Rob Elphinstone

Rob Elphinstone specializes in capturing the beauty of the Canadian west coast through his textured wild flowing landscapes. His art reflects the belief that our senses reveal only a shadow of what we truly experience. Rob believes that the beauty of a place is hardly ever replicated in a photo or a video. Our senses take in a fraction of what we perceive about the world. This tiny fraction is the shadow of what is really there.
Good art should not have to be about what the inner psyche experiences or displaying perfectly what is optically there but should be about the unseen reality that everyone feels. Every one of his art pieces reflects the premise that creative art stems from what is truly evident in nature rather than the shadow that can be photographed. The term “Actualism art” is used to distinguish this art form from the emotionally based “expressionism” trend. Reality is more than just the sum our emotional impressions and the sense detection of an external scene. The realism art discipline attempts to capture the latter and expressionism the former.
Rob Elphinstone’s version of Actualism art allows that the observer can interpret the “actual” and create works that capture the essence of the observed in a fundamental way.
 The process of laying down textured brushstrokes helps capture the elusive nature so evident when we look outside. The textured brushstrokes give the paintings a unique look. This technique yields a complexity that mimics nature and that permeates every portion of the pieces he creates.  From a distance, the painting comes together through form as a coherent whole, but each portion catches the eye in a manner that draws the viewer into it.