Maine's Capital Area

In Gardiner, Maine, Robert Saunders is a recognizable figure. There is just something about him that makes you think, “I bet that man is an artist.” Yet Robert recalls a time when he first discovered the concept of being an artist. It was 1963, and the son of the first artist he ever met, Bill Komodore, told him his father was “not a painter, but an artist.” It was this comment, which made Robert realize: “Artists are people and I might be one.” Robert’s work includes visual poetry, pieces in which numbers or letters pose as isolated enigmatic patterns or march in bright ranks. The images seem ordered yet the meaning is tantalizingly just out of reach. Line and color playfully engage the viewer, hinting at an arcane system. Other pieces assemble objects, named and unnameable, in arrangements as terse and evocative as haiku.

The show’s title, “Game Theory” has two sources. Games are sets of rules for play, and an artist’s work is to play beyond rules. Many of the pieces in the show are like dreams of games, familiar yet leaving you grasping for the meaning. In mathematics, Game Theory describes systems of operations that take into account “interaction with other intelligent and purposive people.” This engaging show demands your playful interaction to reach a deeper connection. Robert asks you to join him at the opening in July 3^rd and connect with him through his current body of work. His tools of choice for the work include: French curve, triangle, circle, ellipse, stencil, straight edge and liquid acrylic ink.