When Robert Rogers Stack was growing up as one of seven children in an 1820s-era house on Brinton’s Bridge Road in Chadds Ford, visitors looking to locate the family home would invariably find themselves at a nearby neighbor, asking for directions.

“The original Brinton’s Bridge had burned down before I was born, so a lot of our friends and family would come up Route 202 and turn onto Brinton’s Bridge Road and drive for miles, only to find that the bridge was no longer passable,” Stack recalled. “Not knowing any alternate routes, they would often knock on the door of the house near the bridge and ask there, ‘Could you tell us how to get to the Stack’s house?’”

A man would answer the door and point out how to cross the river further down at Route 1 so they could find the Stack’s home on the other side.

That neighbor was Andrew Wyeth, who in addition to being one of the most famous artists in America also had a side hustle as the GPS system for the Stack family home and, on a larger scale, as one of the key navigators for the artistic life he has enjoyed for the past several decades.

While prominent, Wyeth was far from the only influence Stack’s creative journey.

“I grew up seeing art shows at the Chadds Ford Elementary School that displayed Wyeth’s paintings or visiting the Brandywine River Museum of Art that had just opened,” Stack said. “We lived in a big old house and behind it was a smaller home that was lived in by a sculptor and a few painters, so I literally grew up around art and artists.”

Whether it was through influence or proximity to the sweeping landscape of creativity around him, Stack’s progress to becoming one of the most recognized artists in the Chadds Ford area began when he was a boy, when he lost himself in sketch book drawing. By the time he had reached his teens, Stack had already dabbled in nearly every medium known in the application of paint to a canvas. While a student at North Penn High School, he found himself gravitating toward watercolor, influenced by two area artists – the painter and sculptor Tom Bostelle and the filmmaker and painter Rea Redifer.

When Stack attended the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, he studied with artists Roger William Anliker and Charles Schmidt.

Working with the gifts of place

It has been said that for an artist growing up in what is generally known as “Wyeth Country,” he or she is given an unfair advantage – a head start – by virtue of being given the very same tools of landscape, nature and color that the most famous family of American art were – and have been -- blessed with. Throughout his career, Stack has drawn heavily from these influences, but to comprehend the backstory of Stack’s art, it is crucial at the outset to know that a career of stunning canvases extends farther than the tangible skills of applying paint on canvas.

Throughout his life, Stack has also pursued photography, astronomy, video production, digital printmaking – all of which draw their application from the power of light and shadow and are applied to his work as an artist. The early sunlight tapping against the eastern-facing walls of the hotel in “Cape May Morning.” The sun gleaming off of the large roof in “Greenhouse.” The shadows that cross the face of the fox in “Morning Raider.” The late afternoon dusk of light illuminating the soldiers’ helmets and rifles in “Hessians.”

“I had already learned a lot on my own about art even before I got to college, but the thing that fascinated me most was my fascination by the light, and anything of artistic construct is based on where the light is, where it was and where it is going,” Stack said. “Chuck Schmidt began to explain to me how things are warm and cool, and if we want to organize our light, we need to determine whether your light is warm or if it is cool, and the shadows in the work will always be opposite, and you can structure your colors based on that – to create big, broad warm shapes or big, broad cool shapes.

“Roger spoke about the importance of painting from dark to light, and I began to register this knowledge about light and shadow in terms of a click, and explanation that would click into place for me.”

Through the use of watercolor, gouache, egg tempera and oil, Stack’s paintings have been showcased at invitational, juried, and group shows and are also in gallery, private, and corporate collections throughout the U.S. and abroad. Yet, if there is a consistent model used by Stack over the course of his artistic journey, it has been horses, from the time he was a small boy sketching them at local farms in Chadds Ford to the equestrian art that has in some ways become his trademark.

Stack’s foray into equestrian continued to blossom after he graduated from college.

“My admiration for horses began from simply observing,” he said. “After I graduated from college, horses served as cheap models for me.”

It was at that time when Stack met Virginia W. Kibler, who lived nearby and was an artist and the owner of horses. She had studied illustration with Thronton Oakley – a former student of Howard Pyle’s and had spent 40 years teaching 4-H students how to ride horses.

“Viriginia was right out of an Andrew Wyeth painting, and one day she saw me sketching her horses and said, ‘You shouldn’t be sketching horses. You should be riding them,’” Stack said. “She put me on a horse, and I saw her gallop away on hers. I didn’t fall off the horse, so I guess that was a good sign for me.”

Stack’s equestrian connection continued with a video he made for a charity event for a local non-profit organization several years ago that depicted a horse-and-carriage drive that was shown at the event. After his friend “Frolic” Weymouth convinced him to travel to Virginia to shoot another equestrian event, Stack found himself arriving at the event with a full crew, which then led to other video work.

Eventually, the camera gave way to a paintbrush, and in1995, his gouache painting of sidesaddle titled Line Up won the Ruth E. Robins Award for watercolor at the American Academy of Equine Art. His paintings have appeared in exhibitions such as the Horse in Fine Art at the Wildlife Experience Museum in Parker, Colo. as well as on the official posters for the Ludwigs Corner Horse Show, Dressage at Devon, and the Devon Horse Show.

‘A nagging in the back of my head’

It is often difficult for a creative person to accurately describe the merging of mechanics and his or her craft, and Stack is certainly no exception, but the answer to what allows him to create magnificent work from a blank canvas, he said, can best be found in the abstract, something he said that comes from “a nagging the back of my head.”

“For me, a painting always starts in my mind, with a shape and a feeling,” he said. “It just gnarls at me, and it may stay there, and two or three ideas may end up being combined. I usually hit on an idea, do some sketches and three of four days later decide, ‘I think it would be really neat to do a view from a window when the light is coming down.’”

Stack works out of a small studio in Fallowfield. He is 62 years old, which he calls “young for an artist.” Art, he said, is a forever gift.

“I have taught a few art classes during my career, and I always tell students to follow the old military training that says, ‘Every battle has a solution, and you are trained to find out what that solution is,’” he said. “Whether that solution is to retreat, go sideways or advance, an artist needs to find out what the solution is, whether to move forward, change the course of a painting’s direction, or simply discard it.

Stack said that his favorite moments as an artist are when he is about two-thirds of the way through a painting, “when every stroke I put in will improve the painting,” he said. “It will solve all of my problems and pull it all together and become an interesting piece.”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].

Stack wins poster competition at county art show

Robert Stack’s work, “Early Spring” was the winner of this year’s annual poster competition at the 51st Yellow Springs Art Show, that ran from April 27-May 12. The painting was featured on the show’s catalog, postcards, billboards, invitation and flyers, and was sold by silent auction in the Lincoln Building galleries.

As the longest-running and most esteemed juried art show in Chester County, the Yellow Springs Art Show unveils new artistic talent annually, providing a distinctive cultural experience for thousands to embrace. The exhibition boasts over 3,500 works of art, spanning a variety of media including ceramics, sculpture, watercolor, pastels, and oil. The proceeds from the show play a pivotal role in sustaining and expanding the mission and impact of Historic Yellow Springs, funding conservation projects, arts education programming, and historical experiences that benefit the community at large.

To learn more about the Historic Yellow Springs Art Show, visit www.yellowsprings.org.