Rob Rey

Excited to be a featured artist at Gen Con this year!

Introducing the Gen Con 2026 Featured Artists – The Official Gen Con Blog The annual Gen Con Art Show honors the creativity, craftsmanship, and imagination that bring our favorite worlds to life through stunning visuals. From far-reaching fantasy realms to striking sci-fi dreamscapes and beyond—the Gen Con Art Show is a sanctuary for visual revelations, where every comp...

Return to the Stars
8 x 6 inches
A new tiny painting available this Friday on Every Day Original

Some of your atoms, mostly hydrogen, come from the beginning of the universe. Many more were created in the super novae of ancient dying stars. In the time since then, your atoms have been part of many things: oceans and oaks, dinosaurs and dandelions, foxes and fireflies. For a brief moment, these disparate, voyaging elements have come together to be you, to feel the breeze, and to wonder at the night sky. One day they will move on, scattered and woven into many more incarnations before eventually returning to space in nebulous clouds to birth new stars.

Detail of a new tiny painting coming to Every Day Original this Friday, 2/20.

Observation
24 x 20 in, 2014

Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking.

Early philosophers used to believe we could understand the world simply by thinking about it, that what made sense to us must be true. But, Observation showed us that the universe often does not conform to our expectations or desires. It doesn’t matter how much we wish something to be true, how beautiful a theory is, or who came up with it. To find out what is true we have to look and pay attention to how the universe really works.

The methods of science have pulled humanity out of dangerous superstitions and entrenched ignorance. They have allowed us to find real solutions to stubborn problems from hunger and disease to communication. In the scientific method, Observation leads the way. We may not always like what we see, particularly if it runs against our cherished beliefs, but if we accept it with humility, we will find ourselves better able to confront the problems we face.

Magnetosphere, an allegory
30 x 24 in, Oil on panel, 2021, homage to Fumée D'Ambre Gris by John Singer Sargent.

In addition to the warmth and light we receive daily, our sun expels a constant barrage of dangerous charged particles called the solar wind. When solar storms occur, flares and coronal mass ejections can be thrown our way at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour. Luckily, movements within earths molten metal core generate a protective magnetic shield around our home planet. Without our magnetosphere to protect us, the solar wind may have long ago stripped away our atmosphere, leaving Earth looking much more like Mars looks today: barren, dry, and lifeless.

Human wellbeing has been shown to benefit greatly from the experience and practice of gratitude, whether that gratitude is directed toward someone else or not. Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about our magnetosphere, but it’s one of the many extraordinary things that make life possible on our little world. This can serve as a reminder to take notice of other things we may be taking for granted in our lives.

Prints: https://robrey.storenvy.com

A little light for the season's dark days, the light of life and the natural world. In all the vastness of space, as of yet, we know of only one planet that supports life. At least within some great distance from here, life is rare. Each organism being the exquisite and detailed product of billions of years of evolution, life is precious. The process of science has revealed a luminous, living planet, more amazing than we could have ever imagined, where the intricacies of biology are miracles of evolution and our consciousness is a gift of natural processes that allow us to experience what it is to be alive.

Bioluminescence : Altruism
16 x 12 in, Oil on panel, 2020
Prints available: https://robrey.storenvy.com

Flyby
16 x 12 in, oil on panel
This painting also debuted, and sold, at the IX Art Show last month. Prints Available

The first step to landing on a new world is getting a closer look.

The Moon landing can remind us that in the face of daunting challenges, the human capacity for reason provides a light of hope. Our abilities to understand the world around us through scientific methods, to develop new technology, and to plan for the future have made us the first species in Earth’s four and a half billion year history to bring life to the moon.

Clearly, no single person could have reached the moon on their own. Our species ability to work together is one of our greatest assets. Collectively, we have the power to improve our lives: to produce more food, to cure disease, and respond to major threats. When we work together, we can accomplish amazing feats, and overcome obstacles that would doom other species. Yet, these gifts of evolution do not guarantee success. When we act with careless disregard for our biosphere, or when we put our energies into fighting each other, we also have the ability to defeat ourselves. Where will we go from here?

Nebulae
12 x 16 in, oil on panel
A new painting from an earlier study, Nebulae debuted at the IX Art Show. It's now back and on my website, original and prints.

"If you could tag each of the atoms in your body and follow them backward in time, through the air that you breathed during your life, through the food that you ate, back through the geological history of the Earth, through the ancient seas and soil, back to the formation of the Earth out of the solar nebular cloud, and then out into interstellar space, you could trace each of your atoms, those exact atoms, to particular massive stars in the past of our galaxy. At the end of their lifetimes, those stars exploded and spewed out their newly forged atoms into space, later to condense into planets and oceans and plants and your body at this moment."
-Alan Lightman

Had a great time at the IX Arts Show last weekend! It's a wonderful community that really helps to recharge the art batteries.

The IX Arts Show opens next week! I'm one of many artists who will be debuting a painting only in person on Wednesday night. They won't be on social media until after the show, so you'll have to be there to be among the first to see them.

Night Migration
Oil, 30 x 20 in, 2024

This painting will be coming with me to the IX Arts Show next month in Reading, PA, Oct 22-26! (For real this time, I'm going to try not to be sick this year)

In our night sky there is a dark band that runs through the Milky Way, known as the Great Rift. This darkness is where the stars of our galaxy are obscured by vast clouds of interstellar dust and geese … er, gas.

There is an experience of magic to be found in the poetry of stories, new and old. For many thousands of years, our ancestors looked at the random distribution of stars in the night sky and saw things that were familiar to them. Some people think that living with a scientific worldview means giving up the wonder of our ancestor’s stories. Yet, just as enjoying a fantasy novel doesn’t require believing it to be true, having a grounded, science-based worldview doesn’t have to keep you from enjoying the beauty and poetry of myth and metaphor.

Just don’t make any important life decisions as though there are really giant geese in space.