Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce our fifth solo exhibition with master draftsperson, Robert Lansden in his latest endeavor on paper, entitled, Silent Witness. The exhibition will open with an artist’s reception on Saturday, February 28th, 5 – 7 pm and will run through April 4th. The event is free and open to the public, and the artist will be in attendance.
Silent Witness presents a body of work by Robert Lansden that reflects a lifelong devotion to drawing, paper, and the human-made line. A Kentucky native now living and working in Norwalk, Connecticut, Lansden holds master’s degrees in both Library Science and Fine Art. His work is deeply informed by Buddhism and other Eastern wisdom traditions, which shape his contemplative approach to both making and viewing art. Working primarily with watercolor and ink on paper, Lansden embraces the sensuous immediacy of hand-drawn mark-making, favoring the vitality of the human line over the detachment of machine-generated imagery.
For this exhibition, Lansden employs a simple, hand-executed algorithm—a set of instructions based on the repeated bisection and nesting of grids—drawing until the surface becomes too dense to continue. Some works are created using fiber-tipped pens on archival watercolor paper, while others are drawn with a hollow bamboo pen, underscoring his commitment to humble tools and tactile processes. Though rooted in geometry, the drawings resist mechanical precision; instead, they reveal subtle variations and nuances that emerge only through the presence of the artist’s hand.
Lansden approaches drawing as an experiential practice rather than an analytical one. The grid-based structures function as graphic expressions of natural geometric processes, echoing the philosophical idea that mathematics is not merely a way to describe the world, but an intrinsic part of its being. By working within the singular mode of geometric abstraction, Lansden invites viewers to encounter these forms perceptually—to feel their density, rhythm, and stillness—rather than to decode them intellectually.
Robert Lansden received a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Atlanta College of Art, a Master of Library Science from the Palmer School of Library & Information Science in New York, and a Master of Fine Art from Tulane University. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States in galleries, universities, and museums, including the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, AL), Nebraska Wesleyan University’s Elder Gallery (Lincoln, NE), Nexus Center for Contemporary Art (Atlanta, GA), the Arkansas Arts Center (Little Rock, AR), the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA), Kentler International Drawing Space (Brooklyn, NY), Cris Worley Fine Arts (Dallas, TX), Rowayton Arts Center (Norwalk, CT), and Silvermine Gallery (New Canaan, CT).
Cris Worley Fine Arts is a Dallas, Texas based contemporary art gallery located in the Dallas Design District. With over 20 years of experience, Cris Worley is dedicated to promoting innovative work by contemporary artists at various stages of their careers.