From the Collection: Richard Sturm

“As a painter, I often feel that I am working as an archeologist in reverse, burying layers of images with layers of colour.”

Richard Sturm

Today, we’re sharing the work of Richard Sturm from the Permanent Collection.

Richard Sturm (b.1947) was born in Buffalo, New York. He is a dual citizen of the US and Canada. He has been professionally painting since 1967, and his work is a part of many collections including Trent University’s Art Collection (TUAC) and the Robert McLaughlin’s Permanent Collection. He moved to Peterborough in 1995, where he remains working today.

¹“As a painter,” Sturm explains in his artist statement, “I often feel that I am working as an archeologist in reverse, burying layers of images with layers of colour.” Sturm’s notion of a “reverse-archeologist” refers to his process. He first begins with an image, sometimes images, and then slowly covers it up with layers and layers of colour. We can see multiple layers of blue, red, yellow, pink, green, orange, white, and black in Sturm’s work, “Easy Over,” 1990. The result appears to be—at least at first—chaotic, however, patterns emerge from the layers, adding depth to the work’s balanced composition: lines of black, for example, and biomorphic patches of green.

For many of his paintings, Sturm takes inspiration from 16th and 17th century eastern carpets. More specifically, he is interested in the interplay of light caused by the use of metallic threads. He often uses metallic paint in reference to these metallic threads, which contributes to the work’s depth by refracting light through its many layers of colour. For Sturm, this process allows us “…to observe both the warp and the weft simultaneously, almost as if the paintings had become transparent carpets.²”