artist info

I moved to Toronto after finishing a BFA at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. For a number of years I worked at part time jobs teaching and other opportunities as I worked mostly from a home based studio. I had taken a one year print course at university and really enjoyed etching. When I heard about the Open Studio in 1968 I was very interested. It was on Queen St. West. It was a studio I worked at a portion of each year for the next 12 years: interacting with other printmakers, learning technique and different print media. It was here that I was first offered some custom printing work. A new concept for me as it paid and I received a “printers proof”. I served an apprenticeship under a “Master Printer” and was awarded a printer’s chop as a Master Printer. A practice that is no longer followed.

In 1982 I set up a private custom printing studio in the Pragga Press gallery (a manufacturer of print presses and retail supplies). I was free to invite artists to work with me to produce etching editions that were for sale in the gallery. In this studio I also worked with an ink chemist and we  developed a line of etching inks. The chemist sold the formulas we had developed and that ended that commercial endeavor.

In 1983 I began working at Novak Graphics, a private print studio publishing international artists. I started as a director setting up the etching area and three years later was made studio manager with etching, lithography and silkscreen departments. It was here that I worked with many international artists like Malcolm Morley, Stanley Boxer, Sam Messer, Robert Birmelin and traveled to Sarasota, Florida several times to work with John Chamberlain on a series of large mono-print etchings.

Meanwhile I was painting and drawing whenever I had time. I exhibited when I had completed work and a gallery offered the opportunity. Over the years my interest was in making images and often the idea would demand a certain media to be fulfilled.

At a young age I saw my first blueprint and I loved the visual impression it evoked – the geometric white lines with a dark blue background (Prussian blue was a colour invented for this use). In general this impression has always been with me. The blue print is a design for what is to be. I enjoy this geometric look of drafted lines, and the idea of visual symbols of what can be created.

After Novak Graphics, in 1990 Susan Farquhar and I set up our own print studio. In the parlance of the print world we are both “Master Printers”. We had a large etching press, a silkscreen press and a small letterpress. In the next 24 years we printed over 350 editions for artists, galleries and publishers. This Included printing for the John Lennon estate with Yoko Ono, the Miles Davis estate and Anthony Hopkins to name a few of the most known artists. We also co-published with many Ontario artists of exceptional talent.

In 2006 I became interested in expressing environmental aspects in my work. A review by Robert Palangio (North Bay Arts) sums it up very well. “Robert Game’s paintings and prints focus on the environment and the balance between the natural world and the constructed world. Drawing from his travels throughout central Ontario and Manitoulin Island, Game creates images that reflect on his observations of the forest reduced to walls of trees lining the highway, concealing clear cuts and industrial wastelands or forming protective barriers marking the advance of civilization in natural places.” 

Artists are the chroniclers of our times. Creating works that express the very nature of our life on our planet today. We question and make sense in this time of uncertainty and change.

In 2007 we stayed at Lake Temagami, some 400 km NE of Toronto. It was an interesting experience to live on an island. The local first nation whose territory includes Lake Temagami decided early on to not lease land on the lakeshore, but to lease the islands on the lake. Everything had to be transported to the island from the one public dock on shore. We hired the services of a first nations boat to move our kayaks and provisions to the island cabin we had permission to use. In taking to the operator we were told the trees that surrounded the lake were only a fringe left by the logging companies that had provincial rights to log. He encouraged us to climb the hills and look at how it had been clear-cut as far as Sudbury, Ontario, about 140 kilometers away. This we did and it was true. On our trip south  back to Toronto the major highways we noticed the same style of a fringe of trees and behind them the clear-cuts or farmland.

This goes on despite all the evidence of climate change events. Provincial and Federal governments are doing little to correct these conditions or with many steps not fully effective until 2050. They will not be around when the situation gets really bad for Canadians, for coming generations and for the world.