Robert Forman

String Pictures, History and Technical Information

I began making yarn paintings in 1969 while still in High School. I had been fooling around with paint in my parent's basement when one day I incorporated my mother's embroidery thread into a collage.

In college at The Cooper Union I first kept yarn painting to my self. My professors preferred my drawings to my paintings. My painting professor, Jack Whitten, asked what we did during vacation. I volunteered that I'd spent the vacation working on a project but it wasn't exactly painting. After visiting my studio Jack told me to stick to string and he would consider them paintings.

I have received Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,
The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. In 1992 I traveled to Mexico as a Fulbright Fellow to meet and talk shop with fellow yarn painters among the Huichol, an indigenous people working in a similar medium.

My technique is a variation of the Huichol yarn painting. The Huichol are an indigenous people living in the western Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico.
I attach colored yarn to ClayBoard™ using Elmer's Wood Glue™. Yarn vary in material and thickness. My materials include cotton, linen, silk, and rayon. The diameter ranges from sewing thread to eighth inch cord. Forms are rendered by the direction the yarn is glued as well as color changes. Yarn lit horizontally is bright while vertically lit yarn is dark. The material and sheen of the yarn determines the intensity of this effect.
I am able to mix colors by alternating yarn. I can also mix a number of images using this technique. The finished picture is sealed with Fabric Guard™