Robert DeVee (1940-2017) American, Pointillist Oil on Canvas. Signed bottom right.

Overall: 38 3/4 X 38 3/4 in. 

Sight: 35 5/8 X 35 5/8 in. 

Robert DeVee was born in 1940 in Albany, California. As a youth he trained with the Oakland Civic Ballet and performed with Ronn Guidi, who later became the Founding Artistic Director of the Oakland Ballet. When his family moved to Cazadero he continued dance lessons for many years with Linda Galletta, who became the Founding Director of the Sebastopol Center of the Arts. It was through his interactions with artists who attended the ballet that he became interested in visual art, and after high school he studied acrylic and oil painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts and at San Francisco State University. After working for ten years as a graphic artist at Grodin’s and Joseph Magnin, he took up art full-time in 1970. He began to specialize in large Impressionist paintings of gardens, landscapes, still lifes, and street scenes, exploring Pointillism and Cubism. After visiting Japan and learning of the contemporary print movement, he also began to do monotypes, serigraphs, and silkscreens. After moving to Sebastopol to work with Galletta at the Center of the Arts he met Ren Brown, who became his life-partner in 1981 and eventually his husband. They moved to Bodega Bay in 1989 and opened the Ren Brown Collection Art Gallery that year. He had numerous exhibitions throughout California, primarily in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Bodega Bay, as well as one man shows in Dallas, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, and Chicago, Illinois. His work can be found in permanent collections of the City of Santa Rosa and the Bank of America Headquarters, and has appeared in numerous publications including House and Garden, Sunset, and Architectural Digest. He passed away in 2017 at his home in Bodega Bay, and his work continues to be exhibited at his husband’s gallery.