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[ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: Here in Baker City, we're surrounded by beautiful nature, and so I often work with trees or other organic and natural design motifs.

WOMAN: Being out in nature is always a way for me to clear my head.

Look at that water.

It's so golden, with all the reflection, the trees.

It's just beautiful.

MAN: Even the work that is more abstract, I'm still thinking about qualities of light, things that I've seen outdoors.

It's always paramount, that relationship to natural forms, organic form, nature.

I still feel very close to that.

[ ♪♪♪ ] We're at the Tillamook State Forest on the way to the coast.

I think we found this place like two years ago.

I was just driving with a friend to the coast.

I just love that it's by the river.

And different seasons, you get to experience different things, different colors.

I've been here in winter a lot, and that brings on its own beauty with the bare trees.

It's just like really exciting to come here every time, because I don't know what I'm going to find.

I'm Bhavani Krishnan, and I paint landscapes, figures, still life.

I love to come out and paint in nature.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Oh, wow, this is so beautiful over here.

I just love that I could just look any direction, and it would make a good painting.

I used to be a software engineer, and about eight years ago, I just started painting as a hobby.

And then very quickly, I became more and more passionate about it.

And so about five years ago, I transitioned into painting full time.

For me, it was just, like, how many people get to find their true passion?

I just felt like I had to go for it.

I had to give it a shot.

I was born in Switzerland, but we moved to India like when I was 2 years old.

I always feel like my love for mountains comes from me being born there.

I don't know, like -- I don't know if it make sense, but I just feel that.

[ laughing ] Being out in nature, it's always been a way for me to clear my head.

All the time while growing up, I sought out groups that would go hiking.

I remember there being lots of waterfalls, and we would just jump into the water, and it was a lot of fun.

That's how I developed a deep connection with nature.

Look at that water.

It's so golden, with all the reflection off the trees.

It's just beautiful.

When I look at a scene, I kind of see in terms of shapes and colors.

So it's kind of like a puzzle piece, where different shapes fit together.

I try not to be very logical about it, but just use nature as a jumping-off point.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Especially when there's a lot of green in the landscape, the complementary color will help pop it.

I like to be very loose and expressive with my painting.

When I pick up the brush, I don't even know exactly what I'm going to do with it, but I'm just going with that pure instinctual feeling.

And what happens is I get all these marks on my canvas that are quite -- quite unexpected, which you cannot produce if you're just thinking in a very calculated manner.

If I can use minimal strokes to describe something, that's always, like, way more exciting.

I came to Oregon for work.

The very first time I came here was to interview with Intel, and I saw Mount Hood from the plane.

I almost instantaneously fell in love with it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I love to paint along the Columbia River Gorge.

I think that's just a really beautiful area.

I just love places that are open and natural.

I love going up to Mount Hood, especially in winter to paint snow.

I like coming here to Tillamook State Forest.

The color of the river, the color of the trees or the textures I see, each of them are beautiful in their own way, so I just like coming back here in different times of the year to try and capture them.

When I'm out on location, time just flies by.

Nothing seems to bother me.

It's kind of a euphoric feeling where things are happening organically and you're not forcing anything.

When I first started, I learned a very realistic style of painting where the most important thing was to make something look three-dimensional, and that was what was driving me.

But now, recently, I've found that I need to say something that's a little bit beyond that.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I don't want to just copy a portrait and get an exact likeness, but try to -- I don't know, like, just try and capture something about their personalities.

So basically everything is already blocked in and everything is sort of in there, but I'm just trying to refine some of the colors, add some complexity.

There was like sunlight on the river, so I tried to capture that.

Towards the end of the painting, I like to step back more often because sometimes you can keep going and ruin it.

So it's a good idea to just step away, get a fresh perspective, and see if you're actually done.

Up close, it's kind of a big mess, but when you step back, everything's sort of -- you can see trees, the river.

It sort of all comes together.

Yeah.

I think I'm done.

Yeah.

