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Rob Gonsalves |
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In his post college years, Gonsalves worked full time as an architect, also painting trompe l'oeil murals and theatre sets. After an enthusiastic response in 1990 at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Gonsalves devoted himself to painting full time. Although Gonsalves' work is often categorized as surrealistic, it differs due to the fact that the images are deliberately planned and result from conscious thought. Ideas are largely generated by the external world and involve recognizable human activities, using carefully planned illusionist devices. Gonsalves injects a sense of magic into realistic scenes. As a result, the term "Magic Realism" describes his work accurately. His work is an attempt to represent human beings desire to believe is the impossible. Simon & Schuster published Gonsalves first hard cover book named Imagine a Night in 2003. In 2005 Gonsalves was rewarded with the Canadian Governor General’s Award in the Children’s Literature – Illustration category for the book Imagine a Day, the follow up to Imagine a Night. |
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Artist Rob Gonsalves was born in Toronto, Canada in 1959. During his childhood, he developed an interest in drawing from imagination using various media. By age twelve, his awareness of architecture grew as he learned perspective techniques and began to do his first paintings and renderings of imagined buildings. After an introduction to artists Dali and Tanguy, Gonsalves began his first surrealist paintings. The “Magic Realism” approach of Magritte along with the precise perspective illusions of Escher came to be influences in his future work.
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