American artist Charlie Roberts thinks that we are living in an exciting era for painting. Even though painting’s obituary has been written several times in the past decades, Charlie Roberts believes painting is alive and thriving – and this is not in spite of, but, in part, because of new digital media. In this interview, Charlie Roberts explains his love for painting as an art form and why a painter like Edvard Munch gets a big museum while the rock and roll legend Mick Jagger probably never will. Going from old masters like Bruegel and Fragonard to contemporary painters like John Kørner and Nicole Eisenman, Charlie Roberts explains how some artists use paintings as a medium to engage with the lives around them and original and playful ways. Speaking on what makes a good painting, Charlie Roberts makes a point on how an excellent painting, requires more than simply technical abilities: “At a certain point, you can make an image in Photoshop, and you can copy it perfectly. Painting like that is a skill that can be learned. Anybody can figure it out. So, there’s gotta be something else besides the technical side of it.” For Charlie Roberts, this “something else” includes the ability to capture something beyond mere visual representation. “The paintings that really sing throughout time are the ones that caught this energy that is really hard to catch, so when people can catch that, it is amazing,” Charlie Roberts concludes in his ode to painting. Charlie Roberts is born and raised in Kansas, United States. He graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada in 2005. He is known for collecting and sampling elements from contemporary pop culture, hip-hop to art history in his praxis that spans wood carving, ceramics, painting on canvas and watercolour on paper. Roberts currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Christian Lund interviewed Charlie Roberts in Roberts’ studio in Oslo, Norway, in 2022.
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