I think so.

[ laughs ] [ ♪♪♪ ] I would hope that people would have an emotional response to my painting... that they feel something, that they would be moved by my painting.

Because when I look at art, that's what I feel.

I'm moved by paintings that make me feel excited or invigorated, and that's what I hope to transcend into my paintings.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Baker is like a little enclave in the middle of this beautiful Eastern Oregon landscape.

I took a tour of Oregon, and I was just really enamored with it.

I just love the people and the community.

And so I acquired this property 10 years ago.

Took me about two years to rehab this beautiful old building.

My home is upstairs.

It's a large loft.

And downstairs, in the front, is my gallery and showroom.

And we're in my painting studio right now.

And then over a few yards that way is where I work on bronze.

JULE GILFILLAN: From painting... to printmaking... to pottery... to bronze, artist Robert Anders does a little bit of everything.

ROBERT: I've been in the arts for all my adult life.

I like the idea of innovation and making new things and that heartfelt feeling of producing something beautiful.

I love to stand outside and paint and observe the big, beautiful world.

Being outside is really the primary thing, and then painting is just kind of a secondary excuse to get outside and be in it.

But since this isn't exactly the best day for that, we asked Robert to show us how he makes bronze.

People have been working in bronze, you know, thousands of years.

I just love the tensile strength.

It's so tactile and so heavy and so just durable.

And it has its own kind of vibrational energy.

[ ringing tones echoing ] So it's just a very fun material to work with.

My bronze work is primarily a functional object.

I love the shape of the bowl, you know.

It's functional, and yet it has beauty and elegance.

I start off with a lump of clay and work up a design motif, and I actually carve it into the clay itself.

Here in Baker City, we're surrounded by beautiful nature, and so I often work with trees or other organic and natural design motifs.

It's got to kind of flow out from the center because bronze tends to flow that way.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Okay.

The basic idea of lost-wax casting is to create something in wax.

And then from that, you can cast it directly into bronze.

So I simply begin to coat my design motif with wax to form a large wax positive.

I've always wanted to do this with chocolate.

It would make some kind of big, crazy chocolate ball.

[ chuckles ] Whatever is wax will be displaced entirely by bronze, so I'm looking to create a nice even density of wax for a nice smooth casting.

And then basically, after the wax cools... [ whirring ] then you can separate the wax from the clay.

[ air hissing ] And what you had sculpted is in exact negative relief.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Then I begin to carve it and accentuate the negative space.

When it's warm, I can really carve it with X-Acto knife.

And this will go on like this for, I'm guessing, a couple of hours.

But I like it.

For me, it's a meditation.

As it cools and gets closer to room temperature, it becomes very brittle.

So I use hot irons to just achieve the look and soften the edge.

Wax is just a really beautiful, forgiving medium.

You never really know until you get close to the end exactly what is going to open up and unfold.

And if there's going to be a mistake, it always seems to happen right at the end.

Great thing to do on a rainy afternoon.

And now I'm just going to fix this sprue.

In case you didn't quite get that, it's called a sprue, S-P-R-U-E.

In order for the foundry to introduce bronze to that shape, you need to be able to pour the bronze into that shape somehow.

And at the foundry, they'll add vents and so forth, but I add a major sprue, which is kind of like a funnel.

I'll just go around it and make sure the sprue is sealed down on there.

And there you go, Bob's your uncle.

[ ♪♪♪ ] At the foundry, they'll take the wax and they'll dip it repeatedly in colloidal silica and zircon until it develops coats of this ceramic that builds up on the outside of the wax.

That ceramic shell then is put into a kiln and it's brought up to high heat.

The wax vaporizes out, and it leaves behind an exact cavity of what was once occupied by wax.

And molten bronze is introduced into that form.

After the bronze is poured in, it's left to cool.

[ men chattering indistinctly ] And then the foundrymen will just take a hammer and knock all that concretion away, and what remains then is an exact replica of your wax, but it's now in bronze.

