April 4 – May 13, 2017

Very few artists are ever bestowed with diplomatic honours, the keys to the city, or even credited with representing the soul of a place. Robert Blenderman, however, is one of those rare artists. After nearly 60 years capturing the spirit if Kingston in paint, Blenderman hasn’t yet been given the key to the city, but he has amassed a well-deserved following of admirers and collectors. Of his work and the adopted home which continues to inspire him, Blenderman says, “In my paintings I try to capture the essence of Kingston’s urban uniqueness and Canada’s abundant natural beauty.”

Blenderman’s tireless imagination is hardly exhausted by local streetscapes and landscapes. Realistic, classically styled still lives and wildly expressive abstracts have also been the subject of his attention over the years.

Through a lifelong dedication to developing his natural gift, along with his admirably disciplined focus, Blenderman has produced an impressive ouvre during his long career. Studio 22 is extremely fortunate to represent an artist of such vast talent and thrilled to be able to exhibit new paintings from a beloved local icon.

From the Introduction to his book: Kingston, A City in Canada: Paintings by Robert A. Blenderman: 

“Robert A. Blenderman has been painting since 1960. His works have been shown in galleries in Kingston, Germany, and the USA. He is a self-taught artist who has painted many kinds of subjects in different media. His painting styles have been varied, to say the least. He has tried them all, mostly successfully. His sailboat paintings in the 1960s and 1990s probably demonstrate this the most clearly, for in these one can see examples of realism, impressionism, cubism, expressionism, and semi-abstractionism. His landscapes can be soft and impressionistic, semi-abstract, or verging on pure abstract expressionism in the progressively less representational works. Blenderman’s still-lifes in oil tend to be hyper-realistic, having something of a Dutch Baroque quality mixed with a kind of orientalism, a quite beautiful combination. And his oil paintings of Kingston storefronts are Hopper-like in their stillness and timelessness-not to mention their style and subject, too.”