Hansen: Artist finds his craft after wife’s death

Robert Holton remembers vividly when he became an artist. It was a spring day in April 2003, after his wife died of cancer.

He had a poster-sized picture of her left over from the funeral ceremony sitting on a table in his house. Angry and frustrated after four years of battling the disease, he finally let loose.

“I took a big, 5-gallon bucket of paint and just with a paint stick started throwing it on the picture,” he said. “I had a meltdown. I was angry, asking, `Why did she pass away?’”

The next day after he cooled down, he looked at what he had done.

“I said, ‘Gosh, if I took my time and dripped this paint around this photograph, combining photography and paint, I could create something,’” he said.

Feeling somewhat renewed, he immersed himself in the technique. He created more paintings using pictures of his wife, then the two of them together. Finally, he moved on to other subjects.

“It was very healing for me creating those,” he said. “I started painting to bring me calmness or joy through that troubling time.”

He went to a local workshop on how art can heal. He realized that people do not have to go through pain to find art; they can find joy through art, especially when the subject immediately elicits fond memories.

“So I started painting things that I could escape to my childhood or to an easier time,” he said. “We all have images of our past, regardless of our age — a place, a product, a drink, a food, a cereal — so that’s what I paint. And it’s really exciting to hear people’s stories, like ‘Oh, I remember going to Bob’s Big Boy.’”

His Laguna Beach gallery, Drizzle Studios at 550 S. Coast Hwy., is filled with nostalgic paintings that remind you of Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s soup cans. While he covers the 1950s and 1960s, there are also more recent categories of paintings that include famous landmarks, sports teams and popular products.

“Each age group, everybody, has a brand that they gravitate to,” said Holton, 56. “What I do is a little more edgy, and it’s usually for a game room, a media room, a kitchenette or corporate office.”

He has had to learn how to navigate branding and licensing issues but says there is rarely an issue because he doesn’t mass produce the art. If he put his work on T-shirts, or made prints, it would be a different story.

“I try to work with these companies first. I’ll reach out to them,” he said. “The challenge is how to find the person to say yes. You find a lot of people who say no.”

He attends an annual trade show that specializes in licensing to stay current on the rules, plus he networks with various groups in the industry.

He concedes that not everyone considers his work “fine art,” but he is also not impressed with everything in the fine art category.

“I look around at the galleries near me, and I see art going out the door, but it’s a plein air painting of a beach scene or something. To me, it’s grandma’s art, but people like that.”

Always wanting to improve his craft, Holton recently took a formal class in Laguna Beach, but it was tough for him at times.

“We’re painting a bowl of fruit or a tree from out in the canyon, and it’s like, ‘God, I just can’t relax and paint it.’ I want to throw paint on it when I’m done.”

But he played by the rules and admitted that he learned some better ways to shade and add nuance to his paintings.

Holton will be exhibiting in the summer Sawdust Festival for the first time.

In his willingness to try new things, he also agreed recently to participate in a possible TV series that combines his pop art and branding, along with a cancer angle.

“We’re shooting a TV series that we’re going to pitch to the networks,” said Marc Garabedian, president of ArtMoose in Yorba Linda.

Garabedian has teamed with the charity Angel 34 to help cancer patients during their treatment.

Specifically, a 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl, Nicole Sheriff, found that Icee drinks helped her during chemotherapy treatment. There was something about the way the ice was created that soothed the side effects of the chemo.

After her death in 2004, her parents continued working with the foundation, and the Ontario-based Icee Co. to place its first machine in the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Penn., free of charge.

There are now about 40 machines in children’s hospitals around the country, said Garabedian, who wants to have an art auction in May to raise the money for a machine in the L.A.-Orange County area.

He will use artwork provided by Holton and other artists, and all the proceeds will go to Angel 34.

For Holton, the charity work with Icee is like coming full circle, but now he looks at it with more optimism.

“I’m really trying to promote art as a great way to express yourself,” he said. “Everybody’s creative to some degree. You just have to find out what it is.”

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at [email protected].