Joseph Campbell
about rob
“The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it.”
— Joseph Campbell
One word best describes abstract artist Rob Hooper. Intense. Barely compressed energy explodes from his vibrant paintings in a kaleidoscope of colours and emotions, every drop and brush stroke a raw emotion brought to life.
“As long as I can remember, I’ve had an artist’s frame of mind,” says Rob. “Even when I was a kid, I was a mad doodler.” Born in Montreal Quebec, Rob is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. Growing up, he spent winters in Montreal and summers in North Hero, Vermont. He was always active in sports, music, drawing and, of course, doodling. His twenties were spent raising two children, Scott and Kelsey, with his wife, Paula. Today, they live in South Surrey, BC, cradled by the ocean and nearby city of Vancouver; two very different lifestyles and environments that stimulate Rob’s unfettered creative energy.
Until 1997, Rob lived a double life — as a businessman with the heart of a painter. Rob’s business career required extensive traveling. To feed his artistic hunger, he scoured museums and galleries, inspired by the works of masters like Kandinsky and Cezanne. “I was visiting the National Gallery of London when I had an epiphany,” says Rob. “I was face-to-face with a tiny Cezanne. Peepholes of intense colour were shining through. It was then that I knew exactly how he did it, and that I could do it too.” The experience was intensely emotional for Rob, who returned home and began to paint on canvas. To quote Joseph Campbell, “Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglement.”
“When I started painting, it was like stepping into comfortable old shoes. They fit perfectly and I was off and running. In three years I painted more than 1,000 pieces.” Entirely self-taught, Rob developed his own style. “I was obsessed with exploring different techniques and following the inner voices that carried me along my creative path. I believe it's my life’s work to paint and create art. I have an emotional need to paint and express myself. It calms me and exhilarates me at the same time,” he says. Rob’s learning process continues as well as an avid interest in others’ work, including his biggest artistic influences: Kandinsky and Pollock.
Music is essential to Rob’s abstract expressionism; it fills his studio as he paints. “Colours are the most important elements in my work. They’re like the notes in a piece of music,” says Rob. Each painting is multi-layered and a chorus of colour. He loads the paints on all at once, creating new colours and leaving others pure. “It requires a lot of action,” Rob says of his technique. “I have to know when to pull back or add more paint. I love contrasts and how the colours play off of one another.” His paintings are vibrant, bold pieces that explode with energy in jeweled tones of ruby and gold, bolts of emerald green and ribbons of sapphire.
With each painting Rob mines his deep well of an imagination, fueled by a childhood punctuated with frequent moves and new schools. “Tapping into my creativity feels so powerful because it integrates my emotions and is expressed through my body. It's a very evocative feeling that hopefully imprints the memory or history of that moment onto each canvas.” Abstracts appeal to Rob because each painting is a spiritual and physical connection, fueled by his sense of joie de vivre.
“Being an artist is not a fashion statement to me but who I am at my core. When I'm painting and in the studio with the music turned loud, I am literally vibrating with love and happiness at a personally yet universally soulful level. The integration of beauty, love, music and creative expression has profoundly changed me — it's what feeds me, and what drives me out of bed at three a.m. to paint,” Rob sums up with characteristic intensity. “Painting is what I do, it is who I am.”
— by Ingrid C. King