About the Artist

Brian Romer was born in Vancouver quite some time ago and began to paint at a very young age with encouragement from a father who loved fishing and painting. Preferring to clean brushes to salmon, Brian misspent  much of his youth under the influence of abstract expressionism.

He studied under Miss Wilcox at Magee High, receiving an “A” in Art 10 and 12 (with a slip to “B” in grade 11 after discovering young girls and old motor scooters.) He then went south to the University of Oregon, eventually receiving a Master’s Degree (in business, of all things) and subsequently lived and worked in Montreal, New York, Calgary and Edmonton before finally making his way back to the West Coast. Time has definitely mellowed Brian, and his abstracts have become much more representational in an attempt to capture the natural beauty of his world.

Brian paints just about every day in his Sunshine Coast studio, and whenever possible, on  an 8" x 10"  board on his lap amongst the trees. His works have been shown in various locations over the years, primarily above the bed, behind the piano and down the entire length of the front hall.

Having taken himself far too seriously throughout his previous life, Brian is now determined to keep his art fun. Although, truth be told, at his now rather advanced age, he often paints quite furiously, in what will undoubtedly prove to be a futile attempt to get them all done

PLEASE NOTE:

My website is usually pretty much up to date, especially with RECENT Works, but I seldom get around to moving Recents to other categories such as Landscapes and Archives and I often forget to note SOLD on paintings that actually are sold.  Oh, and sorry, but there are no cards or prints... I like every painting to be an original.

Thanks for your patience... I'd rather paint!

PS: The head shot above is very old.

FOLLOWING  are some of my favourite artsy (and other) quotes...

"For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography."

Pablo Picasso

"Why talk, when you can paint?"

 Milton Avery

"Everything I've learned, I've learned from admiration and osmosis."

 Joni Mitchell

"There is no greater education than one that is self-driven."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

"The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes."

Frank Lloyd Wright

"It takes a very long time to become young."

Pablo Picasso

"We lived in a continuous blaze of enthusiasm. Above all we loved this country and loved exploring and painting it."

Lawren Harris

"What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious; it is entwined in the very roots of being,

in the implacable source of sensations."

Paul Cezanne

"Mine is the horney hand of toil."

John Singer Sargent

"I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned to swim."

Frida Kahlo

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

Winston Churchill

"Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty."

Edgar Degas

"I paint my own reality.  The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to,

and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."

Frida Kahlo

"Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity."

Robert Genn

"An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, a prisoner of manner, a prisoner of reputation,

or a prisoner of success."

Henri Matisse

"For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is."

 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing."

 Frank Gehry

"Composition is the art of controlling the observer."

Robert Henri

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

Henry David Thoreau

"Style is a simple way of saying complicated things."

Jean Cocteau

"The style is the man himself."

George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

"I am so rich that I must give myself away."

Egon Schiele

"As long as one keeps searching, the answers come."

Joan Baez

"The good ones come fast."

Sturgill Simpson

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity"

Horace Mann

"Art is long, life is short. A picture can become for us a highway between

a particular thing and a universal feeling."

Lawren Harris

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

Paul Valery

"To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."

Steve Prefontaine

"Painting is one's private life."

Edgar Degas

"The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing."

Lawren Harris

"Artists must literally go into a zone of intense seeing so the subjective and objective almost fuse together."

Burton Silverman

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."

Edgar Degas

"A failed painting is better than one that's just plain bad. The failed painting is one that could have been great."

Larry Poons

"The job of art is to take reality by surprise."

Francoise Sagan

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

"Glorious nature stomps on creativity."

Robert Genn

"The painter unfolds that which has not been seen."

 Paul Cezanne

"I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free."

Georgia O'Keeffe

"Damn. And just when I was starting to get it!"

Edgar Degas (on his deathbed)