Art for art’s sake: Riverhead woman finally able to pursue her lifelong passion

When Andrea Rhude was a junior at Riverhead High School, she dreamed of going to art school. She always took an interest in art as a hobby — growing up her family owned an art and music store in Wading River — but there was a problem: she wasn’t taking an art class. 

She was told by a friend that she needed to see her guidance counselor to sign up for an art class. She recalls her guidance counselor saying, “No. Why would you want to do that? You’re a good student.” When the guidance counselor wouldn’t register her for the class, Rhude went to the principal. It was a fight, but she eventually got enrolled. 

“Art is everywhere you look,” Rhude said in an interview last month. “But for some odd reason, it’s considered frivolous. It’s like, ‘Oh, if you’re going to go into art, make sure you have a backup plan.’ No one says, ‘if you’re going to go into accounting, make sure you have a backup plan.’”

Rhude went to art school. Now 48, she is pursuing her passion as a full-time career, working to break out in a competitive industry. 

“Art can be important. Art is something that, even if you’re not going to make a living out of it, you should try doing something,” Rhude said. “For one thing, it’ll let you know how hard you have to work at it. But for another, it’s a good way of expressing yourself, especially with political climates what they are — it is important.”

“It’s a good way to make people question things, especially with painting and things of that nature, where you actually have to sit and look at it, and you don’t have somebody telling you what it’s about,” she said. “You have to look at it and bring what is important about it to you — and you have to really pay attention.”

The Riverhead resident’s art is getting featured at local businesses and arts councils, like Greater Port Jeff-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, where she was Artist in Residence.

And now she’s excitedly preparing for her first professional gallery exhibition at the William Ris gallery in Jamesport. 

Rhude attended the Pratt Institute, a private art school in Brooklyn, after her high school graduation. She came back home and worked full-time with her mother, Linda McKnight, in interior design for 20 years, she said. While she painted murals for her job, she put her personal art on the backburner. 

Rhude’s mother died from cancer in 2017, leaving her alone with the interior design business. Deeming it too much for her to handle alone, Rhude left that industry.

“I put my husband through nursing school. And so when my mom died, he basically looked at me and said, you know, you did this for me. You took care of all this while I was going through school. You do your art now,” Rhude said.

She started taking classes online at Smart School, an art mentorship program where the students work with industry professionals. She’s taken classes with big-name illustrators like Martin Wittfooth, Dan dos Santos and Sam Weber.

Getting in the William Ris gallery is a “big step,” Rhude said. She has been working on being proactive with her art, making connections and asking to be on the walls at local businesses like Mugs on Main in Riverhead and Love Lane Kitchen in Mattituck.

Rhude’s art is inspired primarily by folklore, mythology and nature. On display in Mugs On Main are six paintings from her “Alice in Wonderland” series — scenes from the Lewis Carroll book series that include iconic characters like the pompous White Rabbit and merciless Queen of Hearts. One painting imagines what it might have been like on the other end of the tiny door to Wonderland when Alice — having not yet taken the potion that shrinks her — looks into Wonderland.

Rhude is an “Alice in Wonderland” fan, and she said the series is a wealth of opportunities for an artist. She has found there are two ways to look at the book: as a child, she read it as an “amazing nonsensical romp through fantasy and just nonsense;” now, as an adult and consumer of literary criticism, she has gleaned an understanding of the book’s commentary on topics like bigotry and social constraints. 

“That is kind of something that I try to keep in mind when I’m doing the paintings, and why I keep on coming back to it,” she said. 

Also on display at Mugs on Main is a painting by Rhude called “Homecoming.” It shows a person sitting on a table at ruins situated at the entrance to a valley, leaning tired on their sword. 

“This was the first painting I had done after my mother died, and it was kind of like, you’re coming back home and it’s still there, but it’s different,” Rhude said. “Things have been taken away. Things have been destroyed, but you’re still there. Things are still possible. There’s still the beauty in it.”

“There’s a lot of sadness, a lot of things that have moved the colors, they’re more muted, but still the brightness to it. There’s still a warmth to it,” Rhude said. “Just because [my mother] died doesn’t mean she never lived. It doesn’t mean that all my memories and experiences with her were all of a sudden or void, or never happened. It’s always there.”

Rhude’s art will be on display at the William Ris Gallery, located at 1291 Main Road in Jamesport, starting this Saturday and through the end of the month. The gallery is open Friday through Monday from 12-5 p.m., and there is no charge for entry, gallery owner Mary Cantone said. 

“Andrea’s work is realism and just fine, fine work, and I’m happy to have her work at the gallery for the month,” Cantone said.

Correction: This article has been amended to correct the name of an artist Rhude studied under at Smart School. The artist’s name is Martin Wittfooth, not William Martin.