For Robert E. Wood, landscape painting is both a personal legacy and an ongoing exploration. Drawing from years of experience and a deep connection to nature, his work captures moments of stillness, light, and movement. In this interview, he shares insights into his process, influences, and the ideas that continue to shape his paintings.

Your work captures a deep connection to landscape - what draws you to these environments?

It’s partly the lineage of my family and the fact I grew up in an artistic household - my dad (Karl E. Wood) was primarily a landscape artist, as was my grandfather (Robert E. Wood, who I was named after). So they set that example as artists capturing the beauty of nature. Through my childhood my family went on camping trips to Vancouver Island every summer and I have great memories of exploring the Island’s wonderful beaches and forests. I’ve always loved hiking and the tranquility of being out in nature, as well as the wonder of arriving at a spectacular destination. While I also love the energy of being in cities, the peacefulness of nature is usually what I’m inspired to paint. Our world and lives are so much busier and more stressful than ever before, so I think part of my responsibility as an artist is to help people slow down to see and appreciate the beauty in the world around them.

How has your approach to painting evolved over time?

When I started painting I was inevitably heavily influenced by my artistic mentors. I trained for the first eight months of my career with my dad prior to his passing in 1990, and one of the things he stressed was the importance of tone values, and my work initially resembled his. I subsequently learned from some other wonderful artists - notably Harold Lyon, who is remembered mainly for his Western subjects but also painted landscapes, florals, portraits, and many other subjects. Harold was an excellent colourist, so my work then expanded into bolder colour and the utilization of triadic complementary colour schemes. I spent considerable amounts of time plein-air painting on location with a memorable number of artists that included Mannie Gonsalves, who would encourage me to push the drama of lighting effects and to know when to stop and not over-work a painting. 

Everything I learned from them, and from others, melded in with my own intuitive approach. But the biggest transformation came for me sometime around 2017 when I decided to stop painting with brushes - as I had always done - and to start painting with palette knives. That decision was prompted by two things - first, a desire for change and a fresh, challenging, new approach. That’s very much a creative, artistic reason. Secondly, it was inspired by my observations that the art market was shifting toward more contemporary styles, and I was feeling like my traditional style wasn’t in keeping with where broader public tastes were moving. That’s very much a business choice. When I changed to painting with palette knives my work automatically looked more contemporary, while also fulfilling me artistically and providing me with a whole new range of exciting challenges. I’ve continued to refine my palette knife painting techniques, and I know my work will always continue to evolve and change over time, just as it always has. I can think of several examples of artists whose work essentially never changed over the course of decades painting, and that’s a stagnancy I’ve always wanted to avoid.

What role does observation play in your process versus interpretation?

That’s an interesting question because I was just thinking about it recently while I worked on the very large 60x84 painting “Trail to Wedgemount Lake” for Mountain Galleries in Whistler. For me, painting is always a balance between observation and interpretation. Creating a great painting involves visual storytelling, so using that painting as an example, I can tell you that I observed the very subtle distance transitions between the layers of mountains and exaggerated them a bit - pushing the atmospheric distance and creating more visual depth. I observed a patch of dirt in the foreground that suggested a trail, and decided to turn it into one because compositionally I always love having a visual pathway that helps lead and invite a viewer into the scene. I observed hints of colour in the ground-cover that suggested flowers, although there weren’t any flowers… so I added a few carefully-placed flowers. The ground-cover itself was low-lying plants, but I wanted a bit more “lushness” in the foreground to help contrast the massive amount of mountains and rock in the painting, so I made the grass longer, which enabled me to give it a bit more visual flow as if it were blowing in a gentle breeze. 

I simplified rocks and trees in the foreground, selecting only the ones that aided the composition and the visual storytelling of how I want the viewer to explore the scene. I added clouds to what was a cloudless sky, but I chose to keep them light and bright to suit the mood I wanted. I added sparkles of colour that create unexpected visual excitement and help convey the feeling of mood and temperature, such as the bits of turquoise in the foreground shadowed grass…. I could go on but this demonstrates the process of carefully observing the subject, considering what is seen, and the kinds of choices that I made in order to tell my story of this spectacular place.

How do you approach light and atmosphere in your work?

Light is the most important thing to me. Light is what gives colour and tone value contrasts. It’s what makes me stop and do a double-take when I see a dramatic subject. Both light and atmosphere convey mood and help to tell the visual story of a painting. I always strive to paint subjects that have dynamic lighting, and then the use of atmosphere (atmospheric perspective) helps convey distance - as things get further away from the viewer, colours cool and decrease in intensity, and edges soften. But I like to utilize dramatic lighting that will hopefully make people stop in their tracks when they see a painting.

What keeps you inspired after years of painting?

I started painting professionally full-time in November 1989, so in November of this year (2026) I’ll have been painting for 37 years, and I’ve never lost my inspiration. If anything, I feel more inspired than ever before. People very often ask how long it takes to do a painting, but the truest answer (at this point) is 36 - soon to be 37 - years, because that’s how long it’s taken me to become the artist I am today. The paintings I can create now I never could have created at any point in my career prior to now, and that will continue to be true in the future as I continue to develop as an artist - it’s a never-ending, lifelong process, and that’s what makes it so exciting. If it was easy it would be boring. French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas famously said, “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” I always look forward to the inspiration of the next subject, the challenge of the next painting, and I always have more ideas for paintings than time to do them in... So, I guess now it’s time to get back to the easel and start a new painting!