Traveling the Unknown Highway with Rocky Hawkins

Further into his studio, a white floor-to-ceiling painter’s wall dominates the space. An adjustable steel easel is bolted to the wall where a large-scale canvas hangs in progress — a dark curve of road curls around an Indian face, but the depth and layering of paint that Rocky applies has yet to come. Next to the easel a long table of jars and buckets hold brushes, palette knives, rags and paint. A rough sketch — merely pencil scratches to illustrate composition — hangs on another small standing easel nearby. He prepares each canvas with gesso to smooth out the “toothiness.” The next coat is likely a dominant color that will provide a focal point within the image. Hawkins
layers his oil paints onto the canvas, creating movement, dimension and depth from color and texture. He combines passion with skill, striving for an unforgettable image.

Nearby, the “thinking chair” centers on the big wall: this is where the artist sits to edit his work. He ponders color and form, adds and erases, and waits for passion to speak. While he paints prolifically, the time he puts into each canvas is indefinite — some images come easily, while others are a struggle. And it is not uncommon for Hawkins to scrap a painting near completion, scrape the layers off the canvas and begin again.

“I think a painting is about feelings, emotion, self expression, and choices like finding relationships with shapes and colors, adding and subtracting, and embracing mistakes,” Hawkins muses. “Each painting I begin as an explorer with a vision into the unknown. And so each painting is an expression at that certain moment.”

A far wall is lined with Hawkins’ own avant garde photographs, mostly black and whites; photography is another outlet for his creative urges. Nearby a large set of bookshelves holds other sources of inspiration for Hawkins. Fine art and photography books and tomes by artists writing on the artist’s life, its struggles, challenges, motivations. He is a tireless reader, studying and rereading artists whom he reveres:
Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock. Peppered throughout the studio are inspirational quotes written in Hawkins’ own hand, plucked from his readings:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
— Albert Einstein

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
— Jackson Pollock

An artist’s “art” is just his consciousness, developed slowly and
painstakingly with many mistakes en route.
— Robert Motherwell