About

Biography

Painting has always been part of my life. Now, as my career as an archivist and historian enters its final chapters, I am progressing to life as a full-time artist. As an archivist, I preserved the evidence of history to ensure understanding of where we have been. As an artist, I lay paint, my testimony as witness, for future generations to understand where we are now, and for me, as a human being, to continue my vision quest to learn and grow.

Statement

Each painting is a journey: it begins, I embark on a veiled path, enfolded in process.

The world is full of colors one can almost taste, feel, and hear; shapes moving in kinship; and mythical stories told in languages without words. Hue and form help me understand the world. With each layer of paint, I make choices; shapes and colors, once buried and presumed lost are suddenly rediscovered and surfaced in cycles, fragments; creating new juxtapositions.

My artworks are created applying oil paints, watercolors, or pastels on a range of surfaces including canvas, board, and paper nurturing the expression of color, texture, and form. The pigments are applied using centuries-old techniques but greatly influenced by the artists of An American Place and De Blaue Reiter.

My compositions express the challenges to all living things as society relentlessly commodifies existence during the Anthropocene. Humans chose to conquer or to find kinship, and our actions are magnified by our numbers. As an artist, my work captures glimpses of the world’s beauty and inspires preservation of the earth for future generations, because mankind’s thoughtless disregard for nature places our future in jeopardy.

When my brush connects with the “canvas,” I bring intent and courage. Layer by layer, I take inspiration from the painter Caspar David Friedrich: “the painter should not only paint what she sees, but what also what she sees within.” (quote from Nina Amstutz’s book Caspar David Friedrich: Nature and the Self, Yale University Press, 2020, p.14)

Selected Exhibitions

Art Responsible: Nature on the Edge in Gallery Commonweal, Bolinas, California. Group exhibit curated by Sidney Fayorsay of Art Responsible and featuring the artists Mac Obeng Akwaski, Dfoe Art, Robin Chandler, Samuel Berfi, Malcolm Ian Cross, and Nll Nortey Dowiuona. April 2025

Passion for Landscape: Photography and Painting of the Eastern Sierra featuring the work of Irene Reti & Robin Chandler, Mono Lake Committee Visitor Center, Lee Vining, California, 2024

Chalk Hill Vineyard Residency Exhibit, 2017

Discovery, Sweet Adelines, 2016

Mostly Coastal, Sweet Adelines, 2015

Juried Shows

Yosemite Renaissance 32, 2017, awarded honorable mention for Mt. Whitney in Winter

Artist Residencies

Chalk Hill Artist Residency 2017 www.chalkhillresidency.com

Panels

Nature on the Edge: A Conversation with Bruce Byers, Sara Tashker, Gifford Hartman, and Robin Chandler at the Dance Palace Point Reyes Station, October 4th, 2025

Publications

Awakened By The Range of Light: Art, Pilgrimage, and Friendship in the Sierra Nevada by Robin L. Chandler, 2024