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  My name is Rudolf Stalder. I am born in Switzerland in 1946, and in 1994 I moved to the United States, at which time I changed my career from medicine and research to art. At present I live near Durham, North Carolina, USA. My interests also include music, literature and - I love to add - mathematics.    
       
  My main artistic language is ink drawings. My art work also includes mosaics, woodcuts and paintings. Most of it is executed in European style.    
       
  Many of my early ink drawings were done outdoors, many of them are observational studies. Later I did them rather as free compositions.    
       
  I started creating mosaics about five years ago. It is a meditative art. Similar to poetry the goal is to achieve maximal expression using minimal elements. And in addition, many poems and mosaics share the matrix-design as an underlying structure, a structure also widely used in mathematics. Mosaic art also reflects aspects of impressionistic painting. It is an overwhelming experience to stand in the huge apse of the Basilica S. Appollinaris - 6th-century - of Classe near Ravenna and to look at the mosaics of timeless beauty and serenity with their impressionistically designed birds, plants and rocks - covering the entire dome.    
       
  Wood is a fascinating material, creating woodcuts always a unique adventure. The result is the sum of the interaction of the will of the wood, the tools, the paper, the ink, the printing method used and the artistic intention, all demanding their credit in the successfully accomplished work.    
       
  Occasionally I paint, maybe in the future some more, to add a little bit to my palette of expression. Every medium offers specific ways of expression. E.g. a line in an ink-drawing presents differently than a line drawn with a brush, cut in wood, or expressed in a mosaic. For a given idea, I always try to find out the most suitable way of its artistic expression.    
       
  Most of my artwork relates to topics which have emerged over the time. Topics permit to focus and to deepen the expression. Also they allow to integrate ideas from different sources. " Mme. M. Florist " e.g. is the story of an elderly lady living in Paris, running a flower-shop. It allows combine ideas about this lady with sketches from my visits of this town. In reverse, this topic stimulated the creation of three large impressionistic mosaics, allowing to express my passion and affection for cats. Two other topics are " Winterwalk ", related to works of Franz Schubert, and "Minval, a medieval alpine monastery " referring to harpsichord recordings of works of J.S. Bach by my friend Markus Huenninger.    
       
  View of art: With the discovery of the cave paintings in southern France and northern Spain, early and modern art stood off face to face, similar in quality and appearance. It is probably the most dramatic manifestation of the limitation of the historical view of art. The actual wide opening of art may induce a shift from the individual as the center of attention to art itself. Art is expression of deepened feelings. This applies to masterpieces of art as well to a simple melody played on a guitar. Art is an affair of the human mind. Many of its aspects cannot be properly addressed without taking in account the underlying physiological mechanism, processes at present only marginally, but due to advantages in neuroscience likely to be much better understood in the near future. Modern technology allows artists and public to establish contacts in unprecedented ways, which may open new directions of creating art eventually leading to its substantial enforcement. The tutorials on my page may present a little step in this direction.    
       
       
  All rights reserved. Copyright c 1999 -2003 Rudolf Stalder    
       
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