Ross Ritchie: Seeing in the Dark
Ross Ritchie paints in many tongues. Each of his series simultaneously creates and defines its own visual universe, often by first finding his footing in the footsteps of some of his giant predecessors. With inspiration as diverse as Leger and Bacon, Rauschenberg and Degas, Ritchie knows what he likes when he sees it. Instead of mimicking, however, Ritchie defies the traits of his heroes of the abstract expressionist movement, for example, and rejects that his visions must be limited to a particularly narrow style.
- Opening Date: Tuesday, 21 May 2013
- Closing Date: Sunday, 9 June 2013
- Opening Time: Tues to Fri 11-6pm, Sat 11-4pm
Having been inspired largely by the Abstract Expressionists and
Francis Bacon (among many others), Ritchie's hand is, like theirs,
a hand of a master that creates objects with an aura of the divine.
The divinity of Ritchie's paintings, though, is at once
multifaceted and indistinct. The draughtsmanship is perhaps the
first and most striking of a Ritchie's virtues - every stroke of
black paint and every shade of naked cranium is testament to
Ritchie's ability to extract forms from paint that are at once
delicate and firm, light and substantial. Each object hovering in
his blackness glows with a particular glimmer of meaning, but does
not connect to the other objects that hover near it. He is not
telling you a story, nor is he showing you a whole picture.
Excerpts from 'Seeing in the Dark' by Amy Stewart
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