Rod Mireau’s work is shaped by memory, material, and landscape. Drawing from the prairies of his past, his sculptural paintings reimagine place as something remembered rather than observed, blurring the line between the natural and the mechanical. Built through a meticulous, hands-on process, each work invites quiet contemplation, revealing new depth through light, shadow, and time. As he joins Mountain Galleries, Rod reflects on intuition, process, and the power of art to transport us into spaces shaped by memory and emotion.

Your work feels deeply intuitive & emotional. Where do your initial ideas come, what sparks a new piece for you?

I'm never 100% sure what sparks a new piece and that, in itself, fascinates me. Where DO ideas come from? With my latest work, I suppose its often been the merging of a memory I'm revisiting, a palette of materials and surface treatments that I'm exploring, and then a mysterious X factor, like stumbling across a random but awe-inspiring photograph of a mountain landscape and having an "a-ha" moment. that sets the project in motion. The emotion infused in the finished work, I think, is the successful result rather than the initial spark.

Nature & movement seem to play an important role. How do your surroundings influence what you create?

I'm heavily influenced by the natural surroundings of my past, as opposed to current observation. The landscape of the prairies is deeply engrained in me and my work frequently reimagines both the natural features of that place as well as people's presence and perhaps fading history on the land. My "Machine Artifacts" series, for example, are imaginary found tools where I render elements like metal and wood into these mysterious objects that suggest but don't perform movement, that blur natural and mechanical. 

Can you walk us through your creative process from first mark to knowing the piece is finished?
 

Everything starts with drawings. Through the sketching process I also begin to imagine and select my materials. I often perform many material tests, do a lot of math, and cut detailed templates out of various materials (hardboard, fiberglass, wood) depending on the project. The process of creating a piece can involve cutting, grinding, burning, staining, shaping, sanding and more. It's very much a woodshop process and because of this, the end point of the piece isn't really all that subjective or intuitive. Have I executed the project? Is it finished being BUILT? The exception to this might be the painted sky (as in "In the Folds") because there's a specific effort there to create a mood or feeling but, even then, the sky is a counterpoint to all the surface activity in the lower section of wood so the "quietness" of the sky is dictated by that and I know not to work the upper surface too much. At the same time, its job is to convey a slightly melancholy mood and so I also know that this element is done when it just feels right.

What do you hope collectors feel or experience when they live with your work over time?

I hope that these pieces continually reward the viewer, both visually and with the power to transport them into an other place. I hope that it's a new place every day, revealed by how light and shadow fall across its surface or whether the viewer zooms in or zooms out. Over time, I hope these pieces allow a collector to develop a deeper experience with this place, which straddles representational, abstract and mystery, and that it comes to evoke something that could be from their own memory, their own dreams.

As your work joins the gallery, what excites you most about sharing it with a new audience right now?

It's always great to share work with a new audience, especially one that is located in or engaged with the very landscape portrayed in the work. I'm excited to see how my mountains and big skies resonate with people who are deeply connected to those natural elements.