Pretty Aromary Etching by Robin John Anderson
Visited their Gallery in Jerome, AZ on December 15, 2015
He made the etching for me in realtime from the plate he carved
Audit
Robin John Anderson was born in Phoenix Arizona in 1951. The eldest of two children he was showing a precocious talent for drawing and oil painting by the age of 10. At that young age he did not wish to be just an artist, he wanted to be a great artist. By fourteen, after attempting a Renaissance like altarpiece, he was sent to a painting tutor. Robin studied for the next two years with Tibor Kalman, graduate of the Art Academy of Budapest. Robin became his youngest student.
After leaving his master's studio, Robin took a job with the Republic and Gazette engraving department in Phoenix Arizona and did illustrations for both of those Phoenix newspapers. At 21 He left the world of employment forever and became a full time artist. From the sale of his oil paintings and pastels he made an exceptionally good living. In 1975 he married Margo Mandette. Another artist with a keen business sense, Margo was the perfect match for Robin and his ambitions. The young couple's fortunes flourished. In 1981 Robin And Margo traveled to New York City to see the famous Picasso Retrospective held at M.O.M.A. Once there, they fell in love with the city and found out about New York's Art Students League. They were to return almost monthly over the next 9 years and study at the League. Due to good fortune, Robin was admitted to the work shop of David Leffel, one of America's foremost artists of the realist tradition. Upon returning home, Robin created his own style of representational painting. To name this style, he chose the word, "Perceptionism." It was his intension to describe his work in a way that would distinguish it from Impressionism. He advertised the word in trade magazines thus bringing attention to the idea of creating paintings that would combine realism and impressionism to create enhanced or embellished realism. In 1989 the couple took an apartment in New York's Greenwich Village to be closer to the art scene in New York City. The following year they opened a gallery in So Ho on Broome street. During the winter months, Robin ran the New York gallery while Margo ran her galleries in Arizona.
By 1991, running galleries on both sides of the continent, became too much of a strain, so having tasted both the East and the West, the couple opted for the large spaces and the comfort of the West. Their studio in the town of Jerome Arizona has over 20,000 square feet of work space and gallery display. It was a former school building. Margo Mandette also has a gallery in uptown Jerome called The Angel's Inn.