Deborah Roberts

(Flow) positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is the characterized by complete absorption in what one does. [Wikipedia] One of the most difficult things is finding the zone ... your creative art zone! It's a place where almost everything you do in your practice is working and the ideas are flowing. You are unstoppable, each medium you try is working and the adrenaline for creating mass amounts art is at its highest peak. You can't sleep for the fear that it may leave and we as artists can bare witness to the notion that it eventually leaves you. It usually has nothing to do with drugs,liquor or any other substances, though I've heard from others that it can ignite the flow. As for me, when it happens I love it! I don't anything special, because I wor...

I think every artists feels this way, at some point in their career,  what's the value of my work and how do I price it?  If these questions aren't not bad enough this one is even harder, pricing someone else's artwork. So, please stop asking me because I don't know what to tell you about pricing... well I do, but who wants to be the one that burst another person's bubble. Some artists invite curators over and asked them, others just wing it. This leads to overpricing or under pricing the work. I have witness artists selling things one week for one price and the next for another. This is a bad practice! Personally, I tried to be fair with my prices, I've always wanted to get my work out to as many people as possible hence my low prices. It helped me be able to maintain a great client list for a long time and when it was time to raise the prices (actually my dealer did) I was okay with it.  I put in the time both with my status as a practicing artist and my ...

In progress (Studio)

If you don't know how to talk "artspeak" then you are not alone. It's like learning a foreign language, first you learn a few simple phases, then complete sentences and your off adding your voice to the chatter!  I'm not fluent, i know just enough to get my point across. One must ask, Is it important for artist to know how to speak "artspeak"? I have always championed the notion that artists need to be able to write and talk about their work, because it's apart of the learning process to becoming a good artist. Do we have to walk around trying to sound pompous or over-educated? At what point does the "actual" art matters? Just in case you want to sound smarter there's help in Robert Atkins' book, "ArtSpeak" and ARTNEWS recently posted this great article on 146 buzz words to help you speak, artspeak properly. http://www.artnews.com/2013/10/31/how-to-speak-artspeak-properly/ /

So many times i've been told, " why did you make it so big?" Most of the time i say to myself ... " that's none of your concern," but i typically give a generic answer. I am a artist who paints both large scale painting and small works, because I find that sometimes a small whisper carries just as much punch as a loud scream. My work deals with controversial issues like race and beauty so i have to be careful in my practice not to come across as angry or resentful. Large scale painting tend to me to be historic and powerful and makes us all mortal in front of them. I love that! Last night I had the chance to meet artist Jack Whitten at a lecture here in Austin. It was amazing to here him speak on potency of doing large scale works long side smaller ones. He champion this notion that if the message was clear and succinct size didn't matter. I agree with that statement! Look, if i were paint a 2in by 2in painting of a lynching which is very disturbing but...

Is political art turning you off? I guess to most artists who haven't really been under the shoe of oppression might think that making political is boring, limiting and overused. I was asked in my thesis defense, "Haven't the art world had enough of Black beauty?" I am paraphrasing but you get the meaning of the question. What does one say to a question like that? When we look at beauty magazine covers on news stands few if any have a Black face on the cover.   In the current issue of InStyle magazine featuring Kerry Washington  the editors thought "lightening her skin" was acceptable. Her beauty wasn't in question, her skin tone was. I think art and politics go hand and hand, it's the "politics of respectability." Below is segment of my views on gaining respectability through the use of grotesque imagery. The Grotesque in Art History Theorists and historians have explored the social and cultural contexts ...