Visiting Artist Whitney Robbins: Brown is Beautiful

This latest show takes a deep dive into brown. In the words of the accompanying artists’ statement, “Once I started exploring with brown, there was playfulness, beauty, surprise, and that wonderful state of creating something new and exciting. Brown introduced me to the unknown again.”

 

On Monday, as Robbins installed the numerous and diverse works that make up the exhibition, they took a moment to talk about their work, their process, and their approach—and why brown came to hold such meaning and depth for them. In 2019, they explained, they “got bored” with their usual palette, which leaned toward white at the time, and wondered if they might harbor a bias against brown. They felt drawn to brown not just as a hue but as a reflection of what it might symbolize. “The whole project was born of notions about questioning white supremacy,” they said. The results—yes, mostly brown, but with flashes of yellow, green, red, and other tones—are both mysterious and accessible, suggesting doors, rooms, vistas, and spaces that are both interior and exterior. “The throughline is the play of space,” said Robbins. Gesturing toward one painting, they pointed out the windows and doors it contains, adding that the viewer is at once “inside looking out and outside looking in.”

In the Rivers installation, rusty, seemingly ancient objects share wall space with paintings and collages. One, said Robbins, was a sheep-shearing tool; another, perhaps a tongs to hold blocks of ice. This, they said, was a nod to the iron objects that share wall space with Impressionist paintings at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation. “I’m an art-history nerd,” said Robbins, so the connection appealed to them.

They noted that while they’re not the type of meticulous artist who fusses over every detail of an installation, they nonetheless had carefully mapped out the placement of the works, using the walls of their Greenfield, MA, studio to create a mockup that they then sketched on paper and used as a guideline. 

Robbins, who left Rivers in 2013, taught at the school for 19 years, and as they worked to install the show, several former colleagues stopped by to say hello and catch up. Robbins will return to campus on November 12 to attend a community reception for the show and to visit art classrooms. A closing reception will be held on November 22. 

While the current series emphasizes brown, Robbins has not forsworn other colors in their work, which extends to portraits, photography, assemblage, and paintings of birds. Another project had them designing a postcard each day for more than a year, sending the cards to family and friends. 

The variety and range of their work is of a piece with their overall artistic approach. “My tagline,” they said as they adjusted a painting on the Revers wall, “is ‘I chase ideas.’”