Testimonials
Hi Robert,
Three of the four boxes arrived the other day in fine shape. As soon as the snow melts a little more in Dallas, I'd expect to see the box with the lead primer and the Goop.
Once again, I have to thank-you for sharing your insight with respect to my recent stretcher order. I can see that the thicker profile and additional cross-brace provide a lot more resistance to twisting when stretching your herringbone linen. I would have ordered the wrong item, if I hadn't had an opportunity to discuss things with you first.
Regards,
Timothy Rudd
Hello Robert Doak,
I am about ready to order some new paint soon and I look forward to talking with you over the phone. I have a question for you. The last time we spoke we discussed the approach Velazquez took to painting and you sold me a liquified lead ground. It turned out really well. However, I became enamored with its possibilities for use in portrait painting. The special combination of the lead ground with Aragon Yellow, Baroque Red - lent the portrait a unique luminosity and life. The lifelike aspect of the portrait is similar to the quality one can see in Las Meninas.
So my question(s): Is there any possibility you would prepare some special liquified Flemish White for use in my portrait painting that would allow me to cover a face in one sitting? If you were to do this for me, the liquified version of Flemish White would have to have a working time of approximately three - four hours with a final 'golden' hour to allow adjustments to be made. This would be a breakthrough worth exploring in my portraiture and what do you think of that idea?
Previously we discussed how to achieve golden light - the Aragon Yellow and Golden Sienna worked out very well. I'm finding the more I work with your paint that special combinations of colors interact to create special effects. Several visitors to my studio have commented on how one particular painting seems to glow! Magic! My question for you is, how do I know more about the possibilities of your special pigments and their properties? And could I share a section from a master painting (see below) and see if we can try to identify and match that color (the color of the sash)?
Best, Ted Prawat
I found out that this guy in Brooklyn, Robert Doak, probably, the best color guy in the world, had discovered a 'CACHE' of really good lead white pigment (Flemish White). I bought enough from him to last me a lifetime.
--John Currin, from his Jan 2008 interview in "The New Yorker" Magazine
Mr. Doak,
I am such a fan of your paints! I guess it’s an “artist’s superstition” thing, but my confidence grows, the strokes improve, and I’m happier with my work when I use your paints.
Like the new website…I miss talking to you, but like the convenience of ordering online.
B Underhill North Carolina
Hello, Robert Doak:
I want you to know that I love your paints. Your years of research have been a wonderful gift to me. I first ordered from you three or four years ago (and just now need to restock). I have told all my painting buddies at Mississippi Art Colony about your paints, how I started off trying to order what I needed but wound up on the phone with you for hours while you taught me about what I needed…and how I allowed you to select the paints to send me. You did a splendid job…and you were absolutely correct in each assessment. I cannot begin to express in words how delighted I have been. Your paints have a wonderful texture and your colors are more saturated, more vibrant and rich than any paints on the market (I’ve tried them all!).
With your permission, I would like to provide a link to your web site from mine. If you would like to see mine first, it is www.quantumconnectionsart.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Marion
Dear Robert,
I have to tell you thank you for making your gorgeous paints! Your paints are amazing, I love them. It's like having a satisfying steak dinner instead of a salad, what can I say!
Thanks again,
Tamara Smith
Dear Robert,
I am writing to thank you for all the help and advice you have given me over the years I have been in touch with you and for the generous service that you have provided to the whole art community for such a long time.
I believe that you are a living example of a true artists' colorman, in the great tradition of Chevreuil and all those unnamed suppliers of artists' materials over the centuries. I don't think that many fully appreciate how profound the influence has been, by those who supplied pigment and mediums, on the art that has been made in the long history of painting, not just in the 19th and 20th C's, but since the beginning.
Your kind advice and suggestions, as well as the introduction to new pigments and techniques has changed the appearance of my art forever and I am eternally grateful to you for the time you have given in speaking with me. I mean that in the most sincere and humble manner.
I know that you consider yourself more than close to retirement, but I honestly hope that you will continue to produce new colors and ideas for a long time to come and know that you will be truly missed when you are no longer amongst us.
