Medium: Acrylic on Wood
Size: 19.7″ x 19.7″
Year: 2009
$ 2400
All about France
Wired Color
On May - 31 - 2009
Patterns of Light
On May - 22 - 2009
Medium: Acrylic on WoodFrame the Sky
On May - 21 - 2009
Medium: Acrylic on WoodBob Heatly
On May - 21 - 2009
It has been 9 years since I left teaching design in the United States to become a full time painter in France. Each of those years just seems to get better and better. I think that I have done a lot of good work. My life with a “muse” gets better by the minute. I live in France, don’t speak the language and still spend each day to its fullest.
Artists have throughout history reflected the times they live in filtered through their own experience. I am doing the same. I am trying to do paintings that become the focal point of their environment and change with distance and lighting to constantly intrigue and interest the viewer.
Hard edged colored shapes have become my primary vocabulary to control all aspects of the painting. As a result, my paintings change as you change your viewing distance. Sometimes they are almost realistic from a distance. As you get closer, they evolve into minute abstractions of reality that compose almost fractal geometrical shapes to enhance the total painting.
Each painting is a record of my journey through life and time as I work to refine my personal voice.
How and why did Bob Heatly became an artist living in Southern France doing paintings as abstractions of reality? My answer is much longer than the question. It functions as my biography or resume.
Well in all started in February of 1943. I weighed almost 10 pounds and was symmetrical in all directions at birth. It took place on a kitchen counter by my aunt in her house behind her corner grocery store in Mangum, Oklahoma, USA. My parents were R.W. Heatly, a share cropper and Marge (Boyd) Heatly, 9th of 9 children who lived with their parents on a small peanut farm. I spent my first year and a half living in this small wood farmhouse with no running water and a single coal burning stove. There were four generations of HEATLY living together. They tried to raise peanuts and cotton on soil so sandy you would have thought we lived on a beach. It must have been a hard life for the adults but, it was fun.
1946 is a part of my life that I do not remember. I was told by my parents we left the farm and moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA where my father tried to find an occupation that could support his family. To give you an idea how poor we were, their wedding dowry was a mule and two chickens. The smells of beer and sounds of crowds (Professional Wrestling) are memories I have of Oklahoma City. Other than that, I can only remember my home and parents and their friends. I do not have a single memory of another child. The first three years of my life I was the only child in an adult inhabited world. Maybe that explains me.
In 1947, we moved to Altus, Oklahoma. My parents were now a Bond Bread salesman and a Baptist Church secretary. They did this for the remainder of my childhood and in the same small town 13 miles from Texas. As a result, I was brought up with more religion than most. It had an effect, just not the one my parents wanted. Altus in the 1940’s and 50’s was still the Oklahoma John Steinbeck wrote about in the “Grapes of Wrath”. We had dust storms that turned day into night and tumble weeds larger than people. The main spectator sport in the Spring was watching the thunderstorms and tornados roll in from the West. It was and remains Tornado Alley. School really opened my eyes to my true interest in Art. They actually asked us to create something using our imaginations. It was wonderful. I began to draw in all my classes no matter what the teacher was talking about. The other great thing was really learning to read. Books opened a whole new and equally wonderful world to me.
I grew to be short with a persistent pot belly. I sometimes wonder how much being one the smallest effects your motivation to succeed in other areas. Art was that for me. I can remember working or more than a month on a drawing larger than I was. I probably was everything my parents wanted in those pre teenage years. My only unusual interests continued to be art and reading. In the summer months, I used to bring four or five books home from the public library each week. Edgar Rice Burroughs, particularly his Barsoom Series, was one of my favorite writers. I lived about 100 yards from my first school and still ate my lunch at school. Both of my parents had full time jobs from the time we moved to Altus. In fact, my father left home 6 days a week at 4:00 am and didn’t return until 7 or 8 at night. He never attended any of the activities I was involved with. My Mother was a bigger part of my life. Altus was such a small town that it only had one art teacher who went from school to school. In 1953, I started going to his house for four hours every Saturday morning. The way I remember, I continued doing this until I was in High School.
At twelve, my parents working all of the time became a blessing. I was changing and started doing all of the things my parents had forbidden. I was cursing like a sailor, smoking, drinking, stealing hub caps and other forms of teen age vandalism with my friends. With them gone, I could live a completely different life. In Junior High School someone finally realized that I could not see the same as everyone else in my class. I didn’t. I was so nearsighted that I did not realize you could see leaves on trees. Mass-space and figure-ground have always been strong compositional tools for me. Does my affinity for strong form relate to the way I saw the world?
In High School I was always on the fringe, an observer, not a major player in social and sport activities. Basketball was the one exception. Even with my size, I played well enough to be on the varsity team. This exposure to team sport helped me learn how to motivate myself as well as others. In May of 1961, I graduated from Altus High School. School had been easy for me and it’s a good thing, because I did not try very hard. I wanted to leave Altus and my rigid religious upbringing. I knew that to be happy in life I needed to pursue a career that fed my soul not my pocket. Art or Architecture? Which one?
