Robin Weiss

Robin Weiss grew up in Ohio, where his first art teacher Louis Penfield encouraged him to sketch and paint from life. He and Penfield together built a studio adjacent to Penfield's home — a residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. After service in the U.S. Navy, where he painted ship scenes in watercolor, Weiss relocated to Washington State, studied architectural engineering and art at Olympic College, and committed full-time to painting.

In 2005 he joined the Daily Painters movement after reading about Duane Keiser and Julian Merrow Smith, and he points to that exposure and the practice of daily work as the period his painting improved most sharply. Oil is now his medium of choice — "the buttery feel and the intense color of oil paint," he has said — and he works primarily plein air, on oil-primed linen panels, in the Pacific Northwest light. "It's all about the light," he has said. Early influences include Washington painters Deanne Lemley and Jane Wallace.

Weiss currently paints and teaches at the Knowles Studio in Poulsbo, Washington, alongside printmaker and art instructor Leigh Knowles Metteer. His work has been featured by M. Graham & Co. — the Oregon-based fine paint maker — and has shown at galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Front Street Gallery (Poulsbo), Carrie Goller Gallery, and Alki Arts (West Seattle). He is a regular at the Whidbey Island Plein Air competition and has worked at Bloedel Reserve, Olympic National Park, and points across the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound.