Robert A. Hodges-Bonawitz was raised in Minnesota near the Mississippi River where lush summers, crisp autumns, bright white winters, and delicate green springs are home. His lifetime of academic study includes a degree in graphic design and an advanced degree in classical painting. His passion for nature has led him to the challenging but rewarding discipline of landscape painting.

Robert is an artist who possesses extraordinary gifts as a painter of all genera from the abstract to the classical. He has an interest in a variety of subjects and is well schooled in many painting disciplines. He studied for five years at the atelier of Richard Lack, a school of unprecedented lineage including Jean-Leone Gerome, William McGregor Paxton, Edmund Tarbell and the Boston School of Impressionism. Robert has received two gold metals for excellence in figure work.

Robert is an accomplished plein air painter, studying with award winning artists such as Ray Roberts and M. “Skip” Whitcomb of the Scottsdale Artists School. He is experienced in fresco painting, having collaborated with the renowned fresco artist Mark Balma on the Huber and St. Mary’s frescos. He’s a master figure painter and is a student of classical realism, characterized by a passion for the visible world and a focus on beauty, unity and harmony. Other artistic influences include: Gerome, Rembrandt, Bouguereau, Sargent and Gruppe.

Robert believes that direct observation in painting is the basis for achieving naturalistic color, temperature and value. He paints in all diverse weather conditions and terrain allowing him to study, first hand, the play of light and color only offered to us in the open air. In the studio he incorporates knowledge gained from the outdoors into still life, figure works, larger landscapes and frescos.

Robert has participated in several invitational shows including the Laguna Plein Air Painters 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 7^th Annual “The Best of Plein Air Show”; The American Impressionists Society’s 9th International Juried Exhibition; Red Wing En Plein Air; Paint America’s “Paint the Parks” top 100 and top second 100; Richeson 75; and others.