Capital City Arts Initiative exhibit spotlights scenes from rural Nevada

Ron Arthaud, an artist from Tuscarora, finds inspiration to create plein air paintings from scenes at his home in eastern Nevada, from broken-down fences and rusty cars to old picket fences and corrugated sheds.

Arthaud’s work will be displayed through June 30 in the Sierra Room of the Carson City Community Center in “Tuscarora,” an exhibit sponsored by Capital City Arts Initiative.

“All becomes a composition, a subject, something my eye wants to linger over. I need to be right there in the environment, holding still, to find a composition and capture the colors I see with my palette of primary paint. My goal is that the ‘abstract’ designs I paint retain the feeling of space, electricity and interaction of the objects, and ultimately express a feeling of place,” Arthaud said.

Arthaud attended the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where he received his bachelor’s in fine arts in 1984. From 1984 to 1987, he studied at the Atelier LeSueur, a small classical realist art school in the Minneapolis area. Following three years of study in France in the early 1990s, he discovered Tuscarora, where he now lives with his wife and two small children. In addition to painting, he’s restoring their home, an old 1870s building. He shows his art nationally and locally at Stremmel Gallery in Reno.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The Sierra Room is open during city meetings, including every other Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and from 5 to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

CCAI is funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council, City of Carson City, NV Energy Foundation, U.S. Bank Foundation, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Comstock Foundation for History and Culture, and the John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

For more information, go to www.arts-initiative.org.