Alice Roder

“As an artist, I find myself simply responding to God’s goodness and what He has made or established. I look for beauty and the lighthearted ‘swoop’ because the world has enough of the other to weight me down,” says Alice Roder of her artwork.

"To observe and study the work of God's hand helps me feel like I know Him a little bit better," Roder continues. "When I respond on paper, I am often surprised by what comes out - and I get to know myself a little better, too."

Roder's work has a strong sense of design. She has an ongoing interest in "playing" with shapes and lines, and how they meet. Natural forms become simplified for the sake of design, yet retain their inherent structure, whether the subject is a person or a landscape.

She also has an affinity for art forms from around the world: African, Latin American, Oriental, peasant European. All are rich in design, coinciding with Roder's high regard for people of all cultures and their characteristic ways of expressing love for beauty.

By training, Roder was apprenticed in New York City while still in high school into the profession of textile print design. The studio, Gloria Buce Associates, was in itself like a microcosm of people from around the world.

Roder says she may have gained fine art vision from her B.F.A. years at the Rochester Institute of Technology, but the heart of her foundation and craftsmanship comes from her years at Gloria's studio.

Roder broke with her designing career in New York in 1977. She wanted to paint the mountains out west "while they were still there."

After twenty years in the southwest as an artist, Roder says she has lived through several "seasons." She has shown and sold landscapes in shows and co-op galleries in Tucson, Prescott and Santa Fe. She has worked as a children's art teacher, enjoying the process of sparking imaginations and helping young artists build skills and grow.

Another joy has been her work as a free-lance illustrator. Roder illustrated a children's book, From Arapesh to Zuni, for Wycliffe Bible Translators, which combined her feel for landscape with her love for ethnic peoples. Her illustrations for Tyndale House Publishers' periodicals have also combined those two threads.

Roder believes she is entering yet another new season, weaving together the various threads of her life and interests, and she continues to paint with an expectancy of "being surprised." Roder enjoys family life in Tucson with her husband Jim and their daughters Sonya and Anna.