One of Canada's most accomplished painters, Robert Genn gained international recognition for his landscape subjects of Canada's West Coast. Extremely prolific and dedicated to his art, he painted in most parts of Canada, the United States, Central America, Europe, and Asia and made comprehensive land and sea explorations painting en plein air on Northern Canada's Mackenzie River and the Arctic, Haida Gwaii, North Ontario's Lake of the Woods, Lower Canada and the American Southwest. He hiked and painted Canada's West Coast Trail, The Grand Canyon and Lake O'Hara and pioneered what he called "heli-painting" in the Canadian Rockies.
Robert was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1936 and attended Victoria College, The University of British Columbia and The Art Centre School in Los Angeles, California. Genn carried on the tradition of the Canadian Landscape with fresh, painterly techniques and strong design, often exhibiting his devotion to painting by reducing grand themes to small panels painted on location in the wilderness he loved.