As a hallmark of excellent painters, Robert Bissell creates a completely different atmosphere from our daily existence and invites us into his visual imagination to learn more about ourselves. His paintings show how the world of animals can be a mirror for human existence, self-definition and self-reflection. However, the appearance of animals does not make them mere children’s tales. Quite to the contrary, as William Zimmer art critic for The New York Times warns, “Bissell’s work disarms by narrating vitally grown-up and urgent allegories in the guise of child-like humor.”
Robert Bissell grew up in Somerset, England, where he developed, a love of rural life, Celtic legends and panoramic landscapes. Robert’s keen interest in visuals began at an early age by documenting the life around him, mainly through photography. Robert spent six intensive years studying Graphic Design and Art and obtained both a Bachelor of Fine Arts, from the Manchester College of Art, and a Masters Degree from The Royal College of Art in London. Robert moved to the United States shortly thereafter and began a successful career in advertising while continuing to explore his artistic talent.
In 1997 Robert turned his attention full time to painting and has created highly sought after animal paintings and limited editions. His work is full of charged meaning, lore and touched by surrealism. Influenced by the surreal master, Rene Magritte, he likewise mixes scales and uses gigantism with a variety of textures and subtle color palettes.
Bissell says his fondest artistic desire is that his paintings appeal to the intellectual child in all of us, sparking an interest in the mythic as well as universal human values in the tradition of the great heroic-quest stories in literature.
Bissell says he is also inspired by the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His main inspiration however stems from nature itself. Ideas for his paintings develop on his frequent forays into the wild, from short treks in the Marin Hills not far from his home to lengthy backpacking trips into remote areas of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains and Mount Shasta. “I pick up on idiosyncratic things I come across on these trips,” Bissell says.
For example, on a recent excursion Bissell was hiking a trail in the Marin Hills when a rabbit popped up along one side of the path, and then another on the opposite side, and so on, until it appeared they were multiplying like, well, rabbits. “Suddenly there seemed to be a number of rabbits looking at me on either side of the trail,” Bissell recalls. Paintings developed from that excursion capture the essence of this experience by depicting rabbits lining both sides of a carrot-shaped trail leading off into the distance. In other painting large towering bunnies evoke greeters in a reception line—almost as if they are saying to guests, “This is our world. We’re watching.”
Bissell often portrays animals standing upright, another technique that makes the creatures seem more humanlike. Through the use of both gigantism and postures he conveys what he calls his own sense of inferiority in the wild. “Often they seem to be superior beings with more knowledge in the wild than me,” he says. “I come from the city, and I’m not used to their environment.”
While there are layers and layers of potential meanings in a Bissell painting, one thing is quite obvious: The artist favors rabbits and bears. “These are animals that many people grew up with—bunnies and teddy bears,” Bissell says. “Rabbits probably are there because I was brought up in the English countryside and bears because I have lived in the West for the last 20 years.”
Robert Bissell’s work is published by DreamWorld Art, and is available in Galleries such as Exclusive Collections, San Diego, California. His work is in Museums, and important private collections in the USA and Europe.
Excerpts and quotes of this Biography have been taken from the Dreamscapes Book and articles written by Bonnie Gangelhoff for Southwest Art, as well as information supplied by the artist.
