ROBERT FORMAN
I began making yarn paintings in 1969 while still in High School. I had been fooling around with paint in my parent's basement when one day I incorporated my mother's embroidery thread into a collage. At the Cooper Union, my professor Jack Whitten was the one who told me to stick to string and he would consider them paintings.
The interface between my interior self and the outside world is the uniting concept behind my submissions to the “Represent” Exhibition.
“Self Portrait 6” merges the various personas I present to the outside world while “Gringo Rojo” specifically addresses how I’m perceived by fellow yarn painters among the Wixárika(Huichol) people of Mexico.
“Broadway” illustrates a psychedelic romp down Manhattan’s longest street mixing historic and personal histories while “Surveillance” renders the vulnerability I experienced while hospitalized as doctors poked and probed me.