Architecture looked at that time like a way to earn a living doing art. I did not forget about pure fine art. I took the same amount of studio art classes as majors in art. The draft had something to do with that. I did not want to leave school while there was a Vietnam. Bachelor of Architecture, Oklahoma State University, 1967. It took me 6 years to finish this 5 year professional degree. The extra year and every summer I spent at school were due to the extra art courses. They were worth every minute. My biggest influence was Dale McKinney, kinetic sculptor and painter, who shared his knowledge with me.
When you were 25 in the 1960’s and male, the Vietnam War influenced most of your decisions. I was still trying to avoid the draft. The best way looked to be graduate school until I was too old for the draft. That one decision, to get a Masters degree, determined much of my life direction. Without it, I never would have become a teacher. I was 26, married, had a daughter, Masters of Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Illinois and an instructor at the U of I and the draft got me. I was sent to Vietnam after training as an Artillery Ballistics Meteorologist but, I was one of the lucky ones and wasn’t an infantry grunt fighting in the jungles. The year plus a little more that I spent in Vietnam seemed at the time to be a total waste. I was angry about missing this time with my daughter and frustrated because I wasn’t being creative. Now when I look back on it, it is where I developed a healthy fear of hard drugs. I saw too many young 18 year old boys waste away on heroin.
After I returned from Vietnam, I began to feel the full weight of responsibility parenthood brings to everyone. I felt that I had to have a job that would support and provide for my family. I returned to Illinois as the designer for Glen Frazier, Architects and Visiting Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois. Art had to wait. In 1975, Keith Peterson and I opened our own architectural firm, Peterson-Heatly, Architects in Urbana, Illinois, USA. The project we opened the office with was not architecture, but instead, art. Our first paying client commissioned us to do the illustrations for a book they were writing on police guidelines for the federal government.
As the architectural practice grew the less fun I seemed to have. A lot of time is devoted to non creative things in the practice of architecture. As a Professor teaching design and only doing the design work in an architectural office, I had not seen that aspect of having an architectural firm. I decided to accept an offer from Texas A&M to teach design full time. In 1978, I was recruited by my alma mater, Oklahoma State University to return and help rebuild the program to the strength it had when I attended. I accepted and along with many others were successful in making it one of the major architectural design programs in the United States. I remained there until 1999 when I gave up teaching (my day job).
In the first year I taught at Oklahoma State University, one of my students, Roger Robison won the most prestigious student design competition in the United States, the Lloyd Warren Fellowship or Paris Prize. He was the first of about 150 students under my direction to win or place in National and International Design Competitions during my years at the university. Art does have a place to play in architecture. Jim Knight, Fellow AIA and I began to do small projects under the name of Atelier, Architects. We entered and won the Southern Regional Passive Design Competition of 1980. As a result of this win, we began getting the kinds of clients no one else wanted. They were exactly the ones that I wanted to stretch my imagination.
There are many benefits to being a university professor. Not the least of which is time for other creative interests. We got 3 months off each summer and a full semester every 7 years. In 1985, I spent 4 months traveling and drawing in Europe. This rekindled my interest in painting. I began to paint seriously again upon my return. I was painting about 30 hours per week. I had a one man show in 1986 of my new work and many of the really old pieces from the 1960’s and sold almost every piece. I had another outlet beside the students to pour my heart and soul into and people bought them.
I received the Outstanding Teacher Award for Oklahoma State University in 1988 and the ACSA Distinguished Professor title in 1997. Painting and teaching design worked well together. Really, the thinking, the conceptual ideation, everything was exactly the same in my mind. In all of my teaching (one on one), my role has always was to motivate the student to be as creative as he or she could be. Things could not have been better in my professional life in 1990. My personal life had been bad for many years, but I had resolved myself to the situation and was pouring all of my time and energy into my art. Over the years, the only one who suffered from my actions was my daughter, Kim who was just leaving home. Teaching architectural design is similar to the process you would use in art. The biggest difference is scale and the fact that people move though the work. To teach someone to design is impossible. To help them learn to think is possible. The same design principles apply to both. Basic design courses are the same.
Don’t be deceived by the title, University Professor. I have never stood behind a lectern and given lectures on some subject. I only taught design in a studio setting (15 students in one space for 20 plus hours per week). Everything was one on one just 15 times. My role was to make each of their solutions as good and creative as possible.
My painting subject and style had changed. In 1992, I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA for 4 months and became intrigued by the massive walls and importance of light on a person’s perception of place. I had also made contacts in Santa Fe and found a gallery, Houshangs to represent me in that area. My daughter had gotten married, was happy, and had moved to Nebraska. 1994 was very different. I had a slipped disc in my neck and was unable to raise my arms to shoulder height. I could not physically paint so I learned to paint on a computer and explored the potential of this new kind of brush. It is just a tool and not some magic device for anyone to create with. Talent and ability still control the result.
