Many MEDIUMS. IN addition to getting a visual artist, the late Tiit Raid was a musican. In this 2014 photograph, Raid (at still left) and Peter Phippen performed “Shading” at UWEC’s Foster Gallery – a visible/auditory piece by Australian artist Catherine Schieve. (Picture by Andrea Paulseth)
Eau Claire artist Tiit Raid died on Aug. 28, 2022, at property in his studio, surrounded by the individuals and factors he loved. He was doing work on selecting paintings for his last present, to be held at the Pablo Middle at the Confluence in early 2023. What follows is a “conversation” with the artist, which appeared in this journal in 2006. It is been tweaked for existing viewers.
Tiit Raid has been painting entire time given that retiring from UW-Eau Claire’s Artwork Department in 2002. In 2006, he was highlighted in the prestigious American Artist Watercolor Journal.
From 1974 to 2017, Tiit and his spouse, Ann, lived on the banking companies of Slide Creek, in which he’s a regional legend. Many years back, I drove through town and stopped at a fuel station to request about the artwork exhibit opening. “Oh, you necessarily mean Tiit,” the gal at the rear of the counter informed me. He of course was the artist in town. In that location, additional church basement than gallery, or in Thomas Barry Fantastic Arts, Raid’s operate is magnificent. The pair moved to Eau Claire about 5 a long time in the past.
When I attended his opening at Thomas Barry, housed in an unpretentious creating in downtown Minneapolis, I would not have observed it, except for Tiit’s instructions: just throughout from the Loon Café. Viewing his function were pretty much four decades worth of colleagues, previous students, previous neighbors, substantial school friends, strangers, and urban artists with haircuts that haven’t but created it to the Chippewa Valley. Even the male who applied to sweep the parking ton at Kerm’s and gave Tiit and Ann instructions to the generate-in theater the summer months they moved to Eau Claire in 1967 confirmed up. If Raid’s paintings had been poems, these are the information they’d express: it’s his viewing what stands out in the earth close to him that attracts you in to his perform and retains you hunting.
”Improvisation #3“ by Tiit Raid, part of the Pablo Center’s 2021 Confluence of Artwork Yearly Show.
His Minneapolis clearly show was made up of panoramic paintings that are an regular of 6 inches by 2 1/2 ft, section of what 1 buddy calls “Tiit’s extensive and skinny period.” This new collection is primarily based on reflections on h2o – a dam, a barn, a stand of trees, a shoreline – no matter what he finds from his most frequent vantage level: his kayak or even just the look at from his Drop Creek yard. Raid bases his paintings on photos he usually takes, from time to time combining prints to generate just one portray. His approach of alternating varnish and paint quite a few times through the system and his selection of shade interactions make the hues deeper, more lush, vivid, off the webpage. Frequently it isn’t until looking at the paintings’ titles that the matter issue results in being clear. Raid sees shades of purple and chartreuse in the ripples of Drop Creek Pond, which of class are there, if only one particular pays notice.
Raid first thought of getting to be an artist again in the fifth grade in 1952, so he’s been “making images” for above seven decades. This is what he acquired:
How do you choose what to photograph and select which of those people come to be paintings?
I do not have anything distinct in mind when I go out for my kayak rides. I’m just on the lookout at what is there. And what attracts my focus determines what I photograph. I feel to get the job done most effective when I don’t have a preconceived notion in brain about what I want to do. It is sort of like what Picasso talked about when he reported, “I really don’t search for, I come across.”
Artist Tiit Raid sought (and found) inspiration when paddling on the Chippewa Valley’s waters. (Image courtesy Patti See)
Which artists most influenced you?
Anything you see and knowledge results in being an affect. The Swiss-German artist Paul Klee is an early and continuing influence in two extremely significant respects: inventing as you go and establishing observational skills – on the lookout prolonged at the visual appearance of your surroundings. From Wassily Kandinsky I acquired about the intuitive process and the marriage of art to new music, and this has also been an impact on how I strategy my painting and actively playing of music. In a certain way, I imagine of my paintings as musical.
What is your very best advice for a young artist?
A good plan alone has never painted a terrific painting or composed a moving poem. So the very first point I would recommend is to expend a large amount of time observing the visible planet we see all around us every working day. And not to consider it … but merely seem at it … over and above words and phrases and labels … the visible world can be “read” without words and phrases and intellectual explanations. Strategies for paintings will appear from this observation.
The arts is a great position to give one’s inward voice the no cost hand. I have discovered that my paintings tend to be much more fascinating when I make it possible for my intuition to tutorial just about every motion. Today’s observation will become tomorrow’s intuition … so, continually get the job done to create your observational expertise and belief your instincts until eventually you understand normally. And, never ever assume that you know or see nicely more than enough.
Tiit Raid with one particular of his paintings on display screen at UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library, circa 2013. (UWEC photograph)
