“A long time is spent looking at a little wall of paint. This color next to that color. Slight vibrancies of hue. Smooth paint, raggedy paint. Edges hard and soft. There but not there. Always adjusting, adjusting, painting out, painting in. Always searching, working, for an ordering of these forms that feels right. And always the question: What does feeling right feel like? What does feeling right mean? When do you think you know?

Throughout his 40 year-long career, Robert Jessup has approached his paintings with an improvisational manipulation of form that would lead the way toward the discovery (or uncovering) of meaningful configurations. In earlier works, those configurations were representational. However, in the last few years, the search for meaningful form has gradually been taking precedent over representational imagery. The desire for the painting to find its own unique presence on the canvas and to settle into a sustained resonating chord of visual sound has become paramount for Jessup who notes, “Painting has been distilled to what for me are its fundamental questions. How is the paint spread across the surface? How is the painting’s first shape, the rectangle itself, divided and occupied by areas of different color? How do those areas interact with each other? What kind of edges are formed? Color, edge, shape, and surface. The reconciliation of the fundamental forces of the horizontal and the vertical. From a beginning in visual chaos, the struggle to determine essential things and to find a powerful harmony between them.”

New movements in Robert Jessup’s painting methodology have been driven largely by the change in medium. Until 2024, Jessup’s paintings were created solely with oil paint. The newest paintings have all been rendered in acrylic, which not only changes the tonality but the strategy in addressing the composition. The thinned viscosity and faster drying time met Jessup’s impatience for laying down colored layers and improvisatory intuition. Dense areas of color and line create weather patterns that churn across the canvas flowing in what Jessup describes as an “evolving dance of discovery.”

From 1991 to 2018, Robert Jessup was a professor of Painting at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas while continuing to exhibit widely throughout the United States. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Jessup served as the Chair of the Department of Studio at the College of Visual Arts and Design, University of North Texas. He earned a B.F.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Public collections include: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville and the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico. He retired from teaching in May 2018, and after a three-year period in Whidbey Island, Washington, is now based in Denton, Texas.

GALLERY TALK, FEBRUARY 8, 2025 - PART 1 HERE PART 2 HERE

Conduit Gallery Exhibitions

• Paintings from Robinwood Lane
• Ribbons and Curtains
• New Paintings from the Whidbey Series
• Square: New Paintings from 2018
• Paintings 2016-2017
• New Paintings 2013 - 2014
• Longitude/Latitude Part II
• pictures & stories
• Recent Works
• Creatures
• Small Works Group Exhibition