With very best wishes,
Geoffrey Laurence
Dear Robert,
Thank you for your letter. I appreciate you taking the time to write. I also appreciate that you are very good at what you do and you can rest assured I will buy your materials in the future. I'll be taking time off after my upcoming show but please don't worry you've lost me as a customer.
All best wishes,
Cecily Brown
Originally posted on WetCanvas
Robert Doak's Flemish White
Hi, I lurk here sometimes, but don't post, I hang at the A and W forum, but I promised I'd report on the Robert Doak whites I ordered just after the New Yorker article.
there are way more techie people here than me, so if you want that kind of review, you best order it yourself and find out. I'll just give you the basics
I ordered Flake and Mica, and Transparent Flake and Flemish White. the first 2 were in tubes, the Flemish I got in a 4.5 oz jar I got them because I'm disatisfied with the usual tit. and zinc white for the kind of work I do which is a combination of ala prima in areas and lots of glazes after.
The tube paints are fine, but the Flemish White is just spectacular IMHO. This is why I love it. Robert has lots of things that one adds to the white to get it just right for whatever you are doing. So I got Mica, Stand Oil, Sunthickened Walnut Oil, Aluminium Sterate, Copal and leaded glass.
Depending on what I want to do with the white, I add the medium to get me there. This is where the more methodical people can give better info. I just did a panel of tests and then started painting. For mixing white, use it straight or a bit of stand oil. For heavier use the Walnut, for really heavy thick I added Alum Ster and Walnut, and let it sit out overnight, for pearl I added mica, for glaze and flow either stand or walnut or copal
I don't paint in the some of the traditional ways, I'm headed for some sort of way that is very close to my pastel work, so I add leaded glass to the paint or ground, to give me a tooth and a suede stroke look of the pastel , or allows me to drag a brush over the surface and deposit color in the same way my sticks do. For glazing I add the stand and it really is luscious and doesn't sink in the way my other whites do. Sometimes takes a couple of layers to make it strong tho if I want something very white.
However you paint the Flemish can be customized to just what you want, and the white itself just glows... this is my report, I'm sure the accomplished painters here could do much more, but for my money this is the best white ever , and I don't plan to use anything else from now on...tho I still keep some tit-zinc for some small things, don't seem to use it much.
My Best, Colleen
Dear Robert,
I was delighted to read your new website link– the stories you wrote from your encounters with John Currin and Cecily Brown.I'm so glad they helped you heal during your difficult time, and inspire you now. Shortly after Joyce moved on, I remember writing you a long letter thanking you for all your guidance, and your artistic pursuits. Here is a testimonial, sent in gratitude, reiterating what I said then, if you want to add another to your site.
I first met Robert Doak in 1999, being introduced to him by a great painter and friend, Chuck Bowdish. I had heard that I needed an introduction– I couldn't just go on my own. I stayed about three hours that first visit, and spent all I could afford. I explained to Robert that I was dissatisfied with the lack of luminosity I was finding with the oils I was using. What I noticed right away was that Robert was really interested in trying to figure out exactly what type of quality I wanted to achieve in an image. He wasn't concerned or judgmental about the 'image', he just wanted to help me technically. And he was, and remains, more generous with his time and knowledge than anyone else I have ever worked with in the field.
By great fortune I lived around the corner from his shop and started going every week. Each visit was a lesson, and left me poorer, but I always felt wealthier with my new knowledge and investments. I was inspired by his interests and hunger for new discoveries. Knowing how much time he took to really understand the alchemy of each art material he carried, I soaked up Robert's information like a sponge and have complete faith in his perspectives and discoveries. He could sell me crap in a jar, as the 'best, smoothest crap you'll ever use' and I'd buy it.
About two years after meeting Robert and experimenting with his extraordinary range of white oils, I had an exhibition of all white paintings, as an ode to his interests and discoveries. His white paints alone are so extraordinary I wanted to make their inherent qualities the subject of the images. I still think of that show as Robert's.
