I’m Robert Falconer, an artist based in Raleigh, North Carolina. For me, art is a way to make sense of life—a way to capture my ideas, thoughts, emotions, and the small moments I find beautiful. Creating helps me express what words alone sometimes can’t.
I discovered painting in college, which felt relatively late to find a true passion. Growing up, my family’s world revolved around high-level sports—my siblings and I spent our childhoods and college years competing, with the focus always on athletic improvement rather than art. It wasn’t that my parents discouraged us from pursuing our interests, but since art wasn’t something they explored themselves, it never became part of our lives either. That changed when I went to Boston to study finance in college. Looking for a break from my heavy coursework, I signed up for an art history elective, expecting it to be easy. Instead, it became one of the most challenging classes I took in college—and the one that opened the door to a world of art I’ve grown to love.
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In that classroom, learning about the great artists and their masterpieces, I was captivated by how these works expressed something timeless, leaving a mark that outlived their creators. Inspired, I bought a beginner’s art set from Walmart, and that simple act sparked a journey. From the moment I first held a brush, I felt that the meditative process of painting was something I’d carry with me for life. Since then, I’ve painted countless works—far more than what’s featured here—and I continue to create every day.
As a self-taught artist, my journey has been driven by curiosity rather than formal training. My style and techniques really come from wondering how I can make more interesting works and how I can move paint from a blob on the table to the canvas more efficiently and in a way that presents better. As I move through life, the kinds of works of art I find interesting have also changed, and as a result, my style has changed too. The results of this experimentation are sometimes good and sometimes just plain awful, but always personal.
Early on, I questioned whether my lack of training made me “less” of an artist, but I’ve come to see that art is about expressing something genuine, not about meeting anyone’s standards or doing it the correct way. It’s simply about interpreting the world and creating something physical to represent what you saw with your eyes, heard with your ears, felt in your heart, or imagined in your mind. My work is my response to the world, something I feel compelled to create, whether or not anyone’s watching. My goal isn’t to follow anyone else’s expectations of my art; it’s to create works that resonate with me in the hope that they might connect with others in their own way. If my work can inspire even a moment of reflection, then it has done its job.
