Almost every day during quarantine Bob Stuth-Wade went to Proctor Lake and painted. “For years I saw nothing beautiful there until I began to see that seeing itself is beauty,” he said. “Proctor then became a place of practice, like the cushion I sit on to meditate each morning and night. The trees there have become companions and objects of devotion.
“Standing, rooted down, reaching up, stable and engaged with air and earth, they are my teachers. Standing, seeing, rooted in this moment, I am present because the intensity of painting outside demands it. The voice that says, ‘You can’t,’ surrenders to the doing. Experience inevitably, unpredictably, completes itself. Passing through insecurity to completion in fragile confidence is the joy of painting. This silent verity is my ever-present work.”
Bob Stuth-Wade’s work has been written about by Eleanor Jones Harvey of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Frederick Turner in American Arts Quarterly, Judy Deaton for The Grace Museum, and Rebecca Lawton for his recent Valley House catalogue.
Museum exhibitions include Jesuit Dallas Museum, The Grace Museum, and San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.
His self-directed art education began under his mentor, Dallas artist Perry Nichols, when he was a student at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. His first solo exhibition was at Fairmount Gallery in Dallas in 1972 at age 18. “The Comfort of Trees” is Bob Stuth-Wade’s 11th solo exhibition since 1991 at Valley House Gallery (Dallas, Texas).
View “The Comfort of Trees” through February 19, 2022 at Valley House Gallery and online here.
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