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Interview

Rob Evans p4

Susquehanna River artist Rob Evans talks about a favorite monograph, and discusses his working methods…

READERSVOICE.COM: What are some of your favorite non fiction books over the years?

ROB EVANS: I must confess that most of my non-fiction purchases are art related books. One of the most stunning books I recently purchased was a large, lavishly illustrated monograph on the work of contemporary painter Walton Ford, whose enormous and powerful watercolors of flora and fauna are like Audubon on steroids with a dark symbolic environmental edge. [see Pancha Tantra]

RV: What sorts of pictures do you have in your sketchbooks and do you do a lot of wandering along the Susquehanna River sketching?

RE: Earlier in my career I used sketchbooks heavily to jot down notes and concepts. More recently, digital tools have replaced this process somewhat. The camera on my ipad is amazing and I can store vast amounts of potential material and ideas on the device and in files on my computer. These can be manipulated, edited, collaged and played with infinitely in photoshop, often in combination with scans of my drawings or sketches. So the process now is a mixed bag of sketching/drawing from life and working from digital images, as well as from the imagination. I wander the Susquehanna Valley frequently, using these processes to build up a visual library of imagery – clouds, trees, river currents, natural artifacts, weather and atmospheric effects, etc., all of which become sources of information and inspiration for my studio works.

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