Mill Valley artist reclaims our complicated relationship with the color pink
As a child growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, Laura Roebuck knew what toys and clothes were for her and what weren’t.
If it was pink, it was for girls. If it was blue, it was for boys. Never mind that the only reason that was so was because it was marketed that way. Never mind that up until the 20h century, pink was considered a strong color, and thus more suitable for boys, and not one associated with femininity.
“Nobody had any idea that it had been different or that there was anything to question about it,” says Roebuck. “It speaks to the largely arbitrary nature of these things and the changeable nature of them.”
As an adult involved in the women’s movement and attending consciousness raising groups, “I really took issue with the binary,” the Mill Valley artist says. “I really just rejected all of it.
Roebuck wasn’t painting back then. A modern dancer in her youth who became a psychiatrist practicing in San Francisco and Marin, Roebuck didn’t pick up paintbrushes until 2003, drawn to abstract expressionism. Recently, she decided she wanted to explore all the connotations, emotions “and all that other crap” the color elicits, resulting in “Reclaiming Pink,” a solo exhibition of her paintings at Sausalito’s Upstart Modern through Jan. 15.
A slow process
It was a slow process. The pinks of her youth certainly didn’t beg to be embraced. So none of her early paintings included the color.
“All of the pinks they were using were very unattractive. They’re ugly, they’re plasticky. They’re not even interesting colors,” she says.
But then she realized that by excluding pink, she was placing limits on her artworks. Even famed artists Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning embraced pink in their paintings.
So she bought some pink paint that she found intriguing. “One day, I opened a tube of paint and I pushed out the pink oil and I was in love,” she says with a laugh. “It wasn’t a conscious thing that I knew I was going to reclaim. I just went back to what had been an early love of the color.”
That early love started in her bedroom in Cleveland, Ohio. It was decorated with large pink and orange flowers, colors that spoke to her before she has any understanding of what they stood for.
Pink is a color many young girls gravitate toward, thanks to marketing. It’s also associated with breast cancer, with its recognizable pink ribbon and all things pink in October, deemed Breast Cancer Awareness Month — aka Pinktober, again thanks to marketing.
“People have a complicated relationship with pink because it has so much baggage. There was a time when it was just another color and it didn’t have all these things attached to it. I think it’s hard to figure out, what is my interest and what is imposed on me, how are are we being inculcated, how are we being taught these things? It starts so early,” she says.
Embracing beliefs
How we feel about the color, she believes, is how we have embraced, often unconsciously, our family’s values and beliefs. It’s hard to parse out what we truly believe in and what culture thrusts upon us.
“There’s no way to separate it from marketing and from the financial aspect of marketing and advertising. It’s really hard to separate it from how saturated we are. If you still have a sexist culture, sexist society, and they’re making these determinations about what you’re supposed to like, and how you’re supposed to look and what job you’re supposed to have, pink has come to signify something that was negative. It’s wonderful that there’s been a reclaiming and liberation of pink, but again it’s still kind of participating in this idea that there’s some association, that there’s a dyad you can associate with an entire gender,” she says.
“The part of reclaiming the color is because it is a beautiful, strong, kind of fascinating color. When I started painting pink, that was it.”
Roebuck says her deep dive into pink has helped learn about herself — as a healer and as an artist — and uncover what was there a long time ago just waiting to be found.
She hopes her paintings inspire others to do the same.
“I want people to think about what might lock them in or limit them, what beliefs they have about what they’re not supposed to do and who they’re not supposed to be. It’s huge to say, ‘No, I’m not going to be limited, I’m not going to be trapped.’ So I hope that if people have preconceived notions of pink that they loosen them and don’t limit themselves. It’s a fabulous color,” she says.
“It really is about breaking boundaries.”
IF YOU GO
What: “Reclaiming Pink”, a solo exhibition of paintings by Laura Roebuck
When: Through Jan. 15, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays or by appointment
Where: Upstart Modern, 4000 Bridgeway, Suite 100, Sausalito
Admission: Free
Information: 415-559-0020, upstartmodern.com
More: Opening reception is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 13