 23"

Stop and Go Acrylic on canvas • 48" x 60"

Bird Brains and Blockheads Angling for the Big Fish Carved and painted wood • 19" x 68" x 22"

Pandora's Box sold Carved and painted wood • 42" x 33" x 28"

Returning Acrylic on canvas • 60" x 48"

WORKS SOLD

About the Artist

Robert Tharsing is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky. 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. Since an early retirement from UK five years ago, the artist has devoted most of his time to working in his studios in Lexington and Nova Scotia.

Known for the breadth of his artwork, Tharsing makes 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 and Bellarmine College, 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.

About the Exhibition

Ever shifting between realism and abstraction, the current body of work, 11 large-scaled paintings, focuses primarily on the abstract. Since the late 1960s, geometry has intrigued Tharsing as way of constructing a painting. Early works employed a grid system of equally sized taped lines that divided the surface. Eventually, rectangles within the painting were taped and painted and re-painted to create patches of thick texture and rich color, layered upon thin areas. The new work introduces another simple element into the geometry - the circle. Like the earlier rectangles, the circles are taped and painted and re-painted until “they work…” While the paintings are the result of Tharsing’s personal, intellectual and formal investigations, they are easily accessible to viewers because of their lavish color, shapes, and surfaces. Like his representational paintings, these pulse with life and are infused with a sense of movement and drama that is slowly revealed.

The exhibition also includes several new pieces of brightly painted sculpture constructed from driftwood Tharsing collected along the shores of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. The animated shapes of roots, limbs and other wood debris suggest certain creatures that he accentuates. A third component to the exhibition is a series of small paintings of Nova Scotia rocks, which Tharsing painted last summer. For more than a decade, the artist has painted from life the rocks he collects. He paints them life-sized and as accurately as possible, sitting on simple white boards in bright light with deep shadows. These beautiful intimate paintings have a Zen-like, meditative, and often comical quality.