Johnson, Robert

Technique: Acrylic

Born in Montreal in 1949, Robert Johnson is a self-taught painter. At the age of 20 he made his debut in oil painting. Within the ardour of his youth, he painted several paintings all of which he sold, and with this initial success, he knew he had a promising future in the visual arts. Since then he has painted portraits, animals, race cars, cityscapes, rural areas, and more than a hundred murals across Canada found in hotels, churches and private residences. He was awarded first place in a painting competition in British Columbia in 1986, and subsequently made many commissioned works, a job he particularly enjoyed. It was during this period that he painted a portrait of John Paul II, who, by happy coincidence, now finds itself exhibited in the Vatican.

Today, he focuses more on his collection of horses. In 2010, he presented the new series in a Montreal art gallery, and it was an immediate success. At this exhibition the director of Cavalia, a famous touring multimedia equestrian show, discovered his work. Since then, his paintings have travelled around the world and are found in the capitals of large-scale equestrian theatre, from Dubai to Singapore, and from Europe to the Americas.

Robert Johnson is an internationally renowned painter who portrays well established, and very contemporary hyper-realist animals. With his unique style which explores a tone on tone technique, the animals he depicts look rather out of the ordinary, with a charismatic energy and bewitching magnetism. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections.