Indian Hill Gallery’s 2023 Autumn Annual Exhibition presents the work of Frank Hermann and Rob Robbins. Both artists are highly respected painters and educators with strong ties to the Cincinnati area. Hermann is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient (2006) and is Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts in the University of Cincinnati’s College of DAAP. Rob Robbins has an extensive national and international exhibition record and currently serves as a Professor of Fine Art at Miami University.

At first glance the landscape motif predominates in both artists’ works. Upon closer inspection, however, each artists’ idiomatic use of color, texture, and mark comes to the fore, as do their unique responses to the subject matter.

Frank Hermann’s Tree Trunk/Haiku paintings are portrait-like in that they each focus on a singular tree. Uniquely though, they are meant less as depictions of a tree’s appearance and more as an expression of an experience or response to a particular tree. Robust textures, collage, and text are incorporated into the paintings which reflect multiple experiences of the paintings: visual, tactile, and linguistic. 

Rob Robbins works within a more traditional landscape paradigm, depicting complex, immersive views of the forest. However, he subverts expectation by his use of saturated color    and intricate, rhythmic mark making. The densely layered, vibrant surfaces of Robbins’ paintings are both window and wall, creating a visual tension between depth and flatness. A seemingly direct and singular scene belies a composite of multiple views, times, and responses.