Lobdell

At the end of the term Lobdell invited my class to visit his studio -- an exciting moment.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

At the end of the term Lobdell invited my class to visit his studio -- an exciting moment.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

Robbie Conal, who served as a Gallery Director for the College of Notre Dame in Belmont in 1979 had to work on Lobdell to convince him to show his 1961 "Summer Mural," a 20-foot-wide phallic abstraction.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

At first I remember thinking that Lobdell was intuitive, but as I watched the demonstration unfold it hit me: he was counterintuitive.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

I don't remember seeing Lobdell at graduation, and in general I think he tried to avoid social situations, and to some degree his students.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

Lobdell, who told an interviewer in 1960 that "being anonymous is really the best condition to be able to create" was not showing very widely when I knew him, although I do remember him having a small show of monotypes at Galerie Smith Andersen in Palo Alto.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

In a feature article titled "The Long Distance Runner" Anneli Rufus wrote this about Lobdell:

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

Lobdell was a tense painter, and it was the tension of the unexpected that kept him alive to his own work.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

Twenty years later, at the opening of an exhibition of The Anderson Collection at San Francisco MOMA, I saw the first Lobdell painting I had seen in more than two decades.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011

Lobdell was lost in some paperwork when I got there, so I looked around and waited.

John Seed: Frank Lobdell: "Nothing Worth Anything Is Easy" John Seed 2011