Lorna Ritz's Artist Profile
Lorna Ritz
i like artist
In my paintings, the viewer senses sky, mountains, wind, even though my paintings are abstract. My paintings bring the landscape indoors. They become windows that peer deeply into space beyond their four edges. I love to see open, breathing, moving space create entry way inside the picture plane of the flat surface of canvas. Breathing life onto the canvas enables the painting’s depth. One is invited to enter through the architectural construction of the painting and be moved by it. It is how colors relate that always guides me. My color combinations reflect the seasons. The surfaces of my paintings resemble ancient walls, in that there is a sense of history alive in them, through the repetition of the "placement and replacement" of paint many times over. 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. I carve into the paint by scraping, and reapply paint many times over, with an untiring appetite for a reconciliation of disparate parts until they become. Technique and skill are the consequence of the concept in the painting; with the change of concept, they, too, change. I look to nature for the essence of space, which is always alive and moving. How I place shapes together is the construction of the painting, ‘where’ they exist in space in relationship to each other. What is the distance between the objects, how do I get the space between them to move? I always look for light, presence, mood, feeling. My paintings are not objectified; they don’t hold objects, but they do hold spirit, souls, and memory, all of which rise up in a form conducive to be said in paint. The paint finds it before even I do, that makes how colors relate be everything. My paintings 'sing' through the light that emanates from the color combinations themselves Each of my paintings represents a crystallized chunk of formal experience, as well as 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."
Artist's Statement
In my paintings, the viewer senses sky, mountains, wind, even though my paintings are abstract. My paintings bring the landscape indoors. They become windows that peer deeply into space beyond their four edges. I love to see open, breathing, moving space create entry way inside the picture plane of the flat surface of canvas. Breathing life onto the canvas enables the painting’s depth. One is invited to enter through the architectural construction of the painting and be moved by it. It is how colors relate that always guides me. My color combinations reflect the seasons. The surfaces of my paintings resemble ancient walls, in that there is a sense of history alive in them, through the repetition of the "placement and replacement" of paint many times over. 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. I carve into the paint by scraping, and reapply paint many times over, with an untiring appetite for a reconciliation of disparate parts until they become. Technique and skill are the consequence of the concept in the painting; with the change of concept, they, too, change. I look to nature for the essence of space, which is always alive and moving. How I place shapes together is the construction of the painting, ‘where’ they exist in space in relationship to each other. What is the distance between the objects, how do I get the space between them to move? I always look for light, presence, mood, feeling. My paintings are not objectified; they don’t hold objects, but they do hold spirit, souls, and memory, all of which rise up in a form conducive to be said in paint. The paint finds it before even I do, that makes how colors relate be everything. My paintings 'sing' through the light that emanates from the color combinations themselves Each of my paintings represents a crystallized chunk of formal experience, as well as 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."
BFA Pratt Institute, MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art. Taught: R.I. School of Design, Brown U, U Minnesota, Dartmouth College, "Guest Critic" Vermont Studio Center 1991–2013. Lectures: Instituto de Belles Artes, (Medellin, Colombia); American University Italy; Humboldt State University, (CA); New York Studio School, Institute for American Universities Aix-en-Provence, (France). Malta and Honduras @ universities. Exhibitions; Art-in-Embassies Program in D.C. Divinity Center Yale University, Bowery Gallery NYC, Hillyer Gallery Smith College, ‘The Contemporary Art Museum UMASS; Hood Museum Dartmouth College, Fine Arts Center, Provincetown, MA, Huntington Museum, CT., Painting Center, NYC, Provincetown Art Association Museum, Hopper House Museum Nyack, NY., French Cultural Center, Boston. Collections: Hale and Dorr Law Firm, Bank of Boston, Johnson and Johnson, (N.J.), Anderson Museum Contemporary Art, (N.M.), Burnham Institute, (CA.), Veridex, (NJ), Mead Art Museum @Amherst College, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Childrens’ Hospital, Boston, Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, CA. 3X Pollock-Krasner Grant Awards, Kittredge Fund Grant Harvard University,‘cultural ambassador’ Townships Cape Town, South Africa; Puffin Foundation Grant, George Sugarman Foundation Grant Award, Artists’ Fellowship, NYC, Haven Foundation Award, Artist’s Resource Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and an Emergency Grant from Foundation fro Contemporary Art, NYC. I am an Associate Member of the Five Colleges Inc., Amherst, MA. www.lornaritz.com