"Have you heard about this guy named Robert Bateman?" I asked. ROBERT BATEMAN? ROBERT BATEMAN?! "He's only the best living WATERCOLOR artist in Canada." A confession I made to Robert about a conversation I had with watercolor artists since I only found out about who he was a week before meeting him.
Robert laughed and said thank you.
Then he leaned in a bit and whispered, "I actually paint in acrylics and oils."
I had a good solid 10 minutes with him as you can see here. Doors just opened, I happened to be the first and only one at that time. There were no people waiting in line yet. He spoke about his travels and adventures and showed me some of his sketches.
I bought this framed print of a raccoon peeking through an abandoned shack and had it signed.
Some fast facts about him: In the 1950s he went around the world in a Land Rover ; He drew an unusually large crowd for a living artist at his exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute in '87 ; He destroyed his own painting of orca whales demonstrating his protest against the possibility of oil tankers passing through B.C.'s Douglas Channel.
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