THE ARTIST

 Robert LeMay

Canadian

I’ve been working as an artist for over 30 years and have had more than 30 solo shows and participated in multiple group shows. My work has been exhibited in Edmonton, Montréal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York, Milan, and London, England.

My paintings appear in collections all over the world including the Canadian Embassy in both Beijing, China and Canberra, Australia. Shaw Communications has named a room, The Robert Lemay Room, in Shaw Court in downtown Calgary. My work is also part of the Canada Council Art Bank, and hangs at Clif Lede Wineries in Yountville, California, at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, in Edmonton’s City Hall, and in many prestigious private and corporate collections. I was the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant early in my career, in both 1989 and 1990. I was the inaugural Artist in Residence at Graceland University in Iowa in 2014.

I began my career as a still life painter and this has evolved in recent years to include the figure and portrait. I divide the canvas into a grid, painting square by square, row by row to create a subtly digitized effect which is completely hand-painted.

What I’m most proud of in my career is that I’m a self-sustaining working artist. I have painted nearly every day for 30+ years. The act of mixing colours, putting brush to canvas, is for me a poetic experience. Art is a deep adventure and I don’t take lightly the fact that I’ve been able to spend my life immersing myself in the splendour of putting paint on canvas.