Robert Lurz

Location: Brooklyn
Website:  Robert Lurz

I have been painting since I can remember. As a teenager, I dreamed of being a painter, but my parents worried that I would end up a starving artist and discouraged me from going to college for fine arts. Under such pressure, I decided to pursue a more practical and lucrative career in philosophy (irony intended). I’ve been a Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College for over 20 years, but I have never stopped loving to paint – particularly, watercolors.

I am a self-taught watercolorist. I fell in love with watercolors the day my grandmother gave me a Crayola watercolor set when I was five. I love the fluidity and transparency of the medium. I even love its obstinacy – watercolor is notorious for having a mind of its own. Mark Twain’s advice to young writers was to write what you know. I’ve tried to follow this advice in my painting. My paintings are about people and places I know. They are personal. My hope is that they convey something general and universal through their personal particularity. I try to express the unique qualities of watercolor in my paintings. I aim to have my paintings look like watercolors, with runs, blobs, splashes, splatters, and drips. Some of my paintings are done en plein air, and some are done in the ‘studio’ (i.e., the corner of my kitchen next to the window). I am inspired by the master watercolorists – Sargent, Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Yardley, and Seago – and hope someday to have a voice of my own in my paintings.

 It may be disappointing to hear that there is little connection between my painting and my philosophical career. My philosophical research is on highly theoretical issues in science and psychology about the nature of thought and consciousness and empirical research on social and advanced cognition in great apes. However, a few years ago my research team and I studied a group of bonobos to see if their paintings (yep, bonobos can paint) expressed particular emotions or represented particular objects. Our data were inconclusive unfortunately, but we got some wonderful paintings from the bonobos. That is about the closest connection to painting my philosophical research has had so far.