Banana Republic Painting

Robert Stein III began his art career getting busted by his third grade elementary school teacher for selling pencil drawings of dragons to his classmates. It wasn't that there was anything particularly wrong with dragons, or pencil drawings, but it was the fact that I was selling them. These drawings were going for the amazingly low low price of three cents, which coincidently was the going rate for school milk. Mothers were outraged that I was manipulating their nose drippy offspring out of their daily bovine nutritional intake, and they employed my teacher as their agent of retribution. It took several years of living in Morocco, Spain and Germany, studying Art History and drawing/painting on location to recover from that early trauma. I graduated from collage with a BFA in Illustration before computers were readily available for the graphic arts. Hired out of school as Lead Illustrator for Banana Republic, I was a significant contributor to the look and feel of their hand painted catalog in the mid ‘80’s, and we advanced it to the level of Award Winning “Coffee Table Catalogue” whose client address value was second only to Sacks Fifth Avenue’s. Entering the digital realm was more of an investment in the future, as the limited sixteen-color palette of early graphics cards offered none of the visual fidelity that I had been accustomed to as a painter. This investment paid off when I joined Trilobyte, and I was again able to significantly contribute to the overall look and success of the breakthrough CD-Rom games “The 7th Guest” and “11th Hour”. Statement; The digital tools of today offer the artist a hybrid environment where sculpture, painting, animation and photography coexist in a manner that allows the artist to cross pollinate techniques. “After more than a decade of creating production art, I would like to return to my roots while making use of the digital production techniques that I feel add to the creative process. I would describe my current work as Cross Pollinated Contemporary.” My current explorations surround the Dualities of life and how they both conflict and complement.