Later I became interested in watercolors and discovered Robert's incredible line of liquid concentrated watercolor solutions. I had been searching for a way to create large, deep washes of color with watercolor pigments and couldn't do it with what was out on the market. Robert is a great watercolorist himself, and felt the same way. He spent ten years researching to learn how to make concentrated liquid solutions, and produced a material that changed my life. For years he taught me how each pigment reacts, handles, etc., and sought out the best papers to work on. He eventually taught me how to produce them myself, another example of his generosity which amazed me. He gave me hours and hours of his time and opened up another world to me.
I consider Robert Doak one of my great mentors, and most treasured friends. There is only one Robert Doak, and I truly feel one of the fortunate few to have found him.
Nick Terry Marfa, Texas
www.nickterrystudio.com
In the spring of 2008 I had a successful solo exhibition at Ezair Gallery, "successful" in the sense that people saw the work and some people bought the work. For the first time in my life I had money to do whatever I wanted to do with. When I sat down with my wife Michelle who is my greatest friend and advisor, she suggested that I invest in some better quality materials. I had been painting for the last 14 years and the name as the "go to" man that has always emerged through interviews and books with the "big name" artists was Robert Doak.
I didn't know a lot about Doak so I went through his website to try to make out what made his products "superior". I asked Michelle to call him at his Brooklyn shop to order a few pints of his "whites" as trial for investing in bulk supplies. I'm withdrawn by nature and can count the 5 "friends" that I have, all of which I've known for 25 years or more, so making new ones was obviously not at the top of my "to do" list. From the other room I could hear Michelle talking to Doak, when she got off the phone with him she said he wanted to speak with me and she told me "I would 'like' him." I revere her instincts as almost "supernatural" so I did and within minutes had made plans to go see him in Brooklyn later that week. I was "off to see the Wizard."
When you go to Doak's, you get off the train in trendy DUMBO and walk a block or so to one of the last un-renovated buildings in the middle of the block, what looks like an old factory or carriage house. Doak's sign is time and weather beaten and above the doorbell is his name scrawled out in black marker. You hit the bell and a guy answers the door and looks you up and down (old school), when you tell him who you are he greats you politely and allows you in. You then enter the "showroom" which is a painter's dream come true, it's small but neatly packed with bottles full of various oils and pigments in jars all around intersected by a table with brushes, tools, and every other material necessary for painting. After a few minutes, Doak emerged friendly, sincere, and knowledgeable, greeting me as if we'd known each other a lifetime. We got to talking and at 75 years old, he can "put you on your teeth" about everything from jazz to classic movies, old New York and "stories" about various artists, musicians, and celebrities whose paths he's crossed over time. We discussed every aspect of painting from canvas preparation and priming to painting with every additive you could imagine. Being a "self-taught" painter, I have learned along the way and picked up information from experience and experimentation, but this was the technical lesson I had waited my whole life for, no art school could rival it.
The thing about Doak is he can tell you about the difference between the working practices of Rubens, Velazquez, and Rembrandt in such detail that you are humbled by his knowledge. His information about the properties of pigments and mediums is unparalleled, part alchemist, part mad scientist. Above all, the products are the best I've ever handled and I've used them all. There is no comparison, the man has developed a group of "whites" alone which cannot be competed with.
Meeting Robert Doak was one of the high points of my life; he really is one of a kind. My work has benefitted greatly from him and my understanding of the optics and chemicals involved in oil painting are owed to him. Above all, now I have another good friend to count on.
--William Cilento
www.myspace.com/williamcilento
Dear Robert,
One of the artists I most admire, Casper David Friedrich, said, "Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within." While we can't argue with this statement, without quality artist materials, it would be impossible for Friedrich to bring to light what he has seen in the darkness.
I have been in the darkness, but your materials and your advice, even tough advice, have allowed me to bring my images to light.
I now have a large collection of quality materials that even Friedrich would envy. I sincerely appreciate all your hard work, striving to bring the best to the artist.
