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A native New Englander and a 1978 graduate
of Pratt Institute, Bob is one of only two marine artists to have won the
prestigious Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Heritage Award three times. This
is the top award given each year at the Mystic International Marine Art
Exhibition, recognizing the one work in the show that “best documents our
maritime heritage, past or present, for generations of the future.” Bob
also received an Award of Excellence at the 1996 Mystic International.
After graduation from Pratt Institute, Bob pursued a career as an art
director/graphic designer in Manhattan. In 1985 a friend living on
Nantucket sent him a scrimshaw kit as a gift and this proved to be a major turning point in his career. He fell in love with the art form,
and after several years of working by day as an art director and spending
nights working on scrimshaw, Bob finally quit his ‘day job’ and went into
scrimshaw and marine art as a fulltime career. Since then his unique
approach and reverence for the traditions of scrimshaw have won him
accolades from collectors, gallery directors and artists alike.
At the beginning of his scrimshaw career he began an intensive and
continuing study of whaling ships, whales and whaling history. This in
turn has led into many other areas of marine research. From 1993 through
1996, Bob attended daily drawing and painting classes at The Riley League
of Artists in White Plains, New York, practicing the principles of
Classical Realism. This gave him the picture making skills needed to push
the art of scrimshaw to new and higher levels. His work now stands on par
with the best in the world of contemporary marine art. He has focused on
creating original images through the melding of painstaking historical
research and an almost painterly engraving technique.
Whether it's the drama of a 'Nantucket sleigh ride', the gnarled visage of
a whaling captain or the inquisitive expression of a walrus perched on
arctic ice, Bob not only remains faithful to historical and natural
detail, but captures the essence of his subject as well.
Bob is one of the featured artists in a new
book on Contemporary Marine Art,
Bound for Blue Water. Click on the link for more information.
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