Conversations with Bobby Haag

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bobby Haag.

Hi Bobby, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was introduced to oil painting when I turned 20 years old. I never heard of it. At first I would fill notebooks full of drawings.
Those were the first pictures I made independantly and I have a lot of those notebooks from the classic days of drawings and colorings and words. I was creating art with any kind of art utensils or material, like crayons on construction paper. I was expressing my feelings through motifs making stuff up. The art was always a form of “artwork” again and again and I recognized this. Then I starting making oil pastel drawings on artist paper. That was the last thing I did before I started oil painting, but before I knew oil paint existed, oil pastels felt like what oil paint would eventually feel like to me because of their high quality and colors. I would go to the art store and buy three or four oil pastel colors and a big piece of paper. I’d scribble drawings alone outside or in my room in one sitting. In those drawings I began coloring in a new and completed way. It was significant again because I knew it was good artwork. I was forming pattern and geometric shapes and noticing compositiona through my peripheral vision. It was naturally me as myself gaining my own attention by me or something special and I was proud of myself.

When I heard of oil paintings I reallt had no idea what they were. So I finally went to the art store to buy oil paints. It was a big day for me. I felt ready. I earned that moment I remember. I was so clueless about it though.

I thought painting in oil has instructions. I was convinced I was only allowed to paint with red, yellow, and blue! I thought the rule was having to mix the three primary colors to make all the other colors! And I believed pallet knives were the only way to paint oil paint! Now it’s funny. It just shows how I much I respected oil painting. I had never seen an oil painting before or oil paint. It was a big deal. Even in pictures I could only identify paintings made by Vincent Van Gogh as oil paint. Only because they were thick. That’s all I understood about oil paint.

My thinking was if oil paint is thick, then it needs to be painted with a palette knife. I also thought because of this, the oil paint must be mixed to make all of the colors, and without black or white! I do not know why. I had to just guess. Literally my first painting is red, yellow, and blue painted with a palette knife (without black or white). It is a classic now and my favorite painting of mine, and is always hung on my wall wherever I live.

Oil paint was just so advanced to me that I wanted to do my best to do it the right way. That is how I learn things. Slow and one step at a time, and I knew absolutely nothing. I used the palette knife in small paint strokes believing that was also the correct way. I was clueless. This was not a style choice or even an influence. I just wanted to be an oil painter and make great art. I finally used white for my third painting and the colors changed everything, and from then on I began painting.

Everything felt like an experiment playing with the paint and the paint showed me its ways. I was painting small canvases, one after another, with a brush now expressing the color. Any color I saw no matter what it was I painted it on the canvas. My painting was forming a connection with color. This is how I taught myself how to paint.
The paintings were muddy and abstract. They were of my imagination. They were ugly too. I would look at them and be disgusted but that is how I realized: I made them that way. So if they looked gross it’s because I painted them gross that’s why, not the painting’s fault. That showed me the power of painting. What I did painting the painting, became the painting. I fell in love with the beauty of ugliness like mold being so beautiful it hurts to look at, and learned my ability to paint was the responsibility of my capability to make a painting.

So I loved these paintings and I showed people. I would give them as free gifts (I kept some for me too). It was at the time the only way for me to share my love with people. They are my first series ever and are all-time Bobby Haag classics. If you have one, it is really special! Keep it safe!
When I started giving people paintings it became the best way for me to share. My painting gifts became custom paintings. I was forming my own process to paint the custom paintings, too.

I knew how oil paint worked well enough to begin forming pictures from the abstracts. I only used really small brushes to make tiny brushstrokes to paint with in another way with my imagination. I could paint things depicting the personalities of friends and family, and turn them into a classic theme as a memory or something cool. This time they were visually beautiful. That was the second series of my early paintings. Then it got intense… … …

It began when I realized I can put colors… inside of colors… inside of colors… inside of colors, endlessly. Ideas would fit together within a single color inside a spec of another color. I painted until the colors became so small, that the only way to paint more color was to paint a single dot! They became known as my ‘dot paintings’, but these paintings were not supposed to look like that. I thought they looked like God. I was just painting until they magically formed. That was the end.
It was more about the act of painting than the act of making a painting. A intellectual thing.

How I knew the painting was finished was when there was no space anymore left to paint it. If I wanted to keep painting I would have to paint outwards, like 3D.

They were not random.
They are full of symbolism representing things that meant the world to me. I took the physical act of painting to its limit. The whole thing was a sensation. It was interesting to see each painting start off as blank as the blank canvas was in the beginning, just to end up being as detailed as everything and anything could look like at one time together until the painting became absolutely nothing.