Sincerely,
Michael Shipman www.mshipman.com
Three of the four boxes arrived the other day in fine shape. As soon as the snow melts a little more in Dallas, I'd expect to see the box with the lead primer and the Goop.
Once again, I have to thank-you for sharing your insight with respect to my recent stretcher order. I can see that the thicker profile and additional cross-brace provide a lot more resistance to twisting when stretching your herringbone linen. I would have ordered the wrong item, if I hadn't had an opportunity to discuss things with you first.
Regards,
Timothy Rudd
Hello Robert Doak,
I am about ready to order some new paint soon and I look forward to talking with you over the phone. I have a question for you. The last time we spoke we discussed the approach Velazquez took to painting and you sold me a liquified lead ground. It turned out really well. However, I became enamored with its possibilities for use in portrait painting. The special combination of the lead ground with Aragon Yellow, Baroque Red - lent the portrait a unique luminosity and life. The lifelike aspect of the portrait is similar to the quality one can see in Las Meninas.
So my question(s): Is there any possibility you would prepare some special liquified Flemish White for use in my portrait painting that would allow me to cover a face in one sitting? If you were to do this for me, the liquified version of Flemish White would have to have a working time of approximately three - four hours with a final 'golden' hour to allow adjustments to be made. This would be a breakthrough worth exploring in my portraiture and what do you think of that idea?
Previously we discussed how to achieve golden light - the Aragon Yellow and Golden Sienna worked out very well. I'm finding the more I work with your paint that special combinations of colors interact to create special effects. Several visitors to my studio have commented on how one particular painting seems to glow! Magic! My question for you is, how do I know more about the possibilities of your special pigments and their properties? And could I share a section from a master painting (see below) and see if we can try to identify and match that color (the color of the sash)?
Best, Ted Prawat
I found out that this guy in Brooklyn, Robert Doak, probably, the best color guy in the world, had discovered a 'CACHE' of really good lead white pigment (Flemish White). I bought enough from him to last me a lifetime.
--John Currin, from his Jan 2008 interview in "The New Yorker" Magazine
Mr. Doak,
I am such a fan of your paints! I guess it’s an “artist’s superstition” thing, but my confidence grows, the strokes improve, and I’m happier with my work when I use your paints.
Like the new website…I miss talking to you, but like the convenience of ordering online.
B Underhill North Carolina
Hello, Robert Doak:
I want you to know that I love your paints. Your years of research have been a wonderful gift to me. I first ordered from you three or four years ago (and just now need to restock). I have told all my painting buddies at Mississippi Art Colony about your paints, how I started off trying to order what I needed but wound up on the phone with you for hours while you taught me about what I needed…and how I allowed you to select the paints to send me. You did a splendid job…and you were absolutely correct in each assessment. I cannot begin to express in words how delighted I have been. Your paints have a wonderful texture and your colors are more saturated, more vibrant and rich than any paints on the market (I’ve tried them all!).
With your permission, I would like to provide a link to your web site from mine. If you would like to see mine first, it is www.quantumconnectionsart.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Marion
Dear Robert,
I have to tell you thank you for making your gorgeous paints! Your paints are amazing, I love them. It's like having a satisfying steak dinner instead of a salad, what can I say!
Thanks again,
Tamara Smith
Dear Robert,
I am writing to thank you for all the help and advice you have given me over the years I have been in touch with you and for the generous service that you have provided to the whole art community for such a long time.
I believe that you are a living example of a true artists' colorman, in the great tradition of Chevreuil and all those unnamed suppliers of artists' materials over the centuries. I don't think that many fully appreciate how profound the influence has been, by those who supplied pigment and mediums, on the art that has been made in the long history of painting, not just in the 19th and 20th C's, but since the beginning.
Your kind advice and suggestions, as well as the introduction to new pigments and techniques has changed the appearance of my art forever and I am eternally grateful to you for the time you have given in speaking with me. I mean that in the most sincere and humble manner.
I know that you consider yourself more than close to retirement, but I honestly hope that you will continue to produce new colors and ideas for a long time to come and know that you will be truly missed when you are no longer amongst us.
