By
Lorna Ritz
Piece description from the artist
Each of my paintings goes through a constant improvisational unveiling to find itself. I have to wait a long time before unlike colors begin to interact, creating ideas that come from outside myself. Funny thing is: I never remember that I go through this research each painting. This is my own personal search, which begins with the willingness to be lost in the vastness of a blank canvas. Seems that I am really a landscape painter, the seasonal colors that place the first strokes of paint. Day after day, it is the constant color changes in the green vegetation, (i.e. fields, trees), that find new color relationships. The relationship between the colors is what begins the painting; they begin a narrative which becomes the idea. In this painting the cobalt blue sky comes through the trees and then the land rises up to meet the sky. The whites are clouds and then they become reflection of cloud shadows falling on the earth. But it is always how the colors talk to each other that creates the way things remain in a constant state of rhythmic motion, like a soprano next to a baritone.
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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