Robert Akeley lived in Temescal for a long time, and had seen it go through a lot of changes. His life had gone through a lot of changes, too, and his art is a reflection of that.
Robert was born in Maine in a pastor's family in 1930, and it was a conservative environment, as you might imagine. After college at Princeton and training to be a psychiatrist at UVA, came a big switch, and Robert ended up living in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood during the height of the Beat Generation in the 1950s (think Jack Kerouac if you don't know what that means). The 1960s brought more change for San Francisco, and for Robert.
But 1970 brought upheaval. Some might call it a mid-life crisis. Robert thought of it more as a mid-life opportunity. While some people got depressed, Robert got angry. He moved out of San Francisco and found a house he could afford in Temescal, a neighborhood that was having its own crisis. The new routing of Highway 24 had recently been completed, and BART was busy tearing up neighborhoods all over Oakland. Temescal was something of a wasteland, cut off from what were formerly adjacent neighborhoods. Robert was becoming more focused on his internal life. To help process his own growth, Robert took up painting. He found Rob March Harper who became his teacher and guide. As Robert said, he didn't want to learn how he was supposed to paint, he just wanted to learn the basics.
As with most artists, Robert's interests and background helped shape his art. People had always been his primary interest in life, so he began by painting portraits. Except for the glasses, his portrait of Carl Jung looks a lot like Robert with short hair. Besides practicing psychiatry, Jung also painted and sculpted, and proposed that creating art can be a form of therapy, so it's not a surprising connection.
Robert did other representational paintings, still in his same vibrant style, and began discovering that certain things looked more pleasing to his eye. More work on composition led to more abstract and less representational paintings. Later a larger part of Robert's work was abstract and geometrical in nature, though he also had a series of 'word' paintings that came directly from his psychiatric work.
Robert's home in Temescal was interesting in its own right. It was built in 1892 as a doctor's office, and as result has some interesting features. It has two front doors, one leading into the home, the other leading to a waiting room for patients. The largest bedroom appears to have been designed as lying-in ward, and one of the smaller rooms as a nurses' station. Art created by Robert and other artists adorned the walls, and the front room was devoted to music. Robert rented out various rooms to people, so it must have felt more like community housing when everyone was home. Behind the house is a barn. Not a garage or garden shed, but an actual barn with a hoist for hay bales and other supplies. The hay loft had been converted into a work space, and was quite cozy. Robert did his painting downstairs in the barn, sometimes accompanied by a stray cat that had adopted him. Around the barn were countless rose bushes, another of Robert's interests.
A FILM In Loving memory of Dr Robert Akeley, 1930-2020
https://vimeo.com/493377047
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Excerpted from the Princeton Alumni Weekly
Robert grew up in Gardiner, Maine, where his father was rector of the Episcopal Church, and graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA. At Princeton, he was a distance runner and captained our track team, competed in many major indoor and outdoor East Coast track meets, and twice ran the mile against the great four-minute miler, Roger Bannister.
Robert graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School and spent two years at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich before establishing a private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, where he helped found a school for autistic children and a gay doctors group.
In 1997, he closed his office and began seeing himself more as an artist than a doctor. Purchasing an old house and barn in Oakland, he made it a community center for art shows, concerts, benefits, and community gatherings. A largely self-taught artist, he exhibited his work throughout the area, and he remained famously opinionated and fiercely independent until he passed away in Oakland Nov. 25, 2020.
Robert was born in Maine in a pastor's family in 1930, and it was a conservative environment, as you might imagine. After college at Princeton and training to be a psychiatrist at UVA, came a big switch, and Robert ended up living in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood during the height of the Beat Generation in the 1950s (think Jack Kerouac if you don't know what that means). The 1960s brought more change for San Francisco, and for Robert.
But 1970 brought upheaval. Some might call it a mid-life crisis. Robert thought of it more as a mid-life opportunity. While some people got depressed, Robert got angry. He moved out of San Francisco and found a house he could afford in Temescal, a neighborhood that was having its own crisis. The new routing of Highway 24 had recently been completed, and BART was busy tearing up neighborhoods all over Oakland. Temescal was something of a wasteland, cut off from what were formerly adjacent neighborhoods. Robert was becoming more focused on his internal life. To help process his own growth, Robert took up painting. He found Rob March Harper who became his teacher and guide. As Robert said, he didn't want to learn how he was supposed to paint, he just wanted to learn the basics.