I was painting nothing, by painting everything.

Asking for the amount of detail required to do that made it too difficult to paint on my original smaller canvases, so they became my first series of large scale paintings. They started out like the abstract uglies, and the picture beauties combined slowly introducing more and more detail until they grew into the dot paintings. The paintings were so detailed I could literally throw a glob of paint with my hand at it and the glob would disappear. It made sense focusing on the inside of the painting instead of the outside of the painting. It became invisible. Then, like static on a T.V. (since that is what they looked like) I forgot why I was doing it anymore, so I stopped.

I started making other expressions of myself. I was doing all forms of art in any way I could. It was an experience using art as the medium instead of using mediums of art. This just redefined what art was to me and I began to understand art in a whole new way. My point of view or my experience of the world turned into art. My existing became art.

My own art became not even my art, but just pure expression of art expressed through me. The most creative ideas I ever had made in the most creative ways I ever did. Anything I could think of was made with whatever was in front of me. Randomly. It was a phase that pushed the limits of what art can become. The only problem was the art wan’t artwork, it was what I call “art-play”. The problem was only I could understand it. It was a mess. In order for others to understand, I knew I needed to make “art-work” so it could be understood. It had to be communicated with other people. I had to mastercraft genius.

I still made that kind of art for friends and family during that time too as another series of my work, but it was different… I still loved it, but I learned that lesson. Those were discoveries I had to make for me, and me only, and the important thing was I did. Later half of all that work was destroyed in a barn, anyway. I was saving it for the future but it taught me a noble lesson: To share my gift while I still can. Luckily, I have half of it to show one day. It is bizarre, strange artwork.

Art was coming from some place in my heart, and I was on my way to find out where it came from and how I can get that place to exist here outside me. I returned back to oil painting to find out how, like a mystery.

With my magnifying glass and clues (just kidding), I got to work. I wanted to make a masterpiece. So I made a finger painting. I grouped colors into the same colors only this time to form clearer paintings. I saw color in such an extreme way, like I never had before, because I had to evolve myself and my art at the same time.

I saw which colors are which and which are “look-a-likes”. I always simplified color into eleven colors even before painting artworks. This is how I understood the physical world (later I discovered the 12th color). My idea of color grew my own take on color, and color gave me my own color palette to paint with. Color came full circle for me to play and work with professionally because I always approached it professionally.
I began to organize my own understanding of art from that point. Painting was my only attention again. So when I was being exposed to the art-world, art history and the art market and the art community blew me away from everything I thought I knew about art. With my previous techniques I applied this new information I was obtaining to my new “comprehension” of what a painting on the wall meant (in reality).

This was also like the real world becoming exposed to my world, which I do think I made a small impact on so far. I made my latest series of works for people with subjects practicing this. I was aiming toward a more traditional art approach to making art and painting.
A serious study. Didn’t take one day off. I wanted to understand fine art. I did what I knew how to do painting my oil paintings but in new ways I saw. I saw what fine art and real paintings looked like on a wall in a museum. That inspired me. I was doing what I always did. I was pushing myself to do what I had never done before.

I was growing up as an artist and I could see it and feel it. I was living it publicly for the first time verses privately like I always was. I shared the intensity I feel about art. I was being seen with my excitement towards my art.
And the best part is it helped me begin showing my newest paintings one at a time in a celebratory way which would later become my homemade art shows.

Exploring oil painting in as many ways as I am paints my progress so my process always has new purposes. I never ask for it I just do it. I figure it out for myself… because I have to, so I can keep making art.

I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t know what I was doing but I always knew what to do. And I always believed I could.
So back and forth I went from my old ways to my new ideas. I was teaching myself how to learn. I was learning how to study. I was studying how to teach… From my own hand I was being directed towards art again for the “first time” again. It was like being alone in the dark all this time to getting a real art culture shock of blinding light. What does painting mean to the world, and what does it mean to me? My art is still evolving and over time it clicks. I’m doing it.
I get lost, hurt, and confused sometimes. My path is so unique to me it is hard to judge it. Overall, I am combining everything I have ever done myself together one by one. Art gives me some kind of unknown knowledge I always wanted to know. I tell myself to “take my time, but do it now.”

