Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 10
March 7, 2025
2025
Rob
Ober
(Courtesy the artist)
Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?
Rob Ober: I’ve enjoyed working on a new series of paintings that all point to the early childhood influence of Russian icons, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the Orthodox Church experience, especially the music. I have been painting with oil since September. I’m excited about the results… the texture, light, feeling and mood. Acrylic will always have a place in my work, but the oil has been a nice fit for the more religious or spiritual paintings I have been working on.
GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?
RO: When I was twelve years old, I pulled back the shower curtain in the changing room of an indoor swimming pool at a hotel in Moscow, USSR, and looked up at a beautiful, naked French woman showering. I froze. I could not speak or move. I stood there and stared.
(Courtesy the artist)
GB: What is the one painting you are absolutely obsessed with (yours or someone else’s) and why?
RO: Odilon Redon’s Angel of Destiny. I don’t know why. I just cannot stop looking at it. It has a mysterious hold over my soul.