May is a good month for Cowichan Bay artist Robert Cerins.
Spring is his favourite time of year, his birthday is this month and he's the feature artist at the downtown Nanaimo Art Gallery. The show, Luscious Landscapes features a series of works based on float homes in the Cowichan Bay area as well as some landscapes from areas such as Australia and Italy. Most of the works are acrylics.
Last year Cerins spent a month a month in Cowichan Bay on a float home- a small, floating house. He was inspired by the neighbourhood of funky floating homes and painted a series of them. The homes are being taken down now and Cerins said he was glad to be able to document them.
"They're makeshift boxes really," he said. "They've been added on to and kind of pieced together. They were all built in the 40s or 50s and they're leaning and dilapidated with barnacles hanging off them."
Cerins plans to travel up and down the coast painting remaining float home communities in place like Genova Bay this summer. During the labour day weekend he will travel to Sausalito California for an annual art show where he will bring his float home art and paint homes along the coast.
Cerins said he loved living on the float home. He grew up near the water on lakes in Winnipeg and said he lived for the days of laying in the sun on the dock.
"I felt so good I painted six paintings in a month," he said. "I couldn't stop painting. I usually paint every day, but I wouldn't even stop at the end of the day. It fed me more than I was actually working."
Travel is a big part of where Cerins gets his inspiration. A couple of years ago he went to Europe and next is a planned trip to Latvia, where both his parents were born. In addition to having his works shown in galleries, his art is also used for promotional materials. One of his works has been used for the brochure for this year's Victoria Jazz Festival and the manager of the Doobie Brothers band has asked to use his art for labels for a wine company he owns. He's also the only Cowichan Valley artist to have done a spirit bear, which is on display at Cowichan Eyecare.
"When he was delivered I danced around with him for a few minutes and I just let him talk to me," Cerins said of the large spirit bear, which he painted with some of his own characteristics, including the same glasses, pants and facial hair. "He's sort of my spirit bear."
Cerins will be on display for the month of May.