Robert Mclellan Bateman was born in Toronto. After teaching for 20 years, in 1976 Robert left teaching to paint full time. He has travelled the world with his artist/conservationist wife Birgit to many remote natural areas to find inspiration for his award-winning animal artwork.

Besides being one of Canada’s most well-known artists, Robert is also a naturalist recognized by the Audubon Society as one of 20th century’s “heroes of conservation”. He is a spokesman for many environmental and preservation issues, using his art to raise millions of dollars for these causes.

Books about his life and art have sold over 1,000,000 copies. He has also been the subject of several films and television programs. It is in honour of Robert Bateman’s contribution to art, teaching and conservation that one public, and two secondary schools have been named after him; as well, he has been awarded 14 honorary doctorates.

“Watercolour paint is a natural medium for me. It complements and enhances the beauty of this coastal panorama. This region is, after all, a damp, misty part of the world a lot of the time. Water hangs in great silken sheets of fog across mountains and inlets. It ripples and reflects along the shore. The wet, delicate, and raw subtleties of watercolour washes are ideal for conveying the gradation of light within clouds or a summer haze, perfect for suggesting shapes and forms barely visible in shrouded mist or streaking rain. It has a characteristic fresh, organic quality that easily gives the impression of trees and plants, and of rock formations and their textures. It is quick and spontaneous, and has a simplicity to it, requiring few tools. It has a wild quality and although the water can be somewhat controlled, it cannot quite be tamed.

The first impression is always sunlight, the primary concern of everything I paint. No matter what the subject, my process of painting is entirely influenced by light: its direction, the shadows it creates, its honey glow causing everything to hover on a cushion of warm air. Light penetrates things, revealing inner qualities and colours, like the veins in a leaf or the translucence of a shell. It creates halos around them. It makes things shine and flash and reach out to you, come alive. It rings out like sound echoing here and there off everything, filling a place with its reflected glow like a visual symphony. It has a divine loveliness to it. It appears without any human hand causing it to appear. It is just there and a scene is blessed with its rays. My work is to reflect it in my painting.”

Since 1981 Carol has held 15 very successful one-woman exhibitions in a variety of places; Vancouver, Salt Spring Island, Gabriola Island and Nanaimo. She was invited to participate in a group exhibition by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, “The Real West Coast” where she was honoured to have her paintings shown along side the work of fellow west coast artists. She is currently working on new paintings of places along the BC coast that have caught her interest in sharing these sights with you.

“Ted credits the work of English painter, Norman Cornish for inspiring his life long quest to paint
people and places. But the strongest influence in his life and art was living in the land of the
Yukon, where he found hi “Shangri-La”.
In May of 1969, Ted had his first art showing at the Public Library in Whitehorse and so began his
illustrative journey as a working artist in Canada. In addition to his work as a painter, Ted has written
several children’s books and illustrated both “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan
McGrew” by Robert Service. Other projects include his design of Yukon Pavilion for Vancouver Expo’86
and the design of a Canada Post Christmas Stamp in 1996. His paintings can be found in private and
public collections throughout Canada, and in New Zealand, Japan, Germany, and the United States of
America.
In 1987, he received the Order of Canada for his contribution to Canadian culture. He was awarded a
honourary doctorate from The University of Athabasca in 1991, a honourary doctorate in Fine Arts from
The University of Victoria in 1998 and a distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta in
2002. He also holds an honourary doctorate of Law.
In 1993, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia to continue his painting and writing. He was inducted into
the Royal Conservatory of the Arts in 2005. In 2009, the first ever biography of the artist, “Ted Harrison:
Painting Paradise”, was written by author, Katherine Gibson. And in the same year, Ted donated a large
mural entitled “Vast Yukon” measure 19.5 ft wide by 6 ft tall to the University of Victoria. The mural is
currently on display in the Faculty of Social Science