What drives me to create art is my fascination with light and its effects. I never tire of observing how changes in light as it shifts over any surface can momentarily transform an object or a scene into something quietly mysterious or powerfully moving.
Robin Nyikos was born in Toronto into a family that valued and encouraged involvement in the arts. As a child, she was always drawing, painting and making art of some sort. Summers were spent at Go Home Bay on Georgian Bay, whose beauty inspired many of the Group of Seven's paintings.
Robin's seventh birthday was a particularly memorable one. As a special treat, her mother packed Robin and some painting materials into a little boat, and headed to a nearby island for a few hours of painting en plein air?just the two of them. As they sat side-by-side on a smooth granite rock, they noticed a small boat land on a nearby reef. An old man, accompanied by a young assistant, climbed ashore, set up an easel and began to paint. Robin begged her mother to let her go over and watch him, but her mother explained that the older man was one of the founders of the Group of Seven, A.Y. Jackson, and was definitely not to be disturbed.
Robin's passion for drawing and painting was no passing phase. While in high school, she took courses at The Toronto School of Arts, and then went on to study drawing and painting at The Ontario College of Art. After graduating in 1978, Robin travelled to Europe, and while in Nice, ran into a friend from OCA, Istvan Nyikos. The two ended up spending the summer painting together in Mallorca. In early September Robin went to Florence to do postgraduate studies at OCA's off-Campus site, and Istvan went to Grand Canary Island. Eventually, Robin joined him there, and began painting commissioned portraits and landscapes in pastels and oils.