Rick Mobbs Draws on His Intuitions

by Birdie Jaworski

New Mexico landscape, by Rick Mobbs

Four people float in a rain-reminiscent sky, simple grins lighting round faces, arms extended past swollen bodies the colors of spring grass. They fly in harmony, in silly joyous formation, a family of Macy's Parade balloons, perhaps, or a collection of free-wheeling cartoon thought bubbles. Rick Mobbs' study in watercolors, "Flying," offers a glimpse into captured serenity, but the artist's vocation began in a place far from calm.

"I have had a love of making things for as far back as I can remember," muses Mobbs, "but never really thought of myself as an artist until I wound up in a halfway house for homeless men with alcohol and substance abuse problems. I was free of drugs and alcohol for the first time in many years but it seemed that I was still crazy. I looked at the way I had made things all my life, no matter the circumstances, relationships, geographic locations and thought maybe I should pay attention to that. The making of things - drawings, paintings, poetry, sculpture, assemblage using found objects - had been the most profound constant through a crazy life. I began to think, maybe I wasn't crazy, maybe I was an artist. I certainly hoped I was. You can do something about being a drug addict or an alcoholic or an artist. There isn't much I know you can do about being crazy. Maybe medication and love and therapy."

Mobbs returned to school and studied art, eventually becoming a head painter, set painter, scenic artist, sculptor, storyboard artist, production illustrator, and art director. He considers his favorite movie jobs "Elmo in Grouchland" and "Muppets From Space." Mobbs recently moved from the east coast to Las Vegas with his wife, Naomi Swinton and their son, Broadus, when Swinton was offered a position at UWC-USA in Montezuma.

"We love it here. I was ready for a real landscape," says Mobbs. "Coastal North Carolina is so flat! We have found an active and lively activist community here, supportive, kind, interesting people, and great natural beauty. We were ready to come here."

New Mexico has begun to infect Mobbs' work. A new piece, "New Mexico Landscape," mixes the earthy browns, purples, and mustard-hues of San Miguel County's flora in an explosion of texture and rhythm. Mobbs spent a recent afternoon working with seventh-graders in a basement classroom of the Montezuma Castle. With the lights dimmed, Mobbs intoned a gentle visualization exercise, asking the students to bring to life a dream image, to give it form with charcoal and pastel.

"I would love to do that with them again," Mobbs explains. "The techniques were useful to me when I was given them and I think it's fun and useful to teach the techniques of creative visualization, guided imagery and interactive story-telling. Kids have great imaginations. All of them, even the ones we think maybe don't. So do adults but sometimes they are a little more distanced from their creative sides."

Mobbs finds inspiration in everyday life, in the lives of those closest to him. His favorite collaborator is his eight-year-old son, Broadus.

"He's one of the major lights of my life. He grew up in my studio and considers it his," Mobbs smiles. "We collaborate on some things, both of us working on a painting or sculpture. It is a dance for both of us and a wonderful experience."

Often using found materials in his work, Mobbs enjoys pushing the artistic envelope. He once built a wind harp from from a dead but standing cedar tree on a bluff overlooking the ocean, lacing the trunk with eye-hooks strung with taut cables until it sung with the salt wind.

"I love rust and texture, weathering, evidence of the passing of time. I am using some old, bullet-riddled refrigerator doors I found at dump sites, as material for some sculpture I am making now," Mobbs says. "I found some children's drawings on the web that were collected by UN workers in war zones, places like Darfur, Iraq, Iran, even some from kids in London done in the 40's. Drawings of tanks, solders, men with guns, helicopters, burning huts, burning city buildings. I transferred those drawings and cut them out of steel plate and turned them into refrigerator magnets to use on the doors."

Mobbs' work spans different materials and media as well as a wide-range of conceptual landscape from etheric otherworldly family portraits to illustrations of war in a world gone mad. Even though he studied art in school, he relishes the unusual, the true expressions of creativity that can't be boxed and packaged.

"I basically don't care if people make things from Italian marble or popsickle sticks, as long as they are doing what they love to do," Mobbs insists. "I also don't think it is necessary for someone to take the road of art schools and study. The important thing is to listen for the calling, to pay attention to the nudges and urges, the nameless longings that come from inside. I think our most important direction comes from our intuitions, and that is what we should pay attention to, even if it runs counter to common sense."

You can see an online collection of Rick Mobbs' work at www.rickmobbs.com.