By
Lorna Ritz
Piece description from the artist
This painting 'sings' through the light that emanates from color combinations that occur in winter landscape. The viewer is invited to enter through the architectural construction of it. Each of my paintings represents a crystallized chunk of formal experience, while being very personal at the same time. My paintings are earthy, rock-like and weighty, and yet they have in them the rhythm of the sea. I am a nature painter; the nature “out there” coupled with my own internal landscape. My inner finds the equivalent ‘out there.’ My abstract paintings hold in them emotion, spirit, soul, and memory. How colors relate is everything: the color finds the light, creates the shape. I listen to how the paint wants to move. My paintings become windows peering into space beyond their four edges. I feel like I am at a construction site breathing life onto the canvas through a simultaneous building up and a tearing down of color. What is the distance between the forms, how do I get the space between them to move? The intervals are found through a process of elimination: I get rid of what does not enhance the whole, and add what does. How can I say ‘the thing’ in the most economical way? Each painting has immediacy to it, but takes time to complete; it’s my own personal paradox. The painting is the consequence of technique and skill brought about by the concept. That is how what ends up on my canvas gets said, and how my paintings come to be.
Lorna Ritz studied under the instruction of painter James Gahagan, (a student of Hans Hofmann), who was a very important teacher for her in the 60’s. She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1971, in both painting and sculpture, (welding steel, and casting in bronze and iron). She welded steel for 25 years, but never stopped painting, and only paints now. It is color and paint that structures the space that then finds the volumetric composition of her painting. BFA Pratt Institute MFA Cranbrook Academy Art.Taught @: R.I.School Design, Brown U,U MN, Dartmouth College VT Center,NY Studio School, UMASS, Residencies:C-Scape Dune Shacks,'P’Town, MA., International Program, UMASS, Cape Town,South Africa, Wurlitzer Foundation, NM.,Arcadia National Park, ME, Fundacíon Valparaíso,Spain; Roswell Museum Art Center, NM.,MacDowell Colony, NH, Lectures: Instituto de Belles Artes, (Medellin, Colombia), Honduras; American U, (D.C. + Italy);Humboldt U.,(CA);American U, (France) Divinity Center Yale U, Bowery Gallery,NYC, Hillyer Gallery, and Oresman Gallery at Brown Fine Arts Center @ Smith College,'Contemporary Art Museum" UMASS. ,Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Fine Arts Center P’Town, MA. Group exhibitions:"Anita Shapolsky Gallery, NYC, The Painting Center," NYC Edward Hopper Museum, NY, Hannah Bacol Busch Gallery,Texas, Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, NH. solo shows: Contemporary Art Museum UMASS,,State House,Boston, Aidron Duckworth Art Museum, NH.,French Cultural Center, Boston, Grants: Artists' Fellowship, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, Haven Foundation,ME, George Sugarman Grant, Puffin Foundation, NJ, Kittredge Grant, Harvard U., Pollock-Krasner Grants, Esther & Adolph Gottlieb Individual Grant, Ludwig Vogelstein, Blanche Colman Grant Public Collections: U Michigan Museum Contemporary Art, Hale and Dorr Law Firm, Bank of Boston, Johnson &Johnson, (N.J.), Anderson Museum Contemporary Art, (N.M.), Burnham Institute, (CA.), Veridex, (NJ),Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Childrens' Hospital, Nataxix Global Asset, Cedars Sinai Hospital LA,Audax Group, United Health Group Corporate Minnesota, McLean Hospital @ Harvard Medical School, Ipsen Cambridge, MA.
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