From my earliest memories of drawing, my primary interests were of people. There are even ones in crayon, around my studio, that were done when I was 6 or 7 years of age. Throughout my childhood you could find me doing drawings of the people around me, mostly cartoon or caricature in style. Sometime in middle school my interests in Leonardo Da Vinci and a more realistic approach took hold as did my medium of choice being pencil. Later in high school, pen & ink cartoons, of all my classmates and teachers, then followed by some commissioned portrait works in soft pastel. While I found realism a struggle and favored the more stylized or caricature works, I had it my head to become a portrait painter and studied that for a time. In my 20s, I really wanted to study with a local rococo style portrait artist, but did not happen, then later took a Rembrandt style portrait class at the SAIC. Life is demanding, our priorities are often dictated to us, as such my openness to to impressionism, post impressionism and expressionism opened up a wide berth of creative outlets and opportunities for artistic growth. I explored these arenas of art and found them more conducive to the particulars of my life. Over the past decade or so my primary subjects tend to be more landscape and abstract, either building up those basic design essentials or breaking them down into their essence. However, I still love people, doing realistic figurative work and sometimes I have the opportunity to do such. This was the case in this piece and became a merging of learning, mediums, subjects and ideas. Feel free to comment or ask questions.
Thank you for your support. ~ Richard
'Dream Sequence #50' 24"x20" mixed media on canvas