I am finding my own voice out for myself as an artist oil painting and I can see it coming.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I had to teach myself how to oil paint but I do want to go to art school one day to learn more if I ever can. Anyway, it took me almost thirteen years to learn what is probably taught in the first week with a proper art education. I don’t know the term but turns out it is all about the technical part of oil painting. That is where I made my mistakes. I wasn’t aware there were technical sides to oil painting. I only cared about making the art, and making it any way I could. No matter who, what, when, where, why, how or how come. Naturally how I do things in my life is to do it very personally and in my own very special way. So creativity was always my art teacher. There wasn’t anybody around to tell me about necessary steps to oil painting either. Even when there was, I was too busy discovering things for myself to be interested in learning from anyone or any art classes.
I don’t know but I know I was too focused on making art from within me, and not what it was on the outside of me. Today could be different because I am forced to learn art on the outside in order to grow as an artist. I am willing to do that now, but there was no way I could then. Only took my own approach towards it. Today that is still true, but in new ways. I am seeing myself figuring out proper techniques and principles to continue oil painting. It took hundreds and hundreds of paintings to understand how to paint just one and half my adult life so far without guidance.. This new side of the art of painting feels like I am starting all over again. From mastering how to oil paint my way by practicing it for over a decade to being a complete beginner again is weird. It is very difficult and challenging and discouraging, but I like the push to be better than I was and the new approach is encouraging at the same time. People have mentioned advice in the past here and there but I could not understand them. I heard them but I didn’t listen to them. I had to find out for myself the hard way to comprehend art first with all the repercussions of what I was doing to learn the basics. Alone and by myself makes it dramatic for me and that’s how I like it. My physical artwork up to this point might suffer in a lot of ways from
not following the proper steps to make art, but it is okay. It’s part of my story and I am doing it now. I couldn’t have prevented what I had done even if I could understand so oh well. Like someone could tell me what has been discovered lifetimes ago, but for me to truly get it, I have to go through it on my own in my personal lifetime experience. Which I now did, and am ready to change. That was the road I was on being from walking on my own path to get to the starter level one road. I just went the backwards way. Art has to be exciting and devastating for me which is what takes me off the already paved path in the first place. I don’t know anyone doing what I do, but I found out slowly I need to be doing what they are doing and be on “both forks of the road”. None of the paintings I love would have been painted otherwise and none of the next ones would exist. It is an important thing to have happened to me for art. This is all for art but since I am me I have to do it myself. It gives my paintings and my vision another dream and art more paintings. In my life whether good or bad my paintings help me through it. I support all art by anyone and I love all art of any kind. I have lost and gained so much of myself to art but never I would have thought to lose my own art to art, itself. But art has saved my life so I owe my life to my art. But it is important to understand my art owes its life to me, but that is another story I will tell another time. Together art is about the art and it is about the artist.

First thing I learned late was linseed oil. It came into my life after 10 years of painting without knowing it existed. Linseed oil makes the paint thin. I was painting really thick. I learned why thin paintings look the way they did when I had no idea. I had an early impression of oil painting as an idea I progressed way different than that. Whatever that means. Just I never was attempting an “impasto” style (I didn’t even know it had a name). Painting thick was the way I started painting. I thank life for this. Overcoming the messy non-technical thick ways to oil paint helped me move the paint on the canvas into amazing paintings. My lack of knowledge didn’t even matter. Being aware I didn’t know better now matters. I had full deliberate awareness of what I was doing making art. I call making art an “Accident on purpose” in every art thing. I understand art; not proper steps to making it. But now I am learning. So
linseed oil was a good thing to discover later in my painting oil development because it let my colors move around like they never did before.. More paint could be made with less color and color had a new range of colors (and I love colors). Thick and thin collaboration of colors making rainbows together (and I love rainbows). It painted nice and fine, too.
Now I don’t know how to work it as well as the thick, but I gained two years of experience so far painting thin after ten years of impasto painting. The line work is giving more to my texture to look at. I am becoming a greater artist than I was so that is a good thing. Change is good. My works now have newer dynamics and I love linseed oil. I got a little classic glass bottle with a cork in it to store it in so it’s the best.