From there, I take it back into my shop and finish it up.

Take off all the rough edges.

And then I apply a patina to it.

I use a very simple patina, first of sulfurated potash.

And potash has the ability to stain the bronze, and it just stains it in the deep relief areas.

And then I rinse it off and I heat it up again.

And I spray on various oxides, and that keeps the surface from oxidizing any further, and that patina will then be its natural color from then on.

I'm okay with that.

At the very end, I apply a very thin coating of beeswax just to kind of protect it and buff it a little bit.

After weeks of work, you can see what you got.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ grinder whirring ] I've been working in bronze for about 20 years, and it does connect me with that long line of craftsmen, you know, thousands of years ago.

There's that thread of continuity that we're still working in this medium even in the 21st century.

It's lovely to participate in that.

This little town has really let me just slow down.

I like that.

And people just come in and kick the tires and smile and laugh and we talk, and I really love it in that regard.

And it's just my privilege to-- not only to be here but to be accepted here and to work in the mediums that I work in.

Stay dry.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The first marks that you put on a painting are important, even if they end up being entirely hidden under succeeding layers of paint.

I'm trying to stay ahead of my analytical brain.

I'm trying to let my hand take over and get beyond my intellectual or thinking side of what I'm doing.

It's a lot like taking a walk in the woods and just without a destination in mind.

That's the way I think about painting a lot.

This gives me a starting point.

It gives me something to build off of.

I'm just building random forms, and then they kind of give me clues what to do from now on.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Even the work that is more abstract, I'm still thinking about qualities of light, things that I've seen outdoors... and the color qualities.

All these things enter into the work, so it's always paramount, that relationship to natural forms, organic form, nature.

I still feel very close to that.

I grew up in La Grande, Oregon.

Was born and raised there.

My dad sold wholesale groceries and had an office in downtown La Grande.

And I'd go up with him while he worked on his books, and I had these blank sheets of paper, and I started just drawing from imagination.

I attended the college in my hometown, which was Eastern Oregon College.

And I ended up with a degree in secondary education with an emphasis in art.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I started out as a realist painter.

And then growing up in Eastern Oregon, I was really deeply involved in the landscape.

I worked hard at it, trying to translate what I saw into two-dimensional terms.

[ ♪♪♪ ] What I loved about painting realistically was I think it was almost sort of a magic transference that I was after, that I could make these flat canvases real.

But I was bored.

I felt like I was painting within my capabilities.

And then my work began to change.

And then I would think about, "Well, you know, I have the galleries.

But once they understand where I'm going and why, they'll get it."

[ laughs ] But I lost a lot of people.

I lost a lot of collectors.

But I think as a creator, as a creative person, you're not the same person, you know, 20 years later, that you were.

I love the physical quality of paint.

I love watching it be smeared on a surface.

It's just a strange thing.

You're using, you know, animal hog-hair bristles tied on the end of a stick and pushing colored mud around.

And why that's endlessly fascinating, I don't know, but it is to me.

[ ♪♪♪ ] With the "Seeking Level" series, it was like, whatever happens with the work, I think ultimately it's going to end up with a level line at least somewhere within the composition.

Ostensibly, they're seascapes, but in a pretty abstract way.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The "Vessel" series became a way for me to focus these abstract energies in the painting into a form.

I like the vessel as a metaphor.

It comes from the earth, but it's formed by hand and formed by mind, so it's right at that interface between the human and nature.

Some of them get pretty wild, yeah.

And some are more focused or more restrained.

And they're experiments.

Each one-- Well, I guess all my work these days, it's always an experiment.

I'm pretty much centered on what's happening right now... and maybe what'll happen tomorrow.

I have no idea where the work might lead.

And I think maybe that's the best.

[ ♪♪♪ ] To see more stories about Oregon artists, visit our website... [ ringing tones echoing ] And for a look at the stories we're working on right now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

ROBERT: I've always wanted to do this with chocolate.

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.