Recipe: Turkey Pâté en croûte
November 1, 2012
Editor’s Picks for November
November 1, 2012
Spencer Rogers doesn’t consider himself an artist. Although his paintings are a bit unconventional, he certainly earns the description.
By day, he’s an ultrasound technician for a urology clinic who enjoys wrestling with his sons and cheering them on at soccer games. But late at night, Rogers sets up spotlights on his carport, leans over gurneys cast off from his employer and channels his seemingly boundless energy into his creative side.
Using materials such as construction adhesive and joint compound to shape them, his subjects rise off canvases stretched onto reclaimed window frames into tactile, three-dimensional images often viewed from unconventional angles.
“I’m not good at shadows, so I build them in,” he says. The result is shadow cast onto the canvas from the light shining upon the artwork as it is blocked by the lines of construction adhesive, which can rise as much as a quarter inch off the canvas. “I like the heavy (look). I just like to glob it on.”
Rogers started using adhesive and joint compound because creating such thick layers as he desired with oil paint was not affordable. But it turns out the substances have an advantage over oil paint – malleability.
Once he draws an image on canvas, Rogers outlines areas with the adhesive or applies joint compound. After a couple of days he can get his hands on the image, shaping and molding the surface to his liking. Once satisfied, Rogers begins to work with oil paint to further bring the image to fruition. For one painting, he covered the canvas with joint compound and carved the image into it before painting with oils.
Rogers calls his style a sculpture on canvas, a multi-layered creation with a spice of color and fun, and a continual wave of texture running throughout the canvas. Even in areas with only oil paint, the paint is often swirled on thicker than many artists. The result is a feeling of movement.
Architecture intrigues him as a subject, but his perspective is not straightforward. He’s influenced by the art of New Orleans-based James Michalopoulos, whose architectural renderings slope and sway.
“I feel as though people look at things a certain way. I’m trying to look at things a different way … a way you wouldn’t normally see things,” Rogers says. Sometimes the viewing angle seems to originate from a person lying on sidewalk looking up at a building, or peering over the edge of a building’s roof to view the structure.
But he also has taken on as subjects grunge rocker Kurt Cobain; whimsical fleur-de-lis playing instruments and, on another canvas, playing poker; and St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. Rogers began working on the latter before the historic church burned in a fire two years ago out of a feeling of connectedness that only increased with the fire.
“This is a work in progress,” Rogers says, gesturing to one of his works hanging on his wall. “All of them are.” It’s common for him to return to a work that people would consider finished to add more texture, color or other elements to the canvas – even after it’s hanging on his wall for a period of time. He even sees more work that can be done to canvases shown in Fabregas Music’s windows for Art After Dark, the annual free art show along the streets and in the shops of downtown Houma each September.
The event was his first public showing, and something he agreed to on a spur of the moment. But Rogers was happy to have his art in windows instead of having to promote it, as he feels he’s not much of a salesman. But he did eavesdrop on some of the viewers. “I heard some good things as they went by,” he says, adding he would consider showing his work again.
Never having taken an art class, Rogers began painting after buying his first house and finding a 4-by-6-foot canvas in the attic and old paint in the garage. Not being one to throw things away that are well constructed or useful, the finds awakened an interest in painting.
“I love old stuff,” he says. “It’s not what it is but what I can make out of it. … I like to clean something, make it like new or create something out of nothing.
“I found painting is a hobby you had something to show for, and I really enjoy the paint on my hands, my clothes,” he says. “My hands are my biggest tools. My hands are never clean. I’ve got paint on every doorknob, the walls … everywhere.
“It’s stress relief for me,” he says, and when he’s painting, “it’s the only thing I’m responsible for,” since his sons and wife, Dana, are in bed. “It’s my time to put all my thoughts and feelings into one subject. It helps me focus on one thing.”
Spencer Rogers, who has no formal art experience, uses construction materials to craft these vibrant paintings.
