A Visit to the Bateman Gallery

Work by Robert Bateman

 I love Robert Bateman.  Well I love his talent with some paint and a brush.  The way he can play with light and dark and make a picture that looks realistic and life like is a wonderful gift.  We have a few of his works, or rather copies of his work and we enjoy looking on them and finding new things in them. My favorite one is of a pod of orcas, going by a rocky point and sea gulls flying in the air.  You can almost hear the sound of the orca's spraying, sqeaking and the gulls screaming at them for interfering with their opportunity for dinner.

Work by Robert Bateman

 Robert Bateman and his wife have created a gallery in downtown Victoria, at the Old Steamship Terminal, that we had an opportunity to explore today.  It was wonderful to see how they to this building with character, added the elements of the coast - cedar wood in the baseboards and benches, colors on the walls that were of nature like sky, sea and moonlight night.  They also have added current technology as well with QR Codes that are scanned by your cell or tablet.  In other rooms they have a motion sensor built into the gallery card describing the piece and it makes the call of the bird that is in the picture.  Very clever and a good way to share the sounds of various birds that people may have never heard before.

I really like the space that they are in despite it being very loud when more than 10 people are in the space. The video was slow to load and in some cases it did not run at all, which was disappointing. The flow of the space was good too, I loved coming around the corner and the distance seeing this fellow at the end of the hall. 

work by Robert Bateman

This picture is very large and takes up the whole of one wall at the back of gallery. You can almost hear him snorting and pawing the ground getting ready to defend his herd from outsiders. It also reminds me of growing up a few miles from Elk Island National Park and seeing these herds through out the year as we drove through the park.  Or my best memory of cross country skiing on a Sunday afternoon through the park  and seeing these fellows waiting at the bottom of the hill, where the trail goes between two swampy areas that means you may be either getting wet or stomped on depending how you go down the hill.  It was awesome...  I wonder if I can convince the
hubby that we should get this buffalo for our walls.