Robert Townsend Joins Altamira
Altamira Fine Art is pleased to welcome Pop Photo-realist Robert Townsend to the gallery's roster.
Robert Townsend was born in Downey, California in 1974. He paints highly finished images of the icons of an American Pop mythology. His unfailing eye for color and texture produce a vision of America's material culture that vacillates between nostalgia for what is lost and optimism for the continuation of American ingenuity.
Townsend's aesthetic draws heavily from his California upbringing and life in Los Angeles. Townsend lives and works out of an industrial warehouse turned artist complex known as the Los Angeles Brewery. Formerly home to Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery, the sprawling building was converted into artist lofts, and is now one of the oldest and largest art colonies in the world.
Citing American painters Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Bechtle as primary influences, Townsend's work is a mixture of pop, photo-realism, surrealism and representational interpretations of largely mid-century subject matter. His exceptional technical ability is complemented by a painterly approach to color and design, with occasional whimsical elements adding a playfulness to his skillfully crafted watercolors and oils.
ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2012 Compass and Line, Skidmore Contemporary Art, Santa Monica, CA
New Paintings, Sue Greenwood Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2011 New Paintings, Skidmore Contemporary Art, Santa Monica, CA
Paintings, Sue Greenwood Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2010 Recent Paintings, Skidmore Contemporary Art, Santa Monica, CA
2009 Robert Townsend: A Pop Mythology, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
Robert Townsend: New Work, Michael Hollis Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2008 Robert Townsend, New Paintings, Hespe Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007 Icons, Michael Hollis Gallery, Pasadena, CA
COLLECTIONS
The Getty Family, CA
The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA
Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
American Art Collector Issue 16, "Lost Highways"
Southwest Art Magazine, "Vintage Style", May 2007
American Art Collector Issue 40, "Vintage Pop"
American Art Collector Issue 67, "Americana"
