Robert Kost

Robert Theodore Kost (1936–2003) was a self-taught Canadian prairie artist known for his magic realist style. His art focused on small-town life and the simple beauty of the prairies. His work is featured in the collection of The Canada Council for the Arts and can be seen in collections of large corporations, federal and provincial governments, and private collectors across North America. Kost was notorious for burning any paintings that he was not satisfied with and thus destroyed hundreds of works over the years, yet sold more than 300 paintings over the course of his 40-year career. After graduation, Kost studied mechanical drafting in Winnipeg. The couple returned to Lac du Bonnet two years later in order to help his father run an Esso service station. Kost's art was showcased in major exhibitions nationwide throughout the mid-1970s and 1980s.

Imperial Oil commissioned Kost to create a series of Blackbird paintings; he was featured in an MTS TV commercial; and At the Picnic Table was used as the cover art of a mid-1990s MTS regional phone book. Kost’s final painting—of his grandson, Lucas, on the shores of Grand Beach was completed just before his death in 2003.

Kost's art is in the collection of the Canada Council Art Bank and represented by Mayberry Fine Art, among others.

Style and influence Kost's early style embraced a loose impressionism, but after discovering the work of realist painters such as Andrew Wyeth in the mid-late 1960s, he rediscovered the landscape of his childhood and eventually changed his approach.

His early influences included the Group of Seven, Tom Thomson, and French impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh. Later, he was inspired by the Fauves, German expressionists, and David Milne. He also found inspiration in the works of American realist painters such as Andrew Wyeth.

Kost is often compared to renowned Canadian painter Alex Colville, yet made a name for himself through dreamlike portrayals of ineffable loneliness on the Canadian prairies. In 2002, The Winnipeg Free Press art critic Bill Redekop proclaimed:

Nobody has ever painted Lake Winnipeg and its grey-green-blue-late waters better. Nobody.

Personal life Kost married wife Grace Nejedly in 1959. The couple had three children: Anthony, Karen, and Jonathan. Kost enjoyed bluegrass music and played the fiddle. In the early 1990s, his band, the Ain't No Mountain Boys, played a side stage at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Kost was also an avid golfer, and played an early role in the development of the Granite Hills Golf Course. He suffered a silent heart attack in 1992 and had a quadruple bypass the following year.