Robert Standish

For 12 years, Los Angeles painter Robert Standish had been representing his perceptions of the undercurrents of the human condition through photorealistic paintings of people and blurred lights. Seven years ago, Standish shifted away from constructing life-like replicas based solely on his photos to delving deeper into the unconscious unknown and new psychological depths. His choice to explore pure abstraction unlocked an organic spontaneous paint process of his own making, which is evidenced in both his current Rhythmic series and Anti-Sporadic series.

With an interest in metaphysics, Standish uses basic elements like line, color, and texture, to represent the dynamism, constancy, and transcendent flow of the universe. Standish’s lusciously colored, abstract paintings appear to be in the tradition of both American Abstract Expressionism and German Expressionist painting. There are no finite borders or endings in his works as every stroke bleeds into one another in an eternal unbroken chain that seems to extend far beyond any conceivable edge of the canvas. 

The painting’s many layers, strokes and scrapes of color may thus appear as “beautiful” as anything found in nature that came into existence partly according to a predetermined structure (such as DNA), as well as by way of unpredictable occasions of pure chance and the action of outside forces. Standish taps into a universal and organic language as his traces begin to take on the shape of fractal patterns, earth frequencies and topographies and biorhythmic waves. As he once manipulated the real into the unreal, Standish now transforms the natural into the supernatural.

Robert Standish graduated from Antioch University in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology. His paintings have been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums. He currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California.