Entertainment
15 Minutes With Robert Deyber
THIS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, STAMFORD MUSEUM AND NATURE CENTER CELEBRATES THE OPENING OF ITS LATEST EXHIBIT “ROBERT DEYBER: TURNING A PHRASE” WITH A RECEPTION FROM 5:30 TO 8 P.M. DEYBER, A GREENWICH NATIVE, TELLS US ABOUT HIS INSPIRATION AND WHAT’S NEXT FOR THIS LOCAL ARTIST WHO IS GETTING THE ATTENTION OF MUSICIANS LIKE SHERYL CROW AND TOM PETTY. INTERVIEW BY KRISTAN ZIMMER
KRISTAN ZIMMER: Tell us about your medium.
ROBERT DEYBER: It’s actually acrylic. A lot of times people look at it and think it’s oil. Acrylic is the hardest medium to work in. It dries as you are putting it on. There are agents you can add to the paint to make it dry slower but it changes the way it looks. I like the kinetic, fast process.
KZ: When did you first get interested in art?
RD: I started painting as a child. My mother was a portrait artist in Greenwich. She was pretty well known in town for doing portraits for boardrooms. I used to watch her paint. I set up a little studio for myself when I was 13 instead of going and playing outside.
KZ: So how’d you end up as an airline exec?
RD: When I went to college my father put out all these statistics of how many people make it as an artist. I went into business school instead. Every moment I wasn’t working, I was painting…. I only started seriously doing it full-time after my airline career ended when 9/11 happened.
KZ: Your current exhibit at the Stamford Museum is a series of images depicting cliché phrases such as “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” What was your inspiration?
RD: Right before I left the airline business, at the time (it was the ’90s) people were throwing around these business clichés. One of them was, “We need to start thinking outside the box.” That is the phrase that started me on this series. After the 20th time I heard it in a meeting I started sketching this open box with a person standing outside the box with a light bulb over their head. I became fascinated with all these clichés.
KZ: What artists inspire you?
RD: A lot of people throw the term surrealism around. Artists from the Surrealism movement: Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Frida Kahlo. I love Dali but his stuff is really dark, heavy-handed and a bit scary. There are some current artists, John Currin, Will Cotton, that I’m really fascinated with. I’m influenced by the Hudson River School. I’m drawing from a lot of different places.
KZ: Have you ever done commissioned work for any big name customers?
RD: When I first left the airline industry, I started a website. Tom Petty’s wife Dana found my website and started acquiring my work. She bought five pieces. The name Dana Petty didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t know she was Tom Petty’s wife. Then one day Tom Petty called me and said, “My wife has been buying your work and it blows me away.” He asked me to do the cover of his album Highway Companion. He wasn’t very clear about what he wanted. I wound up doing a painting that when he saw it he was emotional. “How the F did you get inside my head and figure out what I wanted?” he said.
KZ: When you aren’t painting, what do you like to do?
RD: I’ve always had that feeling that to be really good at something it has to become an obsession. I have a farm in Litchfield. I do a lot of planting trees, moving of trees, antique collecting. I like to go to flea markets and garage sales and find wacky things. I’m doing more three-dimensional work. I created one piece called Firesign. Pieces of that are from a demolished building.
KZ: What do you want people to take away from this exhibit?
RD: I like being able to entertain people. I like making people laugh.