Second thing I learned late was all about primed canvas. Big mistake. I painted on the raw side of primed canvas usually every time on purpose. Raw canvas must be primed. I did not know that. Right away, the first thing I noticed as I began to oil paint was how much I loved the raw canvas. It became why I loved canvas painting with brushes. It was friendlier looking than the primed side and old looking. It welcomed me with this magic to the paint. It gripped the paint off my brushes and spoke to me. And it is the same color as my favorite color since blue: heather. Every time I’d prepare a canvas I ripped it off, flipped it over, and re-stretched the primed side to the back. Turns out I was un-preparing it! Ugh!! Again, nobody told me and I didn’t know better. Every single one of my most special and beloved paintings are proudly stretched and painted that way and I stood by it. I loved it. Now it symbolizes a limited lifespan like my own mortality as the artist. One with the paintings in that way. It means a lot to me emotionally. I think it’s okay and kind of cool. It is definently historic in a way I didn’t plan. Makes my story legendary because I will move on and make better, and more proper work leaving behind my classic raws. It is just the despair that came with it I have to keep. Really quick I wanted to say the raw canvas made my eyes use their sight to actually see the paint for what it is in real life. I could see when I painted both the canvas and the paint which grew that relationship. The primed side had the worst unbearable blinding white acrylic plastic fake paint I had ever seen because it had the primer already painted on it for protection, but right in front of my face so I hated it. Anway, I am learning to paint on it now and I love it for what it is. I am learning to paint on clear prime so I can see the raw canvas like before, and on the white primed canvas so I can do both until I learn the next thing. It wasn’t something I want to paint on and it is not the same canvas anymore. A new canvas. The white primed canvas messed with my color theory and now it is embracing it. It would make me sick seeing the way paint paints on it and now it makes me healthy. A lot of growing up as an adult artist. I’m getting over it now.

What it was is white is a already a color of paint, not canvas, and the heather raw natural canvas color was canvas, not paint. Clean and clear. I made the natural canvas become a color itself: clear. The 12th color of my palette. I believe there are only twelve colors in our world and clear is what I numbered the twelfth. So, I began to refer to the canvas color as “clear” and this was an invention to paint the color of air, mirrors, glass, water, and reflections and self reflection as a “point of view”. The space between one and the painting. I would paint it by leaving the canvas bare in areas as an individual color giving the canvas the chance to shine. I let it be part of the painting and the canvas allowed the paint to go beyond what physical oil paints can do representing the way I see the world in 12 colors: Clear, Black, Grey, White, Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Brown.

I need to explain one last thing about my mistake. Raw canvas soaks up the colors like an old cloth, especially with linseed oil I learned later. It looked real and authentic and the personality of the canvas was true to the art of painting and could honor eachother but with damage. My first ever oil painting was luckily painted on the primed side. My other paintings were on the backsides of properly treated canvas which is giving them some protection thankfully. I will have to learn how to conserve them now and handle them with extreme care forever. Fine. The whole thing broke my heart. I worked so hard for so long on all my paintings… I don’t want them to break. The damage of my life’s work is physically decaying rot without repair because oil paint painted on rae canvas isn’t stable. I felt like everything I did was wasted for nothing but that is not true. In fact it was all for what I have so much more to be an artist for; not less. This had to happen to someone and it happened for me, Bobby Haag, not to me. One day it will make sense. This whole thing found out a new way to protect my artworks without me being there to
do it. I need to be myself as an artist so I can help keep my paintings safe primed or not for now though. They have the same chance as a properly prepared painting does anyway I think. Love is the problem solver. I love every single one of my paintings and I take care of them and always do. To last for future generations to enjoy, study, and see in person, because of their sentimental value will mean something to art. I believe in that. That sentimental value to paintings creates value of the painting. Responsibly (of me) I documented all my paintings as soon as they were painted. Those images exist at least in their prime like an old photo of them when they were young. And currently these paintings are in my personal collection and in the hands of friends and family and people I met along the way painting. They are being cared for and loved right now during our own lifetimes. and that is beautiful not tragic.

Honestly I would have never chose to ignore advice or be ignorant in any way. I never would stubbornly paint on raw canvas if I knew the reason why not to. Seriously I never knew for twelve and a half years straight. That’s why I never saw other artists doing it I guess. Facing this lesson alone I take it, and in the worst way imaginable. It was made for me like I said. I understand why preparing a canvas was invented in the first place from it.. Me and painting are moving forward now. I am learning how to properly prepare my raw canvases, and my new works will benefit from this added seriousness to my art. In both archival ways and visual quality.
All I knew of art is how to make it but now I know more than that. I am an artist at heart. I want to learn the rules. It’s my fate and it is my destiny. I get to watch me become a real artist in real time and share it. My first works are a true sign of me always being a real artist without knowing or thinking I was one, and I tried and did my best.