With very best wishes,
Geoffrey Laurence
Dear Robert,
Thank you for your letter. I appreciate you taking the time to write. I also appreciate that you are very good at what you do and you can rest assured I will buy your materials in the future. I'll be taking time off after my upcoming show but please don't worry you've lost me as a customer.
All best wishes,
Cecily Brown
Originally posted on WetCanvas
Robert Doak's Flemish White
Hi, I lurk here sometimes, but don't post, I hang at the A and W forum, but I promised I'd report on the Robert Doak whites I ordered just after the New Yorker article.
there are way more techie people here than me, so if you want that kind of review, you best order it yourself and find out. I'll just give you the basics
I ordered Flake and Mica, and Transparent Flake and Flemish White. the first 2 were in tubes, the Flemish I got in a 4.5 oz jar I got them because I'm disatisfied with the usual tit. and zinc white for the kind of work I do which is a combination of ala prima in areas and lots of glazes after.
The tube paints are fine, but the Flemish White is just spectacular IMHO. This is why I love it. Robert has lots of things that one adds to the white to get it just right for whatever you are doing. So I got Mica, Stand Oil, Sunthickened Walnut Oil, Aluminium Sterate, Copal and leaded glass.
Depending on what I want to do with the white, I add the medium to get me there. This is where the more methodical people can give better info. I just did a panel of tests and then started painting. For mixing white, use it straight or a bit of stand oil. For heavier use the Walnut, for really heavy thick I added Alum Ster and Walnut, and let it sit out overnight, for pearl I added mica, for glaze and flow either stand or walnut or copal
I don't paint in the some of the traditional ways, I'm headed for some sort of way that is very close to my pastel work, so I add leaded glass to the paint or ground, to give me a tooth and a suede stroke look of the pastel , or allows me to drag a brush over the surface and deposit color in the same way my sticks do. For glazing I add the stand and it really is luscious and doesn't sink in the way my other whites do. Sometimes takes a couple of layers to make it strong tho if I want something very white.
However you paint the Flemish can be customized to just what you want, and the white itself just glows... this is my report, I'm sure the accomplished painters here could do much more, but for my money this is the best white ever , and I don't plan to use anything else from now on...tho I still keep some tit-zinc for some small things, don't seem to use it much.
My Best, Colleen
Dear Robert,
I was delighted to read your new website link– the stories you wrote from your encounters with John Currin and Cecily Brown.I'm so glad they helped you heal during your difficult time, and inspire you now. Shortly after Joyce moved on, I remember writing you a long letter thanking you for all your guidance, and your artistic pursuits. Here is a testimonial, sent in gratitude, reiterating what I said then, if you want to add another to your site.
I first met Robert Doak in 1999, being introduced to him by a great painter and friend, Chuck Bowdish. I had heard that I needed an introduction– I couldn't just go on my own. I stayed about three hours that first visit, and spent all I could afford. I explained to Robert that I was dissatisfied with the lack of luminosity I was finding with the oils I was using. What I noticed right away was that Robert was really interested in trying to figure out exactly what type of quality I wanted to achieve in an image. He wasn't concerned or judgmental about the 'image', he just wanted to help me technically. And he was, and remains, more generous with his time and knowledge than anyone else I have ever worked with in the field.
By great fortune I lived around the corner from his shop and started going every week. Each visit was a lesson, and left me poorer, but I always felt wealthier with my new knowledge and investments. I was inspired by his interests and hunger for new discoveries. Knowing how much time he took to really understand the alchemy of each art material he carried, I soaked up Robert's information like a sponge and have complete faith in his perspectives and discoveries. He could sell me crap in a jar, as the 'best, smoothest crap you'll ever use' and I'd buy it.
About two years after meeting Robert and experimenting with his extraordinary range of white oils, I had an exhibition of all white paintings, as an ode to his interests and discoveries. His white paints alone are so extraordinary I wanted to make their inherent qualities the subject of the images. I still think of that show as Robert's.
