With a watch on reframing his talent once more, Michael Robinson is within the midst of his first gallery exhibit in La Jolla, with an appearance planned for next month.
4 of Robinson’s contemporary paintings are on display at Legends Gallery through January.
Robinson, a former reporter and musician who lives in Northern California, will likely be on the gallery at 1205 Prospect St. at 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, as a part of La Jolla’s First Friday Art Walk.
Certainly one of his pieces, “Dance Cadaverous,” is “Picasso meets punk rock,” Robinson said — a combination of Pablo Picasso’s early self-portrait and Andy Warhol’s aesthetic with a quote from a 1972 proto-punk song by Jonathan Richman that references Picasso.
“I Prevail” is known as after Robinson’s favorite hard rock band. “Inglorious” is “Basquiat meets Tarantino,” he said — a riff on Tarantino’s movie “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
“I Prevail” is known as after artist Michael Robinson’s favorite hard rock band.
(Provided by Michael Robinson)
The fourth piece, “Ansonia Takes an Aria,” quotes a lyric from hard rock band Three Days Grace.
The show is at Legends because Robinson and his wife, each art collectors, have known Legends owner Roree Mayhew for about nine years.
“We love La Jolla,” Robinson said. “We attempt to get down there every year” to go to and shop for art.
Robinson’s art “speaks to me,” Mayhew said. “It’s something I haven’t seen in awhile. It’s slightly bit outsider art [with] classic influences.”
Mayhew said he gravitates toward Robinson’s paintings with writing on them, as they “hit little cultural spots here and there that I feel have slightly meaning.”
He said Robinson’s art suits well at Legends, which specializes “in whimsical art. We’re a fun gallery that’s accessible to simply about anybody.”
That is Robinson’s second exhibit, following a solo show in Lafayette in Contra Costa County in May.
Showing at Legends is “an actual dream come true,” Robinson said. “This was the one place I actually desired to be represented.”
Robinson took up a spot on the easel six years ago at a painting party, realizing quickly that he was drawn to creating visual art.
“I had this jolt of electricity,” he said.
It prompted him to pursue painting for the following 4 years under the pseudonym Ray Montenegro.
“I used to be in stealth mode,” Robinson said. “I desired to get honest feedback from fellow artists, collectors [and] gallery owners … without it being awkward for them or me.”
He shed the Montenegro persona two years ago and relaunched himself as … himself.
“It just felt like the appropriate time,” Robinson said. “I got to a latest level; I had enough consistent good feedback.”
Before that, Robinson had an extended profession as a journalist, working for outlets including the Kansas City Star and Oakland Tribune and having his work printed in a dozen other California papers in addition to in The Recent York Times and Wall Street Journal.
He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1984 Democratic National Convention within the San Francisco Examiner.
While writing, Robinson began making rock and blues music, spending several years performing and releasing 4 CDs.
Each shift, from author to rocker to painter, has meant Robinson has felt closer to his father, journalist Clarence Robinson, who died a couple of yr ago.
“My dad was probably my biggest influence in my life,” he said.
“He was a Renaissance man … he could do all the things,” Robinson said. He recalled that his father learned to play guitar and speak Russian and took on journalism assignments across the clock.
“From the time I used to be a child, it just seemed natural for me to do a variety of various things,” Robinson said. “Fortunately, I work really hard at each and get pretty good at it.”
Painting affords Robinson an area to explore “the large questions of life,” he said.
“I paint because there’s things I need to say concerning the world that I can’t say in a song or … in a poem or in a brief story or … in a nonfiction piece. That’s why there’s a variety of writing [on the paintings and] a variety of my titles hark back to something else. I’m attempting to get a humorousness; I’m attempting to have people have a discovery experience.”
To learn more about Robinson, visit michaelrobinsonart.com. ◆
