Haunting Landscapes and Interiors

By Bob Bumcrot and Francesca Turchiano
After many years, artist Arne Rostad has returned to Norfolk. Some of his paintings are now on view in the library.
Born here in 1953, Rostad attended the Norfolk Center and Salisbury Schools before departing for England to spend three years at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art at The University at Oxford.
In those days the Ruskin, as it is usually called, followed a classical teaching method in which students drew live models all day every day. The atmosphere of the school, which functions as the Oxford art department, was
perfectly captured (as “The Constable School”) in the short story “Still Life,” by John Updike, who was a student there decades before Rostad.
The Rostad interior paintings echo both his Ruskin training and Scandinavian roots. Early in his career, he would hire models to put in the interiors, only to find that “they kept the viewer out.” Later he discovered that his empty interiors leading to the outdoors were similar in style to those of Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916), a Danish master of light and solitude.
Rostad’s landscapes often depict houses and trees drenched in intense sunlight, reminiscent of a Norwegian summer day. Although he usually works in his studio, painting from studies and photographs, he sometimes paints on site. An excellent example of this is “Midday,” a small brilliant depiction of the home of his artist sister Turi Rostad.
Many of Rostad’s paternal relatives still live in Norway, some on a farm near Trondheim that has been in the family for three centuries. There is a fascinating connection between the Rostad family and the great Norwegian
symbolist and printmaker Edvard Munch (1863-1943). During World War II Munch was living on a farm in Oslo next to one owned by Rostad’s great uncle. The aged artist regularly traded his lithographs and woodcuts for farm produce.
“The great room in my uncle’s house was lined with dozens of Munch’s prints, many just leaning on the walls,” he said. Rostad’s earliest influence was undoubtedly his mother Joan, a “Sunday painter,” who died in 2004. “The house always smelled of gum spirits of turpentine,” he recalls. “I don’t really feel at home without that smell.”
The Norfolk Library show of Rostad’s works, which opened July 1, runs through August 2nd.

Photo, of Arne Rostad against the background of one of his interiors, by Bruce Frisch.