Robert J. Blanchette (b.1961–) is an artist whose meticulously rendered graphite pencil drawings employ various genres of still life, portraiture and landscape to explore complex relationships between light and space. The artist literally hammers the paper with rock-hard graphite to achieve the rich tonal array-simultaneously diminishes and increases the importance of the subjects he presents.

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My art communicates my emotion at the time of choosing the subject to draw. The gray scales achieved when drawing with graphite and charcoal are an ideal medium for visually expressing what I feel about a specific subject. Although the genre of my work is realistic, imitating reality is not the primary goal. I want a viewer of my work to get something out of viewing it. I want to stir some sort of memory, emotion or feeling. When the viewer identifies with a work of art then the art is a success.

During the early and mid 1960's, as America was experiencing military, political and social change, the art community, was itself, undergoing a metamorphism. Starting in 1965, just as the abstract expressionism movement was dwindling in popularity, the art community sought to challenge and hopefully to displace the newer Modernism movement that was currently the trend in paintings, sculptures and other forms of media.

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If you know the story La Chèvre de M. Seguin, then you know why. But for those who are not familiar with the story, it is about a goat owned by M. Seguin. The goat's name was Blanchette. In antiquity the name Blanchette was also written as Blanquette. The pronunciation is the same, it's just two ways of spelling the same name.

As a concrete example of this my ancestor Pierre Blanquet immigrated to Québec in 1642, or there abouts. On arrival the spelling of his name changed from Blanquet to Blanchet. It was much later in the 1700s that the name changed to its current spelling of Blanchette.