Robert Saunders has devoted most of his career to the art of visual poetry. His works are about language and communication, often featuring numbers and the letters of the alphabet in a variety of orientations. Many of his works seek to achieve the effects of verbal communication without such language-based symbols. Verbal content is instead suggested through the use of intersecting or non-intersecting lines embellished with bold color and artistic abstraction. The lines remind us of thoughts and words that intersect to create meaning (or that trail off into nothingness). Color and abstract imagery suggest emotion or the development of ideas.

One series in the current show features pages taken from a daily journal that the artist kept from February 2005 to February 2006. Instead of making verbal entries for each day, the artist made an abstract drawing to record his thoughts and emotions. Some entries relate to specific events, such as a drawing done in homage to Washington, DC jazz vocalist Pam Bricker on the day her suicide was reported in the paper. Some evidence what would otherwise be unremarkable circumstances, like the quivering hand that bedeviled the artist for a few months as a side effect of a prescribed change in medication. Most relate to nothing in particular that will be remembered, yet they have graphic appeal despite their mundane, stream-of-consciousness origins.

Saunders is a recognized contributor to a variety of "outsider" art movements. He has an extensive exhibition history. His work is included in the Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, and his contributions to the mail art movement have been documented in publications in the US, Germany, Holland, Spain and Brazil. He has won numerous first place awards in international rubber stamp art competition. He is listed in the Franklin Furnace Archive and in the archives of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and Humanities. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Manchester Institute of Arts & Sciences and in the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, NH.

Mr. Saunders received his undergraduate degree in art from Western Michigan University and his Masters of Art from Wayne State University. He currently lives with his wife in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, DC.