Featured Artist Robert Van Praag

Artist Robert Van Praag combines photography and painting to create fantastical imagery of architecture and landscapes which he calls “DreamStreams.” View more of his work by visiting his website.

 

 

Never knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always reverted to shooting still pictures and making them into fantasy with whatever camera was available at the moment. My first big project was a stop-motion movie on super 8mm film about the attack of miniature alien robots.

 

 

In college, I began a film based on the fantasy stories of “The Princess and Curdie,” a series of books my mother used to read to me. Escape and fantasy was always my greatest pleasure but I needed to make a living.

 

 

I found a job at NBC Burbank as a network page. Eventually, with the help of a well-placed film director, I found my way into network news and became a cameraman.

 

 

As a professional photojournalist, I’ve been paid to travel the world and record all sorts of reality for clients like National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Travel, BBC, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC and ABC.

 

 

Arriving in the middle of the night in Casablanca, we stepped off the plane and immediately dove into the Medina to follow a gypsy tribe selling water to visitors and charming very large snakes.

 

 

After a grueling six hour ride in a Land Rover over pot holes and muddy trenches, we found the Orinoco River in Venezuela where our story subject was about to release two hundred baby crocodiles into the wilderness.

 

 

I spent three months in New Orleans recording the Katrina disaster and followed that with chasing the determined tornado chasers. We drove 16,000 miles from St. Cloud, Minnesota to Amarillo, Texas and back. I flew in with the National Guard to record Atlanta’s “Snowpocalypse.”

 

 

I’ve been deposited by helicopter into a raging forest fire in Kern County, California. I’ve spent a week on Alcatraz recording a reenactment of the Great Escape.

 

 

And now, at last and finally, finally, through photography and painting, I’ve rediscovered some of the bright, shiny fantasy I’ve always wanted to share with the world.

 

 

Every summer, time permitting, I maintain a booth at various art shows and festivals. This year, 2017, I’ll be at two shows in Chicago, one in Wyoming, one in Cincinnati and one in Indianapolis while continuing to be available as a director of photography for my broadcast clients.

 

Artist Robert Van Praag invites you to visit his Etsy page.

 

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