1996 was a year of hospitals and ultimately death. It began with intensive care (heart) for my wife. She needed a transplant. It ended with death. My mother died in her home surrounded by her friends of colon cancer on November 2. I was in a car on the way to see her when I found out she had died. My wife’s health continued to decline and my father died on October 26, 1997 in Oklahoma City Baptist Hospital of pneumonia with only me present. Most of my year had been spent in Altus with my father. He had a very difficult time coping with mom’s death. She had done everything for him. He didn’t even know how to use a can opener. My wife, Linda died of cancer on August 6, 1998 at home with her mother and I present in the bedroom. She was diagnosed with cancer on the lung, brain and bones in April. Her health failed rapidly due to intensive radiation therapy and soon her mind began to regress. She had the mind of a child when she died.
It seemed like all my responsibilities had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt free! I still had time to live the way I had always wanted to. I let my hair and beard grow, bought a new black Ford Explorer Sport and began to live. I finished 1998 spending Christmas alone in a rented room in Santa Fe. Upon my return to Stillwater, I began to change that situation while planning my future. Europe, then on to art alone. 1999. I walked into a bar in Oklahoma City, ended up talking to the owner and closing the bar together that night. As I prepared for spending the summer in Europe, we began to see each other. We are from radically different backgrounds but right for each other. Soul mates do find each other.
I spent the first 2 months of the summer in Italy and France sketching with students and doing the French Postcard Series. Terri came to Paris to spend a week. The week turned into a month as I began to fall in love with this fun, world wise, smart, beautiful, sexy woman. I will always remember the month at Hotel du Pantheon. There must be something in the air of Paris. We walked the streets of Paris oblivious to the people around us. We talked about our pasts, our hopes, and our aspirations. In that month, Terri was able to learn more about how I feel than anyone ever has. From people watchers we became people who others watched and envied. Every couple must have a special place in their hearts. The Moulin Rouge in Paris became that place for us. Terri had been a dancer, so where the Can Can was born was perfect. We drank with the students, smashed plates in Greek restaurants, tumbled down a Paris stair, had a hotel call by a French doctor and returned to Stillwater a couple.
When we returned, Terri stayed with me instead of returning to Oklahoma City. She sold her bar, furniture, car and we moved the rest to Stillwater. I started working on the Oklahoma Series at school and larger pieces at home in the evening as we planned our future together. Our future did not include Oklahoma. Quit teaching. One decision made. This would be my last semester and we would spend New Year’s Eve under the Eiffel Tower and then find some place to live. House, car, furniture everything would have to go. Both of us started framing the summer’s work for one last show in Oklahoma before we left. In November, I asked Terri to marry me and leave for France not as a girlfriend but, as my wife. She said yes. She is my wife, my girlfriend, my lover, and my best friend.
1999 was a very good year. My last show had sold all of the big work and some of the new French Postcards. We were standing under the Eiffel when the fireworks went off to welcome in the new millennium. House was on the market, car on a lot, boxes in storage, four more days in the hotel and off to find a home somewhere in France.
When we left the states, we thought we would end up living in Paris. The cost was just too much so we headed south for warmer weather. As we drove through small villages, we begin to think a place like that. Finally, we came around a bend in a mountain road and laid out before us was paradise, Provence. We stopped. Shipped our boxes. (the short version)
It has been 7 years since I became a full time artist and each of those years just seem to get better and better. Lot of work. Lot of really good work. No serious exhibits but, I haven’t tried. My life with a “muse” gets better by the minute. I live in France, don’t speak the language and still spend each day to its fullest.
This web site would have been misleading and incomplete if it did not contain references to the 21 years my day jobs (student, soldier, architect, architectural professor) were using all of my creative energy. The time period : 1964 to 1985 Both architectural firms that I had were small and seemed to attract clients that had very little money to spend and had heard we did good work with low budget projects. We did do good work and won a few awards. Strong emphasis on order, layering, and pure geometric form. Work with the environment. Architectural firms? Yes! Architect? No, I really was a teacher of design and architecture who did not like the real practice of architecture. I was better at paper architecture than real architecture and it was more challenging to design buildings and cities that were not possible in the present. My strength was conceptual ideation.
I was part of the best architectural school, Oklahoma State University, in the United States. I really believe that and the sheer number of competitions my students won bears it out. I have always been competitive and they were a good way to measure our school against the rest of the world. We won by being more creative and working harder than anyone else. Teaching was as natural as breathing for me. I expected only one thing from my students, their absolute best and they gave it to me. In a way, the students were like extensions of me. With them, I would explore multiple solutions to the same creative situation and carry each idea to its limit. The hard part was convincing them it was their idea.
I am a very lucky person. I have spent my entire life creating art. Buildings are just large pieces of sculpture. Day job or night job? They both fed my soul. Putting this together has forced me to take a look at my life and I have come to realize that the 21 years of inactivity as a painter may be making me a better painter now.
