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The Okanagan Arts Directory

Robert Jenkins, landscape artist Address 1669 Newport Road Westbank BC V4T 1X1 Telephone and Fax (250) 768-6600 Email Address Website http://www.robertjenkinsart.com Affiliations Alternator Gallery, Gallery Vertigo Categories Visual Arts and Antiques - Artists and Photographers

In painting the wilderness, I try to convey its message, not a verbal message that I can write down, but something more elusive that makes sense before words. We are the products of a world that has and still shapes us. In our artificial civilized environment, we lose contact with our roots, our source of being. Living here, close to nature, is a wonderful opportunity, to re-establish whom we are, to discover our being, to understand ourselves better, and to perhaps shape a better future. When I paint nature, I try to experience it first, not just passively, but actively, so that it becomes for me a friend. Allowing that friend to communicate through the painting is a priority. Born Vernon, BC, I attended schools in Vancouver, Trail, and North Vancouver, then UBC and U of Calgary graduating with a doctorate in Cosmic Ray Physics in 1966. Throughout my growing up, I had always drawn and painted, and, although I had chosen to follow my scientific side in my professional career, art remained a strong interest. I began painting seriously with oil paintings of landscape, mostly, but with my move to the New England area and exposure to the New York art scene, gradually shifted to large minimalist geometric shaped canvases, and acrylic colour stains. I continued in this vein when I moved back to Canada (Ottawa) to commence a career as a radio communications scientist with the federal government. A number of exhibitions later, with the pressures of career and a young family, my painting was put on hold - I did not have the time or energy to do it all. Now retired, and living in the Okanagan I have been able to restart my artistic endeavors from a very different perspective. I enjoy hiking in the mountains, and began by drawing the things that I saw. From pen and ink, I moved into pastels, a medium I had not used since childhood, and found the responsiveness of that medium ideal for the present work. The earlier, abstract works reflected an inner sense of order and harmony; my present work in landscape is intended to celebrate the 'not always orderly' message of nature. It is a voyage of discovery which never ceases to surprise and delight.