| About Rob | | Print | |
 As a landscape painter, nothing pleases Robert Saley more than stumbling across a rusted old car or animal carcass in the middle of a forest or field."In my work I try to feature those things that others overlook, forget or discard," he explains. Often Saley does this by fastening found objects like bullet shells, saw blades and fishing lures around his painting of the area in which they were discovered. This concept very effectively reminds the viewer of past human presence in a certain place. A diverse and prolific artist, who works in a variety of mediums including papier-mache, ceramics and wood, Saley also finds his muse in the imaginary world. Over the past seven years, he has given birth to a wacky school of scaly cartoon characters named the Bucket Fish, which appear in a variety of narratives on t-shirts, eating platters and in paintings. This self confessed 'obsession' with animation and exaggeration subtly and successfully permeates into Saley's landscape pieces, especially in his interpretation of clouds and plants. Born in Toronto in 1970, Saley spent most of his childhood summers fishing (no surprise!) in Wavel, Ontario, near Timmins. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art's editorial illustration program in 1992 and spent the following eight months painting and drawing in Florence, Italy. Saley has shown his work in many Toronto exhibitions, including Tales Upon Black Water, Bold Spirits, Drawnonward, and Reverence Lost? at the Wagner Rosenbaum Gallery, and Young Contemporaries '95 at the Lake Gallery. Rob Saley lives and works in his beautiful log home in Nottawa, Ontario near Georgian Bay. 
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