Robert Spannring is a contemporary western artist who specializes in painting and sculpture. Using watercolors, oils, and ceramic sculpture, Robert finds delight in creating painted stories about Yellowstone and the Montana landscape through representational, impressionist, and abstract compositions that spark questions about the changing American West.

Robert is a native Montanan.  Born in Livingston on a bright Montana winter night, Robert is the youngest of eight children.  His mother and father grew up on family-homesteaded ranches in the Big Timber area.  The land has always been Robert’s inspiration.  He grew up sneaking away from school to go outside, draw the landscape and animals along the river bottom, and explore what might be around the next corner.  He has been a professional fine artist since 1976.  

For twenty years Robert worked as an illustrator and watercolorist.  During these years, Robert developed his skills in drawing with pencil, pen and ink, and watercolor washes.  His subject matter was wildlife and the land.  While attending Montana State University, his Life Drawing classes expanded Robert’s desire to seek out other subjects, and he began to explore still life, the human figure, and abstract objects.  

​Robert loves a challenge and currently is busy exploring new and more contemporary ideas within the picture plane…a meandering stream, a sky interrupted, a season in mind where the colors express, spring, winter, autumn, or summer.  You will find Robert out on the land, painting just for the enjoyment and the chance to understand light and how to scribble paint across a canvas.

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