Robert Feinland’s recent paintings explore a studio environment created over the course of 40 years. Sculpture and found objects, materials and old furniture compose an imaginary world that also has the comfort of familiarity. These “interiors” reflect his roots as an artist: large abstract paintings on paper or canvas tacked to the wall, figurative sculpture, and sketches from life on New York’s Lower East Side.
In the early 80’s, Feinland decided to follow Constable’s call “to be a ‘natural painter’” even in the urban element, and he began to study the old shul structures of the area in plein-air oil paintings. More recently, these atmospheric oils have focused on changes in the city’s architecture: the disappearance of shuls and churches that formerly challenged the squares and rectangles of the gridded city streets. While these motifs inspire him, painting for Bob Feinland means a search for color tones that simultaneously express the tactility and tangibleness of touch and the vibration of color in shadows and light.
Brooklyn born Feinland received his MFA from Brooklyn College and BA from Haverford. He has taught painting, drawing and sculpture at the NY Academy, the DOOR, and the Educational Alliance Art School, and curated shows at PS 122 Gallery and the Police Building Gallery. He shows at CHAI Gallery in Brooklyn and has also shown at the Nicholas Roerich Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Provincetown Art Association Museum, Vorpal Gallery, and AM Adler Fine Arts, among many other venues. He received gold medals from recent invitational shows of the Audubon Artists (2012, 2014), the latter judged by American Federation of the Arts curators. His work was reproduced as a magazine cover (Jewish Press Magazine, Apr. 26, 2012) and on the NY Times Weekend Arts Section first page (Mar. 23, 1990, feature article.)
His work can be seen at: Haverford College Gallery - Alumni Show 2006 www.haverford.edu/news/gallery.php?id=3131 “On the Grid/Off the Grid” video walk-through with Francis Cunningham - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LY_5e_QcNc NY Times (Mar. 23, 1990) Review/Art; “A Sprinkling of Exhibitions Near Factories and the Water,” by Roberta Smith www.NYTimes.com/1990/03/23/arts/review-art-sprinkling-of-exhibitions-near-factories-and-the-water.html Jewish Press (Apr. 26, 2012), “Shuls on my Mind,” by Richard McBee http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/arts/shuls-on-my-mind-robert-feinlands-paintings/2012/04/26/0