In The Artist’s Words
… On Painting

I can’t conceive of anything being more varied and rich than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it… ad then I’d like to put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my life. Painting, for me, has never been a hobby. It is not relaxing – writers and athletes would say the same. Since I was twelve, I have always painted unless I am interrupted. It is a labor, but it is what I do… a labor of love let us say.

I am often asked about the techniques and procedures for my work. First and foremost is the idea or the thought behind the painting. Although it is a joy to create something just for the sake of creating, it is much more satisfying to create something special. It may not necessarily be brilliantly executed, but ‘special’ means it comes from the heart and experience unique to oneself.

One definition of a masterpiece I have heard… when you see it, you should feel you are seeing it for the first time, and it should look as if it is done without effort. This is a very, very tough yardstick. I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever done a masterpiece, but when I am struggling with each painting – and they are all a struggle – I often feel that I am nowhere near those two goals. Sadly, I feel much wildlife art is just the opposite. When you see it, you feel you have seen it a thousand times before – yet another wolf, or another loon, or some overworked subject done in the same old way. And, it looks as if it is done with a great deal of effort – every feather of every hair is painted in great detail, but no sense of form or air or space or time, and often flat as pancake.

My own ideas come from many sources: it may be from a film, travels, wildlife parks and zoos. Everyone has his or her own muse. That is the fabulous thing about human creativity: each person is as unique as fingerprints or zebra stripes. The muse must be cultivated and she will come to you in unexpected ways. For subject mater reference, I avoid the spectacular and obviously beautiful. This is a question of taste. I leave that department to post cards. I have no need to paint it. Nowadays, I will deliberately seek out the opposite of glorious… I find that nowadays, many aspiring artists ‘cook up’ most of their picture, especially the habitat. Whatever their reasons may be, they base their work on the real world as their eyes have seen it. They make take liberties, but reality is the base. Reality is my taste.

People often ask how long it takes me to do a painting. The answer is – I don’t know. I work on five to fifteen at once. I like them when I first start them, then they always get worse so I start a new one to cheer me up. By the time the fifth one looks really awful to me, the first one doesn’t look quite as bad, and a new idea about it may have come along so I can work on it for a while. One took me about six years on and off!

Living on Salt Spring Island on Canada’s West Coast allows me to view the world with a bit of critical distance. The pace of island life is slower than on the mainland, and the rhythms of the sea, the shore and the forest are always close at hand. While I am painting, scents and sounds waft in through the open windows of my studio. Even though I am also surrounded by modern gadgets – phone, computer and fax machine – that defy geography, this proximity to the world as it was before technology and progress became our gods is my constant reminder of something deeper – of just how great a responsibility we have to achieve a state of peaceful co-existence between the human world and the wild.

Robert Bateman

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Robert Bateman’s works can be found at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia; Burlington Art Centre, Burlington; Ontario, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; Denver Art Museum; Hamilton Art Gallery, Ontario; Genesee Country Museum, New York; Glenbow Museum, Alberta; National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson WY; and many private collections. This is the first exhibition of Robert Bateman’s works in Russia.