ANAT EBGI

Happy Painting, new work by Neil Raitt at Anat Ebgi, LA. Check it out if you are in town.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Bob Ross. My first memories of painting and first oil paintings were done side by side with my Grandmother in her living room painting along with the afro-ed one. Despite the kitsch, Ross took the everyman’s stance of everyone could paint. Maybe this is the PBS version of Bueys’ “Everyone is an Artist”. I don’t know. The paintings usually generated weren’t great and they sure looked a lot like what was sold in parking lot sales broadcast nearly every weekend on the radio, but there was something magical about Ross and his talk of happy trees, imaginings of the squirrels who live there and the freedom of making something. I’ve loved a palette knife since then and the buttery feel of paint as it rolls off the blade, squeezing off the sides with the slightest pressure. It made me love paint. 

So! Aside from the cult influence of Bob Ross, Neil Raitt’s paintings take that mechanical, highly reproducible, kitsch aesthetic and married it with field painting, modernist reduction and wallpaper to create this beguiling body of work. Using repetition, systems and hinting at the paradox of the mechanical/route vs the unique, his paintings are smart, inviting and do feel like happy painting, in the best possible sense. I think Bob would be proud.