With his confident, ballpoint contours enclosing broad washes of color, his linear perspectives more whimsically than systematically applied, and his pilot’s-eye views of spectacular planetscapes, Robertson’s draftsmanship clearly owes a debt to science-fiction comic books, television cartoons, architectural elevations, and a correspondence art course he once sent away for. His painted “visions” transpire within precisely delineated, opaque edges that recall the softly rounded borders of early television screens and the control panels of matinee movie spacecraft. Because he claimed to have witnessed these visions in his sleep or trances, Robertson’s dreamscape itself seems patterned after the television set, suggesting that he may have experienced dreams as if they were broadcasts and he were viewer or actor or both. Like a television set, this self-described prophet and seer received, decoded, and projected otherwise invisible transmissions emanating from somewhere else. Second sight/sound site: Robertson’s Farway Land World replaces old-time Israel as this year’s model of the Promised Land.
