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​"The solidity and monumentality of forms captured in Evans’ paintings and mixed media works belie the fleeting or ephemeral subjects that he so often treats. There is nothing ethereal or ephemeral about his figures and objects. Without a doubt, they exist in our world and have real mass and volume. Like the works of the Dutch old masters, Evans’ paintings are not merely reflexive snapshots of the familiar, but are carefully calculated, often highly sophisticated, compositions which also happen to be extraordinarily unordinary in their ability to resonate long after viewing."

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From a 2004 brochure essay by Scott Schweigert, curator of the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA.

For full essay CLICK HERE

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"In his paintings, Rob Evans presents non-linear narratives that hover between hyper-realistic psychological investigations and luminist explorations of natural forces. With a precise draftsmanship and subdued color sensibility that tends toward a shadowy, cool purple-violet, he creates images that are layered with meaning and allegory. Seemingly simple landscapes and interiors become, in Evans' hands, dreamscapes that look familiar but that emanate a sense of isolation and aloneness that belies their roots in traditional representation."

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From a 2001 catalog essay by Terrie Sultan,  director of the Parrish Art Museum in Long Island, NY and formerly director of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, D.C.

For full essay CLICK HERE

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"...Evans sets most of his scenes at night or in crepuscular light, which creates dramatic power. Add to this crisp drawing, bold forms and a brooding, quasi-spiritual atmosphere, and you have some striking and memorable work. "

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From a 2000 review by Edward Sozanski in The Philadelphia Inquirer of Evans' solo exhibition at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

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"I was delighted to receive your fine catalogs and am deeply impressed with your work. This is a remark I rarely use. And I mean it"

 

From a 1999 hand written letter to the artist by prominent American artist Andrew Wyeth.

 

 

 

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"Here in Rob Evans' brilliantly devised art, are worlds within worlds, paintings with other paintings inside them (a classic mode, classically executed), paintings-as-windows, windows-as-paintings, realism in the service of dream. The fanatic detail, the wondrous and transfixed sense of unfilled space, the truly dazzling sense of telescoped perspective, and the subtle feeling for color -- all of these things bring us to a feeling for things about to disappear, things that have disappeared, that are no longer there, but which may be about to come back. Like the very best artists, Rob Evans gives us the visible in the service of the unseen."

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From a 1998 catalog essay by Charles Baxter, an award winning American novelist, essayist and poet.

For full essay CLICK HERE

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"...Evans is a superb draftsman and very talented painter. He makes good use of light and shadow to charge his highly detailed paintings of interior scenes or landscapes with a kind of calm-before-the-storm tranquility. They are engaging works that reward careful viewing."

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From a 1997 review by Ferdinand Protzman in The Washington Post of Evans' solo exhibition at David Adamson Gallery.

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"Rob Evans introduces into his concepts a strong intellectual element, asserting the space of his compositions as a spiritual field, filing it, as he puts it himself, with "power lines." His compositions bring to mind sequences from metaphysical cinema, where the interior blends naturally into the outside world, the two constituting a single energy field. Within his "harsh" plastic system, close to hyper-realism, he transforms organically the visible into the invisible, he finds a link between the real and the fantastical, he perceives the depth of unity where everything is interrelated and the depth of loneliness where everyone becomes oneself ... Rob Evans reminds us once again how much more powerful the mytho-poetical space is, compared with the ordinary, profane one. In this sense his artistic space becomes experimental, a proving-ground for building and testing notions, inconceivable elsewhere."

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From a 1991 review by Vitaly Patsyukov , prominent Russian art critic and curator at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. 

For full article CLICK HERE

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