Meet Skip Rohde | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Skip Rohde and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Skip, is there something you believe many others might not?

Lots of people advise young people to “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Maybe. But this “advice” is very short-sighted and implies a naive and passive approach to life. It’s like the old cartoon where two scientists are at a blackboard covered with equations and, in the middle, is a block that says “And then some magic happens.” Doing what you love, and making money, are two different activities. I know very few artists, for example, who are making a living by creating artworks that THEY want to make (not commissions). Even the most successful artists have side activities like teaching. I prefer a more active approach of answering the questions “What is it that you really want to do? How will you make that happen?” These questions require deep thought and regular revisiting. Your answers in January may be very different from those in July. In my art career, it led me to separate my income-producing and art-making activities. On the business side, it led me into activities that have had a major impact on my life and art. On the art side, it led to my art becoming much better conceptually, technically, and personally.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Talk about open-ended questions! I could write a “War and Peace” tome trying to answer these.

I’ve been doing art since I was a kid. My parents were very supportive and enrolled me in private art lessons from about the 6th grade through high school. I didn’t want to be a professional artist, though – I wanted to design race cars, so I got a degree in Mechanical Engineering. No race teams came knocking on my door, though. I joined the Navy on the promise of seeing the world and doing cool things. The Navy definitely lived up to their promise: they sent me to Europe, Asia, US east and west coasts, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Desert Storm, and Bosnia. They gave me jobs I didn’t know existed, much less thought I could do. I retired in 1999 after 22 years.

The next step was moving to the Asheville, NC, area to go to the University of North Carolina at Asheville to study fine art. This was something I’d been working towards over the previous seven or so years. I didn’t want to be a “Beltway Bandit” like most retired military officers, I wanted to do something that let me be me. The UNCA program was excellent. It’s a liberal arts program at its core that lets students focus on one particular area, like painting in my case. Being back in school after so many years in the Navy was fun and much more challenging than I anticipated. I graduated in ’03 and set up a studio in Asheville’s River Arts District.

My attitude at the time was that I was now a professional artist and I’d make at least some of my living from art sales. That just didn’t happen. While my work was reasonably capable, my subject matter (people) was not something that sold well. That pulled me down a rabbit hole: I looked around to see what was selling, tried to incorporate some of that into my artwork, it still didn’t sell, so I looked around some more … Pretty soon I was doing work that I hated, that wasn’t selling, and I was about to quit. That’s when a coach asked the question “What is it that you really want to do?” I realized that I was doing what I wanted to do (painting), just not the subjects I wanted to paint. That’s when I separated the income-producing and art-making activities. My art immediately got better, started getting into prestigious juried exhibitions, and winning awards. It still wasn’t selling, but I was very happy with the way things were going.

That continued until 2008. The Iraq war was ongoing and I had very strong convictions that (a) it was a total mistake and (b) we needed to fix it. So after a long series of serendipitous events, I wound up going to Iraq as a temporary State Department officer and then an Army Corps of Engineers civilian to work on reconstruction projects for 18 months. I came home for a while, then went to Afghanistan as a temporary State Department officer for a year. In both cases, the driver was that these were situations that we, as a country, had to get right, and I felt a duty to do what I could to help make it right. Now my wife won’t let me go to war zones anymore.

I re-established my studio in Asheville and have been creating artworks ever since. While I was in Afghanistan, I would sketch the Afghans during our meetings. About 50 of those drawings are now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. I’ve also been working on a variety of series of artworks, including one called Meditation on War and another titled What May Be.

In 2017, I had a lady ask if I could be the live wedding painter at her sister’s wedding. I said that I absolutely could and would love to do it. Then I went on Google asking “what the hell is a live wedding painter?” Wedding painting turned out to be a fun and productive activity. I do about nine or ten weddings a year, no more, as I want to keep these very personal creations and not a factory assembly line type of work. I have four left this year and three already scheduled for next. I’m still creating my own works as well and exhibiting in a variety of juried, group, and solo shows. Life is good.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Western North Carolina is a tourist destination, so there is an infinite number of things to do.

Restaurants: Curate, White Duck Taco Shop, Zambra’s, Stackhouse, Farmburger, Jettie Rae’s Oyster House
Sites: Drum circle on Friday evenings in Asheville, Shindig on the Green, River Arts District, waterfalls around Brevard, some of the 60+ breweries, Blue Ridge Parkway, Southern Highland Craft Guild, the Orange Peel music venue, whatever festival is happening that weekend

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My wife Janis. Without her love and support over the past 30+ years, I literally would not be here.

Website: www.skiprohde.com, www.ashevilleeventpaintings.com

Instagram: @skiprohde

Twitter: @skiprohde

Facebook: facebook.com/Studio.of.Skip.Rohde, facebook.com/Asheville.Event.Paintings