After the late 1940s, he began a serious painting career and started exhibiting fine art watercolors. His paintings often depicted regional subjects with buildings, boats or coastline structures. Creating a "mood" was important to him and gives his works a narrative quality. His watercolors were primarily sold through art galleries in San Diego and Dallas. Landry also became a well known instructor at watercolor workshops near his home in San Diego and in traveling workshops held in Oregon, Arizona and Hawaii.

 

 

 

A native of Washington DC, Robert Landry settled in San Diego, California where he became known for his watercolor landscapes.  Previous to that, he was Staff Artist for the U.S. Air Force Graphic Arts in the Pentagon Building and also Art Director for the Federal Aviation Agency in New Jersey and Convair Astronautics.

After serving in World War II, he studied art in Washington DC and Minneapolis, using the G.I. Bill, and this education led to his commercial art work.

By the early 1950s he was becoming a serious fine-art watercolorist with regional subjects of coastal scenes, buildings, and townscapes. He sold his paintings through galleries in San Diego and Dallas and also gave watercolor workshops near his home in San Diego and in Hawaii, Oregon, and Arizona.

 

 

 

A veteran of WWII, Robert Landry made good use of the G.I. Bill, and studied art in Minneapolis, MN, and in Washington D.C. He then worked as a staff artist for the U.S. Air Force graphic arts department in the Pentagon. He also worked as the art director of the Federal Aviation Agency in New Jersey and at Convair Astronautics. In his later years, he moved to San Diego where he gained a reputation for his watercolor landscapes. He taught art and was a member of the San Diego Watercolor Society, and participated in watercolor painting workshops at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California with noted artist Jade Fon. and is remembered fondly by his students.

Fellow artist and art teacher, Don Foster of Colorado reports Robert to have been a fantastic piano player who could sit down for hours and render up-tempo works of the thirties and forties without repetition.

Foster goes on to say that while they were teaching an art class together on the north shore of Oahu in 1970, Robert Landry began one class quoting Albert Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge limits us to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand."

 

Then he sketched out a scene, and told his students that he wasn't going to paint the scene as it existed, but rather how he imagined it would be on a rainy day.
To the left is the painting he produced that day, a rainy Hawaiian day. The students told Robert no one uses umbrellas in Hawaii. Robert retorted, "Now they do."
Sources: Don Foster, Robert Landry Brochure, former Landry student Sandy Gravitch, AskArt Источник

 

 

Источник: California watercolorists

California Watercolors

California Art Catalog