Roar Høstad (b.1982, Trondheim, Norway)
Roar Høstad is visual and intermedia artist. His work, ranging from oil/acrylic painting, pastels, and sound production, is present in collections in the US, Norway and UAE.
The suggestive surroundings of Rye, his birthplace—a pristine Trøndelag village wrapped by fjords and crowned by lakes and dense forests—have influenced his practice from the start; they still fuel his passion for painting natural landscapes.
In 2003 Høstad graduated from Trondheim Cathedral School’s Art College. Early on, he matched the passion towards mastering visual art techniques with the study of music—a field he understands as yet another manifestation of art. This led him to practicing percussion and experimenting with sound production (at Trøndertun in 2007), and to create atmospheric works influenced by electronica, psychill, and electronic music he refers to as “spherical harmonic sound”.
In 2012 Høstad enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, specializing in landscape painting with Peter Homitzky, and participated to one of his first group shows, at SoHo’s Ward-Nasse Gallery.
In 2014 Høstad moved to Gran Canaria, Spain to expand his landscape art practice beyond the Norwegian one of his youth, trading fjords and pines with palms and tropical sunsets: the Arctic with the Equator.
In December 2018 this research culminated with Høstad’s first solo exhibition, a show at the Museo de Esculturas Abraham Cardenes, Tejeda, llustre de ayuntamento de Tejeda, Gran Canaria which featured a selection of his finest landscapes.
Høstad has since then directed his investigation towards the study of human anatomy and to portraiture, momentarily favoring the medium of pastels to spotlight precision, yet planning a return to the medium of oil in the next phase of research.
Seeking for a merging of his passion for visual arts and music, and increasingly interested in the multisensorial, Høstad is currently planning
an exhibit that blends together visual, aural and tactile experiences.