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Robert Minuzzo was born in San Francisco, California on February 28, 1956.As a child Robert learned to draw from his mother while his father shared his love of the California wilderness with his young son.Growing up across the street from Golden Gate Park accelerated his awareness of nature.By high school Robert’s artistic talent won him the opportunity to paint a mural on his auditorium entrance at Lowell High and members of its faculty became his first collectors.
Robert began his higher education in pre-med at City College in San Francisco.Using his draftsmanship skills in anatomy class helped him memorize human body structure.An art professor there recommended he apply to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. After his acceptance he declared a major in illustration; but by his second year Robert’s natural gift for painting was heavily encouraged by his instructors.He emerged from Art Center in 1980 as an artist, or more precisely a painter.
Robert returned to Northern California and began capturing the spectacular beauty of its landscapes on paper and canvas.With influences from the work of de Kooning, Pollock and Diebenkorn, he has created his own unique style:often an impressionist, sometimes a more abstract expressionist but always using his command of the spectrum.Robert’s work confirms his internalized sensitivity to nature’s perfect designs and infinite color.
The three-dimensional aspect of my vineyard paintings evolved to create more dramatic perspective, a fundamental element of landscapes. With a nod to the plein air genre of early California artists, I take the spectacle of nature to a heightened level. By integrating actual stones, leaves, vines and other natural materials found on location with generous amounts of paint, I can express my tactile as well as visual excitement about my subject. Utilizing full spectral changes in color hues and values allows me to coax the viewers’ eye to the horizon, a resting place in my vistas.
I apply the foremost technical standards to my work. All materials in my paintings are treated with varnishes and mediums to ensure permanence.
My earlier work was abstract and recently I have ventured back to it, launching a series of paintings based on river rocks. Dramatically scaling up their size allows me to express their uniquely mesmerizing structures through a vast palette of color. Centuries old, my first subjects are remnants of Canadian glaciers, found on annual trips to their coastal rain forests. In the future I plan another rock series based on deserts in the Southwest, all the while continuing my locally-inspired vineyard paintings.
In addition to painting vineyard landscapes and objects of nature, I participate in them as a home winemaker, avid fly fisherman and consummate environmentalist. From my small intimate watercolors to my large-scale canvases and murals, I seek to involve the viewer with my passion for the spectrum of nature.
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