As with most artists, Robert's interests and background helped shape his art. People had always been his primary interest in life, so he began by painting portraits. Except for the glasses, his portrait of Carl Jung looks a lot like Robert with short hair. Besides practicing psychiatry, Jung also painted and sculpted, and proposed that creating art can be a form of therapy, so it's not a surprising connection.
Robert did other representational paintings, still in his same vibrant style, and began discovering that certain things looked more pleasing to his eye. More work on composition led to more abstract and less representational paintings. Later a larger part of Robert's work was abstract and geometrical in nature, though he also had a series of 'word' paintings that came directly from his psychiatric work.
Robert's home in Temescal was interesting in its own right. It was built in 1892 as a doctor's office, and as result has some interesting features. It has two front doors, one leading into the home, the other leading to a waiting room for patients. The largest bedroom appears to have been designed as lying-in ward, and one of the smaller rooms as a nurses' station. Art created by Robert and other artists adorned the walls, and the front room was devoted to music. Robert rented out various rooms to people, so it must have felt more like community housing when everyone was home. Behind the house is a barn. Not a garage or garden shed, but an actual barn with a hoist for hay bales and other supplies. The hay loft had been converted into a work space, and was quite cozy. Robert did his painting downstairs in the barn, sometimes accompanied by a stray cat that had adopted him. Around the barn were countless rose bushes, another of Robert's interests.
A FILM In Loving memory of Dr Robert Akeley, 1930-2020
https://vimeo.com/493377047
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
Excerpted from the Princeton Alumni Weekly
Robert grew up in Gardiner, Maine, where his father was rector of the Episcopal Church, and graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA. At Princeton, he was a distance runner and captained our track team, competed in many major indoor and outdoor East Coast track meets, and twice ran the mile against the great four-minute miler, Roger Bannister.
Robert graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School and spent two years at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich before establishing a private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, where he helped found a school for autistic children and a gay doctors group.
In 1997, he closed his office and began seeing himself more as an artist than a doctor. Purchasing an old house and barn in Oakland, he made it a community center for art shows, concerts, benefits, and community gatherings. A largely self-taught artist, he exhibited his work throughout the area, and he remained famously opinionated and fiercely independent until he passed away in Oakland Nov. 25, 2020.
Robert Akeley lived in Temescal for a long time, and had seen it go through a lot of changes. His life had gone through a lot of changes, too, and his art is a reflection of that.
Robert was born in Maine in a pastor's family in 1930, and it was a conservative environment, as you might imagine. After college at Princeton and training to be a psychiatrist at UVA, came a big switch, and Robert ended up living in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood during the height of the Beat Generation in the 1950s (think Jack Kerouac if you don't know what that means). The 1960s brought more change for San Francisco, and for Robert.
But 1970 brought upheaval. Some might call it a mid-life crisis. Robert thought of it more as a mid-life opportunity. While some people got depressed, Robert got angry. He moved out of San Francisco and found a house he could afford in Temescal, a neighborhood that was having its own crisis. The new routing of Highway 24 had recently been completed, and BART was busy tearing up neighborhoods all over Oakland. Temescal was something of a wasteland, cut off from what were formerly adjacent neighborhoods. Robert was becoming more focused on his internal life. To help process his own growth, Robert took up painting. He found Rob March Harper who became his teacher and guide. As Robert said, he didn't want to learn how he was supposed to paint, he just wanted to learn the basics.
As with most artists, Robert's interests and background helped shape his art. People had always been his primary interest in life, so he began by painting portraits. Except for the glasses, his portrait of Carl Jung looks a lot like Robert with short hair. Besides practicing psychiatry, Jung also painted and sculpted, and proposed that creating art can be a form of therapy, so it's not a surprising connection.
Robert did other representational paintings, still in his same vibrant style, and began discovering that certain things looked more pleasing to his eye. More work on composition led to more abstract and less representational paintings. Later a larger part of Robert's work was abstract and geometrical in nature, though he also had a series of 'word' paintings that came directly from his psychiatric work.
Robert's home in Temescal was interesting in its own right. It was built in 1892 as a doctor's office, and as result has some interesting features. It has two front doors, one leading into the home, the other leading to a waiting room for patients. The largest bedroom appears to have been designed as lying-in ward, and one of the smaller rooms as a nurses' station. Art created by Robert and other artists adorned the walls, and the front room was devoted to music. Robert rented out various rooms to people, so it must have felt more like community housing when everyone was home. Behind the house is a barn. Not a garage or garden shed, but an actual barn with a hoist for hay bales and other supplies. The hay loft had been converted into a work space, and was quite cozy. Robert did his painting downstairs in the barn, sometimes accompanied by a stray cat that had adopted him. Around the barn were countless rose bushes, another of Robert's interests.
