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“Mr. Kearfott believes the school of modern art is passing, ‘but it has had profound influence. It has made conventional painting stronger because it has had to compete with pure outline and design.’ Portrait painting has occupied the artist for the past 13 years but as sidelines he produces skillful watercolors and works of sculpture. He believes in conventional art, branding unfathomable modern paintings as ‘technical performances with no emotion’ and condemning them for their seemingly pointless titles. ‘Such paintings,’ he says, ‘are only frameworks. They are like a house with no floors or scaffolding. There’s nothing in them.’ |
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“Because of an intense feeling for the work of such old masters as Peter Paul Rubens, Mr. Kearfott finally turned to his greatest love and devoted most of his time to painting portraits.”
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In 1961, he is quoted in the Martinsville Bulletin, “ ‘There is a great hunger for culture in America,’ according to portrait artist Robert Kearfott, a Martinsville native, of Mamaroneck, NY, who is here working on portraits of prominent Henry County men, at his studio over the former Kearfott Drug Store on the Square. ‘Americans’ tremendous desire for culture is proven in the fact that most Europeans want to come here to sell their art,’ he said. ‘Americans, however,’ he continued, ‘are enslaved to writers who want to sell ultra-modern art’. Because of these writers, he observed, the public is afraid to express an honest opinion about art, thinking it might sound unsophisticated. ‘The Old Masters had all of today’s techniques,’ he reflected. ‘Art is a continuous process and there is no such thing as |
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