About the Artist – Rob Inglis

Art is when you take something and make…..something.

                          ~ Jasper Johns

Born in Canada’s maritime province of New Brunswick, Rob Inglis has been drawing and painting since early childhood. After studying art and design at the Nova Scotia College of Art in Halifax and Seneca College in Toronto, he embarked on a life combining mastery of technical design and artistic creation.

Trained as a draftsman and industrial designer, Rob was intimately familiar with advanced pen and ink techniques, and taught himself airbrushing as well. However, he often found the physical equipment and techniques tedious and difficult to work with. In the late 1990’s, when he began using software programs such as AutoCAD to do his technical design work, he became intrigued by the possibilities that computer design offered. Over the next few years, he began exploring and mastering some of the new hardware and software options for artists that had come on the market. Finally, he could creatively and efficiently express ideas he had long imagined, but which he had found difficult to execute within the limits of earlier technology.

Since his switch to primarily digital media, Rob has produced works designed for hardcopy, for viewing on large HD monitors, and even for public performance – including digital art shows to accompany performances by musical artists. He remains fascinated by the potential of the digital form:

As my work is printed I am often asked about my originals, but most of my work exists only in a computer, or on a flash drive, or CD. When these paintings are printed they appear in the human world as color and form. However, no matter how good the inks and paper are, they will deteriorate over a long period of time. Not so with the ‘originals.’ They will remain in their pristine condition forever, if there is a computer to display them. Being a digital artist is an interesting way to work – I am not really creating a ‘thing’ at all when I’m painting. It shows up as light on a screen. It can be printed, in huge scale, if necessary, but there is something evanescent about it all.

Rob’s art is also influenced by his many years as a practitioner of Zen Buddhist meditation, living and training at Zen Centers in North America.  The Zen influence on Rob’s work is not limited to explicitly Buddhist works, however – many of his abstract and geometric paintings are influenced by his meditation experience. Rob notes that: “Some art can take us beyond words and concepts, giving us a glimpse into the realm of Oneness. The paintings in my Geo-Mandala series, for example, are based on the principle that all things arise from and return to One Mind.”

His art is also deeply informed by his heartfelt connection to nature and wilderness. A lifelong outdoorsman, Rob has traveled extensively through North America. He has kayaked with orcas in British Columbia; hiked the Cascade Mountains, the Sierra Madres, and the giant redwood forests of California; camped for weeks on a deserted beach in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula; and recently SCUBA dove off Utila, Honduras. His connection to the natural world grounds all of his work, balancing the ephemeral nature of his digital creations with the living, breathing reality that inspires him.