De­siree McEachrane

Sev­er­al guests, in­clud­ing for­mer T&T first la­dy Za­lay­har Has­sanali, milled around the Gallery at Fine Arts last Tues­day at the open­ing of Re­flec­tive Moods, an ex­hi­bi­tion by Fraulein Rud­der. Rud­der, the well-known pow­er­house be­hind T&T's an­nu­al Women in Art ex­hi­bi­tion, fea­tures this year for the 14th time as a so­lo artist, sup­port­ed by the work of her equal­ly tal­ent­ed daugh­ters Char­maine, Michelle and Si­mone Rud­der.

Dur­ing a short wel­com­ing speech, Rud­der re­it­er­at­ed that Re­flec­tive Moods ho­n­ours her late hus­band Arn­im. In fact, a small group of paint­ings ti­tled the Arn­im Rud­der Col­lec­tion con­sist­ed of "works he fell in love with and told me 'Don't part with them,'" Rud­der told the gath­er­ing. Much of Rud­der's work is in land­scapes and sim­i­lar nat­ur­al scenes, cre­at­ing an al­most 3D ef­fect with acrylics and oils. But her style is dif­fer­ent this time she said, be­cause it re­flects the change in her life: liv­ing with­out a part­ner af­ter liv­ing with one for so many years. The cou­ple was mar­ried for 49 years. "It is strange. I've al­ways had a lot of self-mo­ti­va­tion when it comes to paint­ing, but his pres­ence en­cour­aged me to paint more. Af­ter he left, I went in­to a slump," Rud­der ex­plained. "And I had to pull my­self out of it and this was the rea­son to do it."

Mem­o­ries of her late hus­band's sup­port and en­cour­age­ment come eas­i­ly to Rud­der; the time he sur­prised her with a gen­uine French easel, per­fect for paint­ing out­doors. Or his cheer­ing her on as she paint­ed an 8 x 4 mur­al for the St James Ra­dio­ther­a­py Cen­tre, where he re­ceived his treat­ment in his lat­er years. "He would mar­vel, 'Do you re­alise that you're paint­ing this thing side­ways?' " Rud­der said.

But the paint­ing ti­tled The Mat­ing of The Snails calls forth an even warmer mem­o­ry of his de­vo­tion and en­cour­age­ment. Rud­der re­mem­bers point­ing out the snails to him, and be­fore she re­alised it, he was back out there with a cam­era, cap­tur­ing the mo­ment for her.

"He was in a walk­er at that time," she said. Daugh­ters Michelle and Si­mone were present to dis­cuss their small­er col­lec­tions as well; mid­dle-child Michelle in tra­di­tion­al art, and the youngest Si­mone in both dig­i­tal art and tra­di­tion­al art. Char­maine is over­seas and could not at­tend. "I was very close to my dad," Michelle said. Even though her first at­tempt at paint­ing at age 13 made him guf­faw with laugh­ter: "It was a still life of four glass­es. He said, 'Michelle, your glass­es look like they have eyes!'" he bought her a set of acrylic paints and a can­vas for Christ­mas. But Michelle did not paint again un­til a few years ago. Still, she in­her­it­ed un­mis­tak­able tal­ent: her Poui Bloom is near­ly gilt against a blue, blue sky. And the piece next to it, He­li­co­nia, is sooth­ing in its re­al­ism. "The year he was dy­ing was the year I start­ed paint­ing again," Michelle said can­did­ly. "A lot of my grief for his go­ing I just paint­ed it away. While I'm paint­ing, I'm talk­ing to him!" Si­mone's work is de­cid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent from those of her sis­ters and her moth­er. Her three piece set called Pierc­ings is pho­to­graph­ic, but al­tered to cre­ate a pho­to neg­a­tive ef­fect with shock­ing shades of red, blue, pink, green and pur­ple. Her on­ly tra­di­tion­al piece, the Nede­bele Woman, is al­so dif­fer­ent. The Woman's proud eyes and pa­tri­cian fea­tures war with the glint of re­stric­tive cop­per rings around her neck; it's a com­pelling ad­di­tion to the Arn­im Rud­der col­lec­tion.

Al­though she was in­flu­enced to paint from a young age be­cause of her old­est sis­ter Char­maine, lat­er in life Si­mone grav­i­tat­ed to­ward ad­ver­tis­ing and dig­i­tal me­dia us­ing com­put­ers and new tech­nol­o­gy, like her fa­ther who was an en­gi­neer. "It was a dif­fer­ent medi­um to cre­ate art with," she said. Rud­der is proud of all her girls, she said. At first she paint­ed alone while they all went off in­to their re­spec­tive ca­reers, she said. So to see them ho­n­our­ing both her and their fa­ther in this ex­hi­bi­tion is "a very good feel­ing." Re­flec­tive Moods con­tin­ues un­til May 22.