Robert Duncan was born in Utah and began painting at age eleven from a set of oils his grandmother gave him. That was one of the best decisions she ever made, because Robert Duncan went on to become a master painter. He’s one of these gifted artists who can capture the fantastical idealized view of rural America with photorealistic results.
He’s been to Paris, one of his “favorite cities”, and his dedication to the French Academic style is obvious in his work. Three of his favorite artists are Bastien-Lepage, Sorolla and Sargent, turn of the 20th century artists who were trained or influenced by the Beaux-arts, where Bougeureau was the master.
I was inspired to write this article because of a delightful PowerPoint presentation showing a nice cross-section of Robert Duncan’s paintings set to music that a friend sent me. His works are available for sale if you are inspired by the presentation. The simple pleasures of Duncan’s subjects are heart warming.
Duncan spent summers as a boy on his grandparents’ ranch in Wyoming where he grew to love the country, the open spaces, and the rural lifestyle.
“I grew up in the suburbs, but every chance I got, I would sneak out to nearby fields to watch the birds or play in the creek,” Duncan said. “and the summers I spent on my granddad’s ranch really taught me how much we all need Nature in our lives. But change is all around us. I want my grandchildren to be able to walk through a field and hear a meadowlark call.”
I live in a rural area myself, one which has only modest growth, but whenever I see land taken for a new subdivision, I can’t help but notice that developers have a knack for choosing the best land for farming to put tract homes with covenants not to farm the land. Not that you could on a postage stamp lot.
“The family farm is disappearing at an alarming rate. Development and sprawl cover fertile fields by the minute,” Duncan said. The idea of zoning was to stop developers from buying up lands for inappropriate uses. It hasn’t worked. The whole idea of zoning has been wasted by small-minded bureaucrats who are easily impressed by showy exhibits of what a development will look like on paper, sometimes with 3D models, and a flash of the money the development will bring to local municipal coffers.
I’ve seen these things happen firsthand, not to mention reading many stories in the media through the years about the land-use travesties in other counties and states.
“We don’t all have to live on a farm, but to pass by and see the cows grazing or just to know that there are wild places being kept wild makes our lives better,” Duncan said. “In a way, my paintings are a call to think about the things that have touched our lives and hope that we might all be willing to do our part to save these things for future generations.”
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