Rocky Green is Algonquin, born on unceded territory in rural Ontario near Monteagle where he now has his studio. 

He lived with painters in California in his twenties and when he returned to Canada, their concerns stayed with him and he began to paint. The artist Michal Manson, then with the art department at Wilfred Laurier University taught him the basics, privately. He gardened for the wife of the painter David Milne and studied her collection closely.

He had his first one-person show in 1996 at the Robert Langen Gallery, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo Ontario. It was well enough received that he continued.

Rocky moved to Toronto where he and artist Robert Thompson, under the business name R and R images, sold paintings on wooden panels, reliquary boxes, devotional objects and carvings. These were modern, sometimes ironic takes on traditional Russian iconography. They sold by commission, in galleries, on studio tours, and at arts festivals.

While taking part in a show of urban folk art in Peterborough, Rocky met artist in residence Bill Batten, a pastel painter who Rocky works alongside to this day.

Bill, Robert and Rocky opened a studio gallery, Greenstudio, in then gentrifying downtown Peterborough at George and Simcoe Streets. The studio cultivated and sustained a solid core of young artists and writers whose work Rocky curated in an ongoing group exhibition and for one-person shows. The studio was privately operated for nearly a decade.

Rocky taught gifted students by arrangement with Sidney Hoskar and P.C.V.S., the arts-focused secondary school. The Greenstudio building housed a graphic design company, a photographer and journalists who often shared projects. They coordinated advertising and theatre venues for the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra. Greenstudio curated shows of paintings for a chamber music series each season. Such projects brought together conservative and liberal sides in the arts community and were, in hindsight, the studio’s greatest success.

Rocky now lives in Monteagle Ontario. His studio is open by appointment. His work is available through the Wildewood gallery in Maynooth. Since the pandemic began, he has had a yearly one-person show at the Ludmilla Atelier in Peterborough, participating in the First Friday monthly arts festival. 

Check out Greenstudio