The PebbleCreek Art Club is pleased to announce that Richard Ebeltoft is the January Artist of the Month.
Richard spent the first 10 years of his life in a small town in northern Minnesota on the Canadian border near Lake of the Woods. One night the temperature dropped to 50 degrees below zero and his father, a contractor, decided he had enough of the cold and moved the family to Las Vegas.
Richard started college at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, where he took several art classes. He then moved to the University of Nevada’s Reno campus, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He continued to be interested in various art forms and began pursuing photography as a hobby.
After graduation, he worked at the nuclear test site in Nevada for four years as an assistant project engineer before deciding to pursue a different path. He enrolled in the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he obtained a master’s degree in civil engineering and a bachelor’s degree in architecture. He then spent the next eight years at the University of Arizona as a lecturer in the engineering department, teaching structural systems to architectural students.
Finally, he transferred to the College of Architecture, spending the next 22 years as a professor, teaching engineering and architecture to its students while also serving as a structural engineer consultant.
Richard met his wife Sandi in 2001. He retired from the U of A in 2002 and they were married in 2004, moving to Prescott, Ariz., for 12 years while also keeping a vacation home in San Marcos, Calif. There Richard took several adult art courses at Mira Costa College in Carlsbad, Calif., and started painting with acrylics.
Richard and Sandi moved to PebbleCreek in 2018, where he now has time to devote to his art. Richard notes the strong correlation between architecture and art, as they are both visual design fields. He works on large canvases in an abstract and impressionist painting style.
Richard’s work will be on display at the Creative Arts Center and at the reception desk in both clubhouses.