Robert Pope Archive

Psychologist George Bonanno uses the term “resilient” to describe people who are able to maintain a sense of core purpose, meaning and forward momentum in the face of a traumatic set-back, such as getting cancer. Purpose and belief can come

This image of three figures caught in a love triangle was inspired by Edvard Munch’s painting and lithograph, Jealousy, though Robert has changed Munch’s focus on two male rivals to a focus on two female rivals. Robert’s image is unusual and further

In a sketchbook,  Robert notes: “Blood is a simultaneous symbol of birth, life and death. Water operates the same way; a life-giving substance that one can drown in.” Robert often used parallels and contrasts in his work. Here he contrasts an apparatus of modern

Robert returned to this image repeatedly. He first showed construction machines glimpsed outside a hospital room window, with the window appearing between a patient on a bed and a visitor in a chair. As he developed the image, Robert dispensed with

The wolf  is encased in a field of energy. His sudden call disrupts the rippling waves around him with a sharp starburst wedge. Is he sounding an alarm or simply announcing his presence in the universe? The wolf’s body is depicted as a

Robert’s lecture notes from a workshop by Michio Kushi. On the left hand page, “an age of ignorance,” is declared, in which disease acts as “a challenge to our humanness.” On the topic of gratitude, Robert writes: “The business of blaming others for our

The title “Heart Attack” suggests the phone is seen from the angle of a person lying helpless on the floor—the phone serves as a lifeline, but it may be out of reach. Robert pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s noir classic, “Dial

Robert illustrated the cover for this book of poems by his sister Janet Pope. Robert often used pattern in his work, especially his commercial work, and collected samples of different patterns from diverse sources. The arrangement of spiraling rays suggest

Robert’s conversation theme, (two figures face one another; between them are symbols of their interests and concerns), combines here with his talking animal theme (a bird or animal gives utterance to emotions felt by the figures, emotions that cannot be

Robert recreates a moment from his 1986 cancer treatment at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Toronto. His mother Isabel accompanied him on this trip as moral support and also to cook his Macrobiotic meals. Isabel looks on concerned, but she is