Jun 02, 2009 - 02:09 PM

By Allan O'Marra

PICKERING -- It was many months after Pickering resident Robert Hinves married his wife, Sandy, in 1988, that she even knew he was an artist.

Although he had worked for several decades as an advertising designer at several different Toronto studios -- following art training at Danforth Tech high school and a year at the Ontario College of Art and Design -- he had let his original interest in oil painting wane to total inactivity over the intervening years.

"She gave me a little kick in the backside to get back into it," he laughs.

Soon he had returned to painting landscapes of rural Ontario and a series of oils of Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia after a trip east.

In the meantime, his last graphics company employer had gone under and Hinves, now a resident of Scarborough, had trained and began working as a credit manager for Scotiabank. Art remained a very secondary activity. A major shift in his style happened during this period when he changed to making pen-and-black-ink drawings of barns and farm scenes, which he enhanced with watercolour paints. And this remains his major art form to the present day.

Hinves retired from his banking job eight years ago and moved to Pickering, where he threw himself into the art scene by taking out memberships in most of the Durham Region art clubs and organizations, eventually taking on the responsibility of one of the vice presidents of the Pine Ridge Arts Council, a position he still holds.

And he began showing extensively in the various regional juried shows as well as at dozens of the annual small-town Ontario arts festivals.

If you like masterful technique in drawing and watercolour application, you would love the work of Hinves. His paintings are exquisite in style, composition and execution. As an alternative to the rigid discipline of his realistic work, Hinves regularly takes a break and loosens up with an ongoing series of textured-surface acrylic abstracts, into some of which he incorporates fall leaves for an intriguing hybrid of abstract and realism.

You can find out more about the exhibition activities of this highly-skilled local artist by sending him a note at artofroberthinves@rogers.com

Allan O'Marra is a professional artist living and working in Ajax. For contact information go to www.allanomarra.com.