Later I became interested in watercolors and discovered Robert's incredible line of liquid concentrated watercolor solutions. I had been searching for a way to create large, deep washes of color with watercolor pigments and couldn't do it with what was out on the market. Robert is a great watercolorist himself, and felt the same way. He spent ten years researching to learn how to make concentrated liquid solutions, and produced a material that changed my life. For years he taught me how each pigment reacts, handles, etc., and sought out the best papers to work on. He eventually taught me how to produce them myself, another example of his generosity which amazed me. He gave me hours and hours of his time and opened up another world to me.
I consider Robert Doak one of my great mentors, and most treasured friends. There is only one Robert Doak, and I truly feel one of the fortunate few to have found him.
Nick Terry Marfa, Texas
www.nickterrystudio.com
In the spring of 2008 I had a successful solo exhibition at Ezair Gallery, "successful" in the sense that people saw the work and some people bought the work. For the first time in my life I had money to do whatever I wanted to do with. When I sat down with my wife Michelle who is my greatest friend and advisor, she suggested that I invest in some better quality materials. I had been painting for the last 14 years and the name as the "go to" man that has always emerged through interviews and books with the "big name" artists was Robert Doak.
I didn't know a lot about Doak so I went through his website to try to make out what made his products "superior". I asked Michelle to call him at his Brooklyn shop to order a few pints of his "whites" as trial for investing in bulk supplies. I'm withdrawn by nature and can count the 5 "friends" that I have, all of which I've known for 25 years or more, so making new ones was obviously not at the top of my "to do" list. From the other room I could hear Michelle talking to Doak, when she got off the phone with him she said he wanted to speak with me and she told me "I would 'like' him." I revere her instincts as almost "supernatural" so I did and within minutes had made plans to go see him in Brooklyn later that week. I was "off to see the Wizard."
When you go to Doak's, you get off the train in trendy DUMBO and walk a block or so to one of the last un-renovated buildings in the middle of the block, what looks like an old factory or carriage house. Doak's sign is time and weather beaten and above the doorbell is his name scrawled out in black marker. You hit the bell and a guy answers the door and looks you up and down (old school), when you tell him who you are he greats you politely and allows you in. You then enter the "showroom" which is a painter's dream come true, it's small but neatly packed with bottles full of various oils and pigments in jars all around intersected by a table with brushes, tools, and every other material necessary for painting. After a few minutes, Doak emerged friendly, sincere, and knowledgeable, greeting me as if we'd known each other a lifetime. We got to talking and at 75 years old, he can "put you on your teeth" about everything from jazz to classic movies, old New York and "stories" about various artists, musicians, and celebrities whose paths he's crossed over time. We discussed every aspect of painting from canvas preparation and priming to painting with every additive you could imagine. Being a "self-taught" painter, I have learned along the way and picked up information from experience and experimentation, but this was the technical lesson I had waited my whole life for, no art school could rival it.
The thing about Doak is he can tell you about the difference between the working practices of Rubens, Velazquez, and Rembrandt in such detail that you are humbled by his knowledge. His information about the properties of pigments and mediums is unparalleled, part alchemist, part mad scientist. Above all, the products are the best I've ever handled and I've used them all. There is no comparison, the man has developed a group of "whites" alone which cannot be competed with.
Meeting Robert Doak was one of the high points of my life; he really is one of a kind. My work has benefitted greatly from him and my understanding of the optics and chemicals involved in oil painting are owed to him. Above all, now I have another good friend to count on.
--William Cilento
www.myspace.com/williamcilento
Dear Robert,
One of the artists I most admire, Casper David Friedrich, said, "Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within." While we can't argue with this statement, without quality artist materials, it would be impossible for Friedrich to bring to light what he has seen in the darkness.
I have been in the darkness, but your materials and your advice, even tough advice, have allowed me to bring my images to light.
I now have a large collection of quality materials that even Friedrich would envy. I sincerely appreciate all your hard work, striving to bring the best to the artist.
Sincerely,
Michael Shipman www.mshipman.com
