Artist finds self-fulfillment in work
Selecting a specific medium, Riley Robbins tries to convey who she is in her art.
Robbins, a senior at Pea Ridge High School, is one of the students in Noelle Webb’s Advanced Placement art class. Her work was featured, along with many students’ work, in the art show at PRHS Feb. 14, 2022.
“Riley’s got a really unique story she tells in her art work. I think that’s what sets her apart from others. She has a perspective … that not many students at PRHS get.
Robbins said she hopes to attend Savannah College of Art and Design and major in interior design.
“AP art is so different from any other art class I’ve ever taken. It gives me the freedom to create what I want to create,” she said.
She said she realized she wanted to pursue art last year, her junior year, thanks to former art instructor, Joe Stewart.
Of one piece of her art, Robbins wrote: “How has growing up with a single mom built my character? How did gaining a second mom and two older siblings changed my life? What emotional development have I encountered after my family adopted my younger siblings? want to consider the different season of my life and how they have formed me into the person I am today.”
On a 12- by 19-inch acrylic paint and water color, Robbins entitled “Ignorance,” she wrote: “In middle school, I would get asked a lot of questions. Some were positive like ‘How are you so happy?’ or ‘How do you stay positive all the time?’ but others, like the questions on the trees, were asked in ignorance. I was young, so were my classmates so these questions don’t affect me like they used to that’s why they are the trunks of trees behind me. As I age, the questions grow, but they are those of the past when my peers were younger and less aware. The yellow buds symbolize the unwithering joy I carry and leave behind as I go through different seasons of life.”
Of a painting of a baby in a womb entitled “Misconception” using acrylic paint, sharpie, tempera paint and canvas, Robbins wrote: “A misconception. Growing up in a nontraditional home I spent a lot of years learning what it mean not to have a ‘dad’ in my situation. Young, I asked my mom how I was born. ‘I wanted a baby so I went to the doctors and they helped me have you.’ This translates to me telling my friends ‘Mom took a pill and that’s how she grew me in her belly.’ Mom protected me from the beautiful mess of the world but it led to misconception.”
“Memories” created with acrylic paint, watercolor and sharpie shows a child’s sippy cup with a top. Robbins wrote: “This piece is inspired by childhood memories and the youthfulness associated with a sippy cup. Connected to the first major stage of my life, my youth with a single mom, when she went on business trips, I would stay with my grandma, Ninny, and the sippy cups of mine at her house have the same silhouette as the one I painted. The use of abstract shapes and lines is to signify that this is a distant memory while the bond color palette represents joyful emotion.”
Regarding “Before” created with tempera paint, acrylic paint, sharpie, canvas, Robbins wrote: “I was an only child for the first half of my life. Disliking silence, I always had my TV on. It’s make-believe worlds were nothing like mine. Mine was better. I had my mom, my cat, my family. Adding richness and light to my childhood. But in the silence the TV consumed me, this was well before I gained two older siblings.”
“All of these pieces are so conceptually different, but they all mean just as much and they all relate to my upbringing and how my life has been so different from some other people in my small town,” she said. “I’m so thankful that I grew up here because it gives me a new perspective on life.”