Robert Sinclair

Robert Sinclair is a painter who works primarily with watercolour and acrylic stain. His barely-there landscapes and representations of botanical themes are as deceptively informal and lyrical as they are sparse.

Sinclair paints from a modernist perspective, paring down the landscape to its most basic elements. His works are comfortable within the language of abstraction, and his style incorporates a watercolour wash sparingly applied across the paper’s surface, with an intent to show the essence of a place rather than its descriptive or aesthetic elements.

Sinclair received his MFA from the University of Manitoba, and both an MA and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He taught in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta from 1965 until his retirement in 1997. Sinclair continues to teach watercolour workshops, and is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour. He has exhibited regularly since 1972, and his work can be found in the collection of the Canada Council Art Bank, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, the Glenbow Museum, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Royal Collection of H.M. the Queen, the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.