Collection: Robert Amirault

O.S.A., C.S.P.W.C., P.A.C.

Robert (Bob) began his artistic journey in his teens, studying through correspondence courses with the Famous Artists School, where he achieved advanced levels of training by the age of 21. That same year, he was illustrating at Simpsons department store in Halifax, where he remained for four years before moving to London, Ontario, to become Advertising Manager. Over the course of a distinguished 44-year career with Simpsons, he rose to the position of General Manager of Advertising and Sales Promotion in Toronto, all the while developing and refining his skills as a painter in both oils and watercolours. He later served as Vice President, Creative, for a company producing textured prints of internationally recognized artists.

While his career in advertising and design was highly successful, Robert’s true passion remained painting. Since the mid-1960s, his work has been exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Toronto, London, and Markham, Ontario, where he hosted invitation-only solo shows for over three decades. Internationally, he exhibited in a two-person show in 1984 in the restored castle of Stia, Italy, near Florence. His career was further distinguished by election to several respected organizations: the Ontario Society of Artists, where he served as Vice President in the 1980s, and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1997, following jury selection of his work. With the CSPWC, he participated in major exhibitions such as the International Watercolour Biennial in Mexico City in 2000, and one of his works is held in the Society’s Diploma Collection at the Art Gallery of Peel. In 2005, Robert co-founded Plein Air Canada alongside five other recognized Canadian painters, promoting the tradition of painting outdoors. A year later, he was among 25 artists invited to travel the fabled Northwest Passage to commemorate the centenary of its discovery.

Robert is a representational painter whose favourite subjects include landscapes, seascapes, faces, and figures. For many years he has painted en plein air in Ontario, the Maritimes, the Arctic, and abroad, gathering the essence of place and light to create larger works in his home studio. Though working in a realistic style, he is equally drawn to the abstract qualities of nature—patterns, forms, and above all, shifting light—which inform his bold brushwork and unique vision.

Having retired from commercial projects in 2000, Robert has devoted himself fully to painting from his studio in South Niagara, Ontario, where he continues to pursue the lifelong artistic goal that first inspired him: capturing truth, beauty, and light on canvas.