Ricky Sears at Brookville Healing Arts

For Immediate Release

Ricky Sears                                                       Brookville Healing Arts 

Transitions                                                       7019 Brookville Road

Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings                                               Chevy Chase, MD 20815

December 19, 2014 – March 19, 2015  

Learner’s Tree (Snow Day), 2014, oil on board, 19 x 13 inches

Brookville Healing Arts is exhibiting new paintings and drawings by artist Ricky Sears from December 19, 2014 through March 20, 2015 at 7019 Brookville Road in Chevy Chase, Maryland. A reception for the artist December 19 from 5-8 pm will also include food and drink to celebrate the winter season.

The title of the exhibition, Transitions, alludes to the artist’s interest in patterns of behavior that he visualizes in an ongoing body of work.  Ricky has returned to his alma mater to teach studio art and recalling the 10 years driving up Landon School’s entrance off Wilson Lane, Learner’s Tree (Snow Day) painted from memory is the latest in this series. Other examples include a series of plein air oil paintings completed over 6 weeks at Landon that record the morning light; watercolors completed on Öland, Sweden this summer describe the flight patterns of barn swallows across sunset skies and compliment patterns the artist created with the inhale and exhale of his breath; and ink dropped in conjunction with breathing create a physical record of the transition between not only the liquid and solid state of plaster, but also Ricky’s working method because this process is one he uses to begin each day in the studio.  The resulting patterns visually describe what Ricky identifies as a connection between design principles and human behavior. “The act of breathing, like the recognition of a pattern, is at the foundation of a life lived in the present. Because we are each capable of unique expression and are compelled to create in our life, the work is meant as an invitation for the viewer to find a connection to one’s breath. Like breathing, we often neglect or ignore individual expression: a necessary action.” 

Barn Swallow Trails across Summer Sky, 2014, watercolor on Yupo, 7 x 5 inches

The works have also been installed to reflect the movement through the exhibition space as the viewer transitions up the stairs from Brookville Road to Brookville Healing Arts’ studio spaces in which body work and breathe awareness are essential components to the class experience. 

Breathing, November 3, 2014 Plaster and India ink, 7 x 5 x 2 inches

A native of Washington D.C., Ricky Sears earned his MFA in painting and sculpture in 2006 from the School of Visual Arts.  He has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and throughout the mid-Atlantic. He has received grants, fellowships, and residencies for his art including a New York City studio in Workspace through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and an Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park. He has held visiting assistant professorships at Washington College and Northern Virginia Community College. He currently teaches painting and drawing at Landon School.  

All works are available for purchase. View additional work by Ricky Sears at www.rickysears.com or schedule a visit to his Kensington studio by email at info@rickysears.com.

Float, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

The one about thinking in terms of paint

Sunset XIII March 24, 2014 Oil on canvas

A still evening painting session at the edge of Rock Creek Park beside Candy Cane City yesterday. The sun had just dipped behind the trees by the time I set up: it was creating a white-violet scrim over the clear blue sky, the sky didn't show any sign of the snow forecast for today. Two trees ground the painting and divide the composition, but the atmosphere is what I am trying to emphasize like the other paintings in my earlier posts.

Did you see Sunday's sunset?!

An awesome variety of colors in the clouds

The branches of this ash tree turned red

The color transitions in the sky go from violet to yellow to blue

Keep your eyes peeled for colors in the clouds.

"The painter who stands before an empty canvas must think in terms of paint" Ben Shahn

The one about my art philosophy

Sunset XII-I March 21, 2014 Oil on canvas 6:30 pm

My philosophy of art
Terry Barrett's book Why is that art? asks the question about your own personal philosophy of art, and as my answer, I have written the following:

Art is a form of communication
that uses words, images, sounds, performance, or
the representation of these
as a language existing in two- or three-dimensions
as an artifact of an individual, group, or community action
who are willful in putting the artifact in context with art history, or
advancing art history with the artifact.

The purpose of art is to communicate experience that either
has been lived, or
can be imagined being lived, or
records a lived experience occuring in the moment of the artifact's making.
Communicated through symbols,
art is interpreted through a viewer's decoding of the symbols' significance,
and an artist is, by presenting 'art' to be experienced by a viewer, engaging
in a discussion that may provide answers to questions,
pose questions without offering an answer,
open a discussion, or
provide the artist's(s') understanding of a subject, a process, or way of living.

The goal of communicating is understanding, and art is just another means,
like spoken language and all its written forms,
to this end.

Sunset XII-II March 21, 2014 Oil on canvas 7:15 pm

The one about certain external signs

Sunset XI March 20, 2014 Oil on canvas

Happy Spring
A tweet I sent @ricky_sears today said 'see you later, winter.' From a sunny day it was a clear and beautiful sunset tonight. What a way to end the first full day away from winter.

On the Eastern Shore
Painting back in Worton, I used cadmium yellow pale hue, alizarin crimson, French ultramarine, titanium white, buff titanium, and payne' s grey and applied the paint thick at first with a palette knife. I then blended the colors on the canvas and added dabs and patches of color to define the midground, then painted the foreground.

