Collection: Richard Mueller

Nova Scotia’s Richard Mueller jumps nimbly from the sculptural (wood, glass, sheet aluminum) to digital, fabric and paper. Mueller characterizes all his recent work as drawings: “Drawings function as both a record of process and as a product. The process of making a drawing establishes a temporality marked by the development of the drawing’s components — hatching, the energy of a mark or the massing of the forms, space and light, etc. Intrinsically, drawings retain a quality of being unfinished, as if presenting a perpetual re-telling of the story.”

Mueller's drawings frequently use vernacular graphic language. Throughout human history, popular graphic representations have evolved into a web of visually coded motifs. They are collected and networked into a narratives that have been shared of interpreted within, and between, cultural groups. Mueller breaks down the well-known associations and created new narratives. Mueller has also created a series of work using a shredded Encyclopedia Britannica: in some cases, sandwiched in glass; in others, assembled into landscapes. Mueller uses the shredding of information as a metaphor for the constant analysis and reconfiguration of knowledge.

Richard Mueller is one of Nova Scotia's most respected artists and art teachers. He has exhibited in Canada, Europe and the US and his work is represented in many private and public collections. In 2002, Dalhousie University (Halifax) produced a highly successful 20-year survey of his work. Mueller was an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Art and Historical-Critical Studies at NSCAD University for almost 20 years, retiring in 2009. He now resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia.