Richard Cole

Richard Cole was born in Edmonton, AB, in 1968. After graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1991, he studied oil painting. First, Richard started a business as a decorative finisher and mural artist. Next, he became involved with design, working with interior designers and architects. Recently, Cole was considered the most sought-after decorative painter in Canada by Western Living Magazine.

Cole has concentrated his practice in the realm of figurative realism. It was a vacation along the Oregon coast that turned Richard into a decidedly Northwest Coast landscape painter. Now living in Fort Langley, BC, with proximity to North shore forests and the world-famous Pacific Rim National Park, Cole is never a loss for the subject matter. His paintings of these verdant cedar forests and wild coastal shores demonstrate his talent with the brush. Richard's paintings are drenched with an atmosphere rendered through the delicate use of colour and light. His use of perspective commands the viewer to see what it is about the scene that caught his eye in the first place.

Cole is also known for his work focusing on the Canadian prairies. His treatment of the meeting of sky and land is recognizably his own. The softness of the palate meets the vastness of the sky, with the resultant tension manifesting into a thick atmosphere. It is almost as if we, along with the painter, are waiting for the prairie storm to break.

In 2013 Cole published his first children's book, The Boy Who Paints, with writer K. Jane Watt.

"The wonders of the changing landscape inspire me, And I try to paint the intangible -- the ever-changing light in the sky, the smell of the weather before a storm, or the movement of the air around you."-Richard Cole.