Robert Royhl is a painter and printmaker from Bozeman, MT. He is Professor Emeritus at Montana State University where he taught painting and drawing for twenty years. Widely exhibited since the early 70’s, he has shown his work in numerous museums and galleries in Kyoto, Japan, Los Angeles and San Diego, CA, Tucson, AZ, as well as across Montana. Royhl’s paintings are complex narratives based on long observation of specific locations. They are painted in layers juxtaposing different types of paint including pigments mixed with animal glue, egg tempera and oil paint. He has taught at several universities, including the Memphis College of Art, San Diego State University and Montana State University. Throughout his career he has been very involved in international art projects. While living in San Diego he did several collaborative projects with a group of artists from both sides of the American Mexican border, including Guillermo Gomez Pena. He also spent two years living and working in Japan where he researched traditional Japanese art techniques. Most recently he was at the David Krut Print Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa  for two months developing new ways of printing, and in Berlin at the Druckstelle Workshop where he gave a three day workshop with his wife, Gesine Janzen, experimenting with printing using pigment and glue.

In 2010, Robert had an exhibition of new work at the Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, Arizona. In 2011, he had an exhibition of recent prints with Gesine Janzen called Palimpsest at the Washington County Museum in Portland, OR. An article on his work was included in the Spring/Summer 2011 Issue Western Art and Architecture.

“My new work comes out of detailed and patient looking at nature. The hidden meaning of a place is only slowly revealed through time.  I spend up to a year sketching and observing the landscape that interests me. Drawing at different times of the day and through different seasons. At the moment I am working on a series of works based on the headwaters area of the Missouri River, specifically focusing on Lewis Rock. In the past I have done series based on the Sonoran desert outside of Tucson AZ, the Kamogawa River in Kyoto, Japan and the lake in Central Park in NYC.

The facts uncovered during this looking are the essential ground on which I develop my imagery, layering both time and space. Reality is a narrative and these visual facts are seeds that are born, bloom, ripen and pass away. Their flowerings are often surprising and wonderfully odd. Nature is so unexpected. For me, there is no ordinary reality.”

Friday night, December 9, 2011, from 5:30 to 8:00 pm, Robert Royhl will have an open studio. His new work will be displayed, along with several unfinished pieces that will allow the visitor insights into his painting process. The studio is located in Room 270 in the West Wing of the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture, 111 South Grand, Bozeman, MT. This opening is in conjunction with “Evening with the Artists”, a studio tour event put on by the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture and will be held during the Emerson Art Walk.