On the Way to WorkRichard Soberpaintings

Biographical Note

Richard Sober was born in 1953.  He is a painter and poet.  He started painting when he was fifteen and hasn’t stopped since.  When he was nineteen he saw a herd of antelope rolling over a hill outside of Ft. Benton, Montana and a very big gray sky with a strip of blue horizon everywhere he looked.  It looked like it was going to rain, but it never did.  Ever since then, he has been enchanted with wide-open spaces.

Around the time he was twenty-six, he, like millions of other people, was caught in a snowstorm.  He found himself in a bar for three days making friends and listening to stories.  Ever since then he is charmed by a good story, even if, and especially if it is a strange one and maybe not even believable.

In his thirties people asked Richard enough already why don’t you paint larger paintings.  Being stubborn Richard replied I enjoy the intimacy of small paintings and I’m not obsessed with big even though I am an American and once rode in a 1967 Bonneville.  If you can’t say it small you can’t say it at all.  Something like that. Well, being a responsible citizen, Richard works.  Paintings and poems come at the edges of the day, as if the day had edges.  Ever since he’s been earning a living he enjoys watching the sun come up, go down, the oblique light of autumn, the night time, the early morning before everyone starts making noise.  So if you like small paintings and even if you don’t, this is the place to be.

July 22, 2010