THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Robert Roth -- Impressionism blossomed in the late 19th century, but it's here, in the early 21st, as Roth demonstrates in this thoughtful display of paintings inspired by New York's Long Island. Acrylic dries rapidly, but Roth doesn't seem hurried, even as he captures all the sensory details of the island's active skies and marshy, windswept landscapes with a brisk, almost blunt hand. "East Hampton" is the show's most balanced, elegant entry. Here, seemingly boundless, soggy grasslands -- their subtle patchwork of greens interrupted only by occasional fingers of whitish-blue streams -- unfurl into the horizon. You can almost hear the squish beneath your feet and feel your boots getting muddy. All this takes place beneath a vast but placid sky, compounding the magnificent remoteness of the scene. This is the basic format of most images, and green, blue, and gray predominate, but in "Bay Overlook," Roth makes a tasteful exception, applying shocking touches of brilliant orange and misty pink to convey flecks of light on the water and the glow of the setting sun. The air, too, is restless. Roth brushes on thicker layers and even globs of paint to portray the onset of evening. For sheer deftness, take note of "Cove," in which Roth incorporates some minor imperfections on his wooden surface into a generally rainy composition, transforming the board's tiny pocks into precipitation, like drops of water on a camera's lens.
- Zachary Lewis , Art Critic
IGNANT
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His paintings transfer the infinite quality of the sky, and its relationship to land and water, to canvas. Though Roth is often considered a landscape painter, the horizons that he paints sit low on the canvas; the land secondary to the might of the sky. “Skies are a powerful form of nature, revealing endless compositions of light and color.” powerful form of nature,” Roth explains, “revealing endless compositions of light and color.” But when every blazing sunset is captured and posted to Instagram, often artworks that render such horizons fail to inspire any great sense of awe. Roth, with his fast, broad brushstrokes, manages to paint such scenes in new ways. His paintings transfer the infinite quality of the sky, and its relationship to land and water, to canvas. “Within my paintings, I try to achieve that sense of vastness as the reflective light travels throughout the low horizon and across the waterways, lighting up the ground,” Roth tells us. “My paintings are really abstract studies of skies and the landscape just happens to sneak in.”
BOOOOOOOM
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“Roth’s atmospheric paintings are built from the energy and experience of nature”
- Jeff Hamada, Editor-in-chief