Robert LaDuke’s paintings open a window onto a brightly colored, slightly dreamlike version of mid-century America. Cars gleam, trains cut across bridges, Airstream trailers rest under wide skies, and vintage aircraft slice through clear air. The scenes feel familiar yet slightly heightened, as if pulled from a child’s memory of old magazine ads or a collection of carefully kept steel toys.

Born in 1961 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, LaDuke received a Presidential Scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1994. He has painted professionally for more than two decades. His first gallery exhibition came in 1996 at Mendenhall Gallery in Pasadena, California, and he has shown steadily since, with work appearing in galleries across the Southwest and beyond.

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