I paint because I have always painted and have always loved doing so. It is a deeply personal and spiritual experience
wherein I search to record, remember and resolve key moments and places in my life. The paintings are the words to
my story. I consider a good painting to be ‘a good story well told’.

 

My work represents my attempt to reconcile the various elements of my past and the pasts of my ancestors both Native
Canadian and European,
and my attempt to reconcile Aboriginal spirituality with Western classicism.

 

I often work in series, with reoccurring themes or subjects such as Havana Cuba or Turn of the Century Ottawa. I strive to
capture moments in time, and not staged set pieces. I look for movement or visible energy seeking to paint the essence
of the thing and not the thing itself.

 

I paint the type of paintings that have always moved me, drawing inspiration from the works of Tom Thompson and Emily
Carr, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, Mark Chagall and Henri Matisse, L.S.Lowry and Hendrik Avercamp.

 

My recent travels to Europe and the Far and Middle East let me see a wider world, a broader tapestry, with a re-occurring
cycle of image making from Zen art to Abstract Expressionism; from cave paintings to Van Gogh’s violent strokes of color.

 

I hope to create work that doesn’t require a degree in philosophy to be understood or a degree in art history to be
appreciated “. Works of Art should stand on their own, without props or stunts or timeline, without future or past.

 

Ross Rheaume

2012