Thursday, November 12, 2015

Artist Robert Bateman explores creative process, love of nature in new memoirs


Artist and author Robert Bateman. Courtesy, Birgit Freybe Bateman. Calgary Herald

**** Robert Bateman will be at Indigo Signal Hill (Calgary) Thursday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. ****

Artist Robert Bateman explores creative process, love of nature in new memoirs

by Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald, November 9, 2015 

At 85, Robert Bateman may seem like a creature of habit.

The acclaimed wildlife artist and naturalist still paints seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., although admits these days he is “interrupted a lot.”

For instance, he goes on a 40-minute hike each afternoon with his wife Birgit, taking the same route every day on his property near Ford Lake on Saltspring Island.

In the epilogue of his new book, Life Sketches: A Memoir, Bateman takes the reader on one of these walks. We join him on the gravel driveway, past what he calls the “map of little mysteries” of his own property, onto a forest road, into a meadow and past the giant beaver pond. Along the way, Bateman writes about a painting he did for Birgit in 2009, inspired by what he calls an “Aha!” moment that happened during one of these daily walks. It was simply the sight of his wife up ahead, carrying an umbrella and “wistfully looking at the ground.”

It was “a very quiet and unspectacular moment, but full of meaning and the memory of so many hikes together,” the artist writes.

Read more at this link: http://calgaryherald.com/…/artist-robert-bateman-explores-c…

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