My moments painting were making people around me happy including myself. It was by being an artist painting the artwork I was making. It is horrible I made a big mistake but alright because of what makes my first works very important artworks of my time painting, and my second works a new chapter. Maybe my raw works will one day look like I made them a thousand years ago because of my mistake. That is art in itself. I imagine my story and live to tell the tale by refusing to not be an artist, and by suffering the things that come with making art freely. I am intentionally entering the inside art world approach from the outside way of doing things because of this now, and one day I will get there so get ready!. I am learning to follow the rules so I can bring into the art world my perspective of art with my failures. Art seeing itself from its past to show itself there are many ways art can understand itself on the inside. This is a good thing for art. There is room for me and my painting to do it, too! It is good I do not fully understand anything about the tested paved road in that way, because I am beginning to come stumbling on my own dusty dirt road to get there. I can arrive with something special. There is only more to be done and only one me to do
my part which is this ongoing adventure painting.
So yeah. I come from the home I came from, and will be welcomed by the big art world as a guest in its house. With everything I knew then, and everything I know now, to keep everything I had done and havent yet and bring it with me.. What I have done in the past I will only incorporate it into what I will do in the future. Make it better. Old and new. It won’t be so scary after all. I have love in my heart and the painting on my mind. I admit defeat, and me and painting will become better in time. Everything is legendary. I am becoming who I am now not just as an artist but an oil painter. I realize there is a lot to learn about oil painting, and I want to do it (with all of it) once I get there. The world I paint I want to share.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Now I am really painting. I have never seen my painting’s color painted so wet! When I was painting as the medium to make something out of paint the process formed a different goal in the past. This is the first time I seem to be using paint to make a painting with it, actually, and I am seeing the quality of the oil paint for the first time. I am experiencing something brand new as a beginner again. I am not good at it yet, but it’s about time I try. I can confidently say up to this point I already have become an expert of color from all my devotion toward it so much that it has turned into some kind of tool I have now to begin to paint with. I became very good at working with the bad qualities and characteristics of oil paint throughout my years accepting all its outcomes. Up to this point it seems I get to learn how to see the good qualities and characteristics of true painting with the colors. Exploring my creativity through making art in all the different ways led up to this outcome, giving everything I know a place to learn more about it all. The canvas isn’t sucking the color out of the paint his time and everything looks richer and shiny. The artwork will last for a long time, too, so everything I paint is kept safe and saved.

Knowing that and seeing the colors is changing my life as an artist going into the unknown again. But this unknown is different and has already been known for hundreds of years of oil painting history properly doing it right. I feel as happy as I did when I began painting! And as scared as I was in a good way. I don’t know if I am even good at it so far but because I built my artist career separate of this happening, I get to keep all the forms of oil painting I had loved to do as an artist to move forward just by painting more. And I can still be myself too without stopping. It is like I am learning how to paint all over again (I keep experiencing that feeling). It makes me think if I could make raw canvas look good with everything working against me, then starting with a properly prepared canvas now I could paint amazing things in ways I have never known possible with everything working with me. It will take as many days to master it as it did when I was aiming to do do with my old canvas method. It seems like every time I paint, painting becomes brand new again when I do it. In the end, without knowing what was happening, I was unintentionally leading toward a beginning. I am grateful for the worst to get to the best.

I don’t want to downplay how sad I am about what happened or how excited I am for what’s happening. Just had no idea the thing that would be ruined forever was the thing that’d fix it forever. Whenever I have something go bad in my life, I turn to being creative, which is my favorite thing to be, to make goodness. There is importance in the artist and the artwork for art to exist.

I gave my paintings the attention they deserved when nobody was around but not the proper care they needed when I won’t be around… My mistake can earn my paintings the same attention I gave them one day. Both my old and new paintings are a special one of a kind just like me!
All my success and failure as an artist has been from being true to my love of art. I have to grow the artistry into my works of art that will take time for me to get to know. It is so crazy and I hope I can do it. I am finally seeing for myself that I AM an oil painter. I have said before that I didn’t consider myself a painter in the past. That I was only an artist and that was true then, but now I feel like turning into more of myself by oil painting as an artist. I am learning how to paint like a painter and I am actually doing the correct way. The amount of effort I put into my work is how far I will go I think, and I believe in what I am doing.

I have come a long way and I have just begun. For myself and my paintings! I have tried every art form I could attempt… and it is true oil painting was always meant for me. I was not born to be a custodian; I was born to be an artist… a master oil painter… me. One day I will be happy I never stopped, quit, or gave up. I found out the best way to explain my paintings is to say: I paint my paintings in love and then they dry that way, and that is my work of art.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Over time, I seem to just be finding out for myself there is more than just one way for me to be an artist. I can choose for myself what kind of art I want to make and why. I get to decide where and how my artwork fits in with the world around me. My path as an artist defines me as my own one-of-a-kind artist. Because, I am the one and only me: Bobby Haag. That is what makes me a real artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bobbyhaagpainting.com
• Instagram: @bobbyhaagpainting