Robert's Biography

Robert  Sears was born in Springfield Massachusetts in 1951 and spent his formative years in New York.

He was encouraged by his grandfather, a native New Yorker to take advantage of the many museums and galleries that the city had to offer;  "from an early age I was impressed by the importance of art in our lives and the respect paid to it by so many people."

Robert spent time in large cosmopolitan centres; New York, Montreal and Vancouver. His paintings have been purchased by private and corporate collectors in the U.S., Canada and abroad.

"Living in the Pacific Northwest has greatly influenced me as an artist. In the scenes I paint I try to express my ideas against this strange and unique part of the world.  Living on a small island for many years has led me to an Eastern sensibility in the way I live my life. The similarity between this landscape and that of Japan has led me to a feeling of affinity with the Japanese realists Hiroshige and Hokusai  and Japanese  woodblock prints-  that and the fact that they depict everyday scenes in their work."

"In my work I am concerned with the mystery and melancholy in our everyday lives and the alienation of the individual in the world of today. I feel that the greatest level art can ascend to is to make us look at things in a different way; when it can make the commonplace seem strange.  The ecstasy with which a child first experiences the world; entirely with imagination and devoid of names and explanations is slowly lost as we accept the explanations of reality imposed by our culture . We seem to spend our lives trying to regain this ecstasy through many different means when what we are trying to recapture is the beauty of the enigma itself."

Robert lived on Gabriola Island for 27 years and now lives in Cowichan Bay