Robert Saffer is an abstract contemporary symbolist artist. He works with all visual mediums. His stark, textured aesthetic has a fierce expressive power with a sense of movement and menace. As a symbolist, he aims to express moods and emotions rather than the world around him. He does not dismiss realism. Rather, he selects symbols by intuition, heritage and study developing paintings in rich hallucinatory colour in line with radical practices of the 21st century. His compositions represent a more lyrical style, aiming to awaken the spiritual experience in abstract phenomena.
Currently, he has engaged in performance and installation art, which he sees as a part of today’s mainstream art world. He believes it symbolizes an essential truth: our emotional condition.
What are your favourite techniques when creating new work?
My work begins with rendering and translating inner scenes (thoughts, feelings and intuition). In this collection, I have experimented with the building blocks of emotional landscapes utilizing various colour schemes and textures…aiming to evoke a sense of sublime in the hopes of creating an intense authentic charge. Of great intrigue and importance are both the subtle and dramatic depictions of light and colour, form and texture, always mindful of the light and dark forces in our genetic makeup. Materials handily woven always play a role in creating this narrative.
What brought you to painting as a medium rather than another form of artistic expression?
Schooled in fine arts and having spent many years as a ‘creative’ in advertising, painting was a natural evolution of my skills, somewhat of a stand-in for depicting reality and reframing my experiences.
Art induces and unleashes feelings. It’s a way to document and process. Art doesn’t necessarily have to be logical or structured, but deciding what a piece is going to say is. Who it is going to speak too, will depend on who is open to each pictorial journey. This somewhat ambiguous format is the very essence of what brought me to painting abstract structures.
What makes your work unique?
An aura of investigative measures are being portrayed in my work. I try to challenge my own conceptions of the human condition. An endless range of effects runs through wild colourful terrains on the canvas. Automatic strokes balance and anatomic designs create a highly emotional aesthetic experience. Paint formations build up into a panacea of creatures and doorways of energy (spirit).