A FILM In Loving memory of Dr Robert Akeley, 1930-2020
https://vimeo.com/493377047
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
Excerpted from the Princeton Alumni Weekly
Robert grew up in Gardiner, Maine, where his father was rector of the Episcopal Church, and graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA. At Princeton, he was a distance runner and captained our track team, competed in many major indoor and outdoor East Coast track meets, and twice ran the mile against the great four-minute miler, Roger Bannister.
Robert graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School and spent two years at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich before establishing a private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, where he helped found a school for autistic children and a gay doctors group.
In 1997, he closed his office and began seeing himself more as an artist than a doctor. Purchasing an old house and barn in Oakland, he made it a community center for art shows, concerts, benefits, and community gatherings. A largely self-taught artist, he exhibited his work throughout the area, and he remained famously opinionated and fiercely independent until he passed away in Oakland Nov. 25, 2020.
Robert was born in Maine in a pastor's family in 1930, and it was a conservative environment, as you might imagine. After college at Princeton and training to be a psychiatrist at UVA, came a big switch, and Robert ended up living in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood during the height of the Beat Generation in the 1950s (think Jack Kerouac if you don't know what that means). The 1960s brought more change for San Francisco, and for Robert.
But 1970 brought upheaval. Some might call it a mid-life crisis. Robert thought of it more as a mid-life opportunity. While some people got depressed, Robert got angry. He moved out of San Francisco and found a house he could afford in Temescal, a neighborhood that was having its own crisis. The new routing of Highway 24 had recently been completed, and BART was busy tearing up neighborhoods all over Oakland. Temescal was something of a wasteland, cut off from what were formerly adjacent neighborhoods. Robert was becoming more focused on his internal life. To help process his own growth, Robert took up painting. He found Rob March Harper who became his teacher and guide. As Robert said, he didn't want to learn how he was supposed to paint, he just wanted to learn the basics.
As with most artists, Robert's interests and background helped shape his art. People had always been his primary interest in life, so he began by painting portraits. Except for the glasses, his portrait of Carl Jung looks a lot like Robert with short hair. Besides practicing psychiatry, Jung also painted and sculpted, and proposed that creating art can be a form of therapy, so it's not a surprising connection.
Robert did other representational paintings, still in his same vibrant style, and began discovering that certain things looked more pleasing to his eye. More work on composition led to more abstract and less representational paintings. Later a larger part of Robert's work was abstract and geometrical in nature, though he also had a series of 'word' paintings that came directly from his psychiatric work.
Robert's home in Temescal was interesting in its own right. It was built in 1892 as a doctor's office, and as result has some interesting features. It has two front doors, one leading into the home, the other leading to a waiting room for patients. The largest bedroom appears to have been designed as lying-in ward, and one of the smaller rooms as a nurses' station. Art created by Robert and other artists adorned the walls, and the front room was devoted to music. Robert rented out various rooms to people, so it must have felt more like community housing when everyone was home. Behind the house is a barn. Not a garage or garden shed, but an actual barn with a hoist for hay bales and other supplies. The hay loft had been converted into a work space, and was quite cozy. Robert did his painting downstairs in the barn, sometimes accompanied by a stray cat that had adopted him. Around the barn were countless rose bushes, another of Robert's interests.
A FILM In Loving memory of Dr Robert Akeley, 1930-2020
https://vimeo.com/493377047
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
Excerpted from the Princeton Alumni Weekly
Robert grew up in Gardiner, Maine, where his father was rector of the Episcopal Church, and graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA. At Princeton, he was a distance runner and captained our track team, competed in many major indoor and outdoor East Coast track meets, and twice ran the mile against the great four-minute miler, Roger Bannister.
Robert graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School and spent two years at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich before establishing a private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, where he helped found a school for autistic children and a gay doctors group.
In 1997, he closed his office and began seeing himself more as an artist than a doctor. Purchasing an old house and barn in Oakland, he made it a community center for art shows, concerts, benefits, and community gatherings. A largely self-taught artist, he exhibited his work throughout the area, and he remained famously opinionated and fiercely independent until he passed away in Oakland Nov. 25, 2020.
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