To become an artist, Robert Sarsony took a separate and singular path. He began drawing at an early age and decided while still a young man to explore his talent and insight and to study the great artists on his own. Sarsony has always been more interested in discovering things - solving technical problems and developing his own style - in his own fashion. His solitary path to his current level of achievement was a more difficult and longer route, but a better one, Sarsony says, for solidifying his individual perspective and selectivity.

"Becoming an artist is quite a gamble," says Sarsony. "To create art, one needs not only the ability to draw along with the temperament and sensitivity to art, but the willingness to work extremely hard. This is one of my strengths; I am willing and able to work very hard in my effort to create." Sarsony's hard work has paid off. His paintings hang in many prominent collections and museums, including the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, and the American Embassy Collection in Washington, D.C.

Sarsony was much influenced by the Impressionists, but not so much by their brushwork as by their conceptual approach to color and structure and their interest in expressing mood. Sarsony believes that the tighter - the more defined - a painter goes, the more color is sacrificed. He says his own exaggerated use of color demands a certain degree of looseness in structure. His handling of one canvas is not uniform throughout; some areas are much more defined than others. Even though his paintings contain figures, Sarsony does not consider himself a portrait artist. He is unconcerned with capturing likenesses: "My models are sometimes disappointed that their paintings do not look like them. I'm after something else - the gesture, the mood."

With each painting, Sarsony strives to create a canvas, an expression of himself, that is better than any he has ever done before: "In each painting you discover something on which you can build. All of my work is the result of a series of continual experiences." His communication and rendering are important to him, but Sarsony says, "First comes the striving for perfection...I explore and search constantly."