Robert Doyon is a self-described “Swiss Artist’s Knife,” with skills and interests in all sorts of creative endeavors. After spending many years working in design and fabrication in Orlando’s theme parks, theatre, and museum exhibits, and assisting other artists in the making of their artwork, he decided to nurture his own artist’s spirit full time. At the age of 48, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Honors in Sculpture/Painting from the Ringling College of Art & Design (1994), in Sarasota. Since then, he has focused on integrating his previous work experience to his personal storyline and visual freedom.

Over the past twenty-five years, he has created abstract and conceptual works with deep connections to his experience and surroundings. In the exhibition Walkabout, which takes the name of his most recent series of paintings, he presents a body of work that highlights his passion for manual work and detail, but also frees him from previous visual and emotional constraints.

In Weave, for example, the color paint drops are organized in DNA like vertical patterns, while in Free Weaver, the same beads take over the canvas in a sort of unchoreographed dance. Walkabout brings bright and lively colors to Doyon’s palette. The earth-natural tones of Mandala for the Disappeared, are replaced by exciting combinations of blues, yellows, greens, and fuchsias, that bring light and energy to his work. The mandala’s theme continues to be present in the organic circles of the new paintings, but it is no longer marked by the weight of the past. There is a new kind of freedom and hope in the strokes of Mirror Twins and an eagerness to create as a symbol of life.

Walkabout gives the artist unlimited possibilities to reach within, beyond the grasp of his visual imagination, and to the viewer the opportunity to share his vision of a promising world in balance.