I've been reading Terry Barrett's Why is That Art?: Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art and at the end of the first chapter the questions for further review include What is your current philosophy of art? I'll post my current philosophy tomorrow. But until then, please see Tolstoy's quote - which could be argued is a philosophy of art - and tell me what you think.

'Certain external signs'
"Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them." -Tolstoy

Although the sky is hard to describe in a quick painting, it's the experience of its color as rendered in oil paint that I'm treating as signs, and if these signs are 'feelings that I'm living through' I'm hoping you experience them as deeply as you can.

The one about the health of the eye

Sunset X March 18, 2014 Oil on canvas

"The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough." Emerson

Another new location
From River Road in the Palisades, I stood across from the Virginia side of the Potomac where the George Washington Parkway follows the upper contour riverside. There are two bridges on either side of the composition and Key Bridge comes in diagonally at the lower right side of the painting. Snow from yesterday helps define the sloping sides of the riverside. The blurred brushstrokes along the bottom of the painting are the tops of trees that are far below the road where I was standing.

I began painting at 6:30 p.m. and the light changed slowly with a blanket of clouds overhead again tonight. No wind, but it was refreshing to feel the distance between me and the horizon again. I wrote the Emerson quote in my sketchbook last week finishing Anne Truitt's Daybook, where she quotes it in reference to her sculptures. She writes, "Artists use landscape as an armature for light, as I use abstract structure." There is a connection that I see between the painting I made with light at it's core and the loosely applied paint suggesting just enough of the location, with or without my description, that I hope a Gestalt occurs from the abstract marks. 

The painting tonight was more ambitious than the others: I attempted to paint more of the landscape - and give as much attention to it - as I have been giving the sunset alone the past nine days. The post yesterday shows how the landscape became areas of color that divided the sky. Tonight, with the long, clear view to the horizon, the sky allowed for even mixtures of color to happen but the landscape became patches and daubs of color this time.

I count myself among those artists "who wish to set the light free, which is what I also wish to do, to make it visible for its own sake." Anne Truitt

Drawing from observation
In drawing class today, my students were charged with drawing the figure from life - drawing from observation - but we used fine tip pens to begin gesture drawing in our sketchbooks.

Sketchbook page from Nova library figures from life

What have your eyes shown you? What are you seeing? #rickyseers

The one about a new location

Sunset IX in the Palisades after a snow, March 17, 2014 Oil in canvas

The new location
I painted tonight from the porch of a house in the Palisades in Northwest D.C. that looks west toward the Potomac river. There was snow I referenced in yesterday's post, no wind, and a blanket of clouds stretching to the horizon.

The house in the painting overlooks Canal Road and the reddish blue transition of color in the background is Virginia that lies just across the Potomac. There's a ravine between the house in the painting and my location, which explains the vertical lines suggesting trees in the foreground.

Another painting tomorrow!

Catching up
Here's the sunset from the night before. With the approaching weather system there were just low clouds, north winds, and very little in the way of sun other than the even light illuminating the clouds.

Sunset VIII March 16, 2014 Oil on canvas

 Follow me on Twitter @ricky_sears, and post your #grit

The one about the halo around the sun

Sunset VII March 15, 2014 Oil on canvas

As the sun was approaching the horizon - or we turned away from the sun if you will, see reference to Mr. Fullerton below - I used titanium white over a French ultramarine underpainting and mixed cerulean and French ultramarine back into the glaze. The same brush was used for this painting, a restriction I made work but an unnecessary  imposition, as my students know I feel. Alizarin crimson was painted on the horizon to describe how the trees catch the sunlight as it blazes in the sky on a clear late afternoon.

The halo around the sun

Tomorrow snow is forecast. Sitting outside this morning Helén and I watched the clouds change from cirrus - horsehair or wispy white, high and transparent clouds to cirrostratus. The ring or halo around the sun that appeared while we were outside was an indication that the atmosphere was changing. As the saying goes "A ring around the sun or moon brings rain or snow upon you soon." Our image from this morning below, for more check out EarthSky.org. Thanks to my meteorology teacher Larry Fullerton for encouraging me to learn about cloud types and for keeping my perspective heliocentric.

Moisture filling the sky, snow soon, as read in the clouds over Worton, March 16, 2014

The one about the wind

Sunset VI March 13, 2014 Oil on canvas

A quiet little painting does not tell the whole story: A stiff west wind blew the palette into the grass and on multiple occasions I had to hold the canvas to the easel to prevent the entire easel from blowing over. The challenges of en plein air painting can still yield good results.

Share what you've been working on. Post it to Twitter #yesterdaysprogress.

The one about routines/rituals to be your best Part II

Sunset V March 12, 2014 Oil on canvas

A difficult sky to translate into paint in one sitting. I had to be cautious in executing this one because the weather was changing dramatically with an approaching cold front - winds whipped clouds across the sky and rain had begun to fall in the west, and the effect this all had on the scale of the work is hard to visualize in this photo of the painting - but where the other Sunsets are each 4 inches square, this one is about 2 inches by 3 inches.

The palette I use here includes three whites: Titanium, Zinc and Buff Titanium
Three blues: French Ultramarine, Prussian, and Pthalo Blue
One yellow: Naples
One red: Alizarin Crimson, though it is only present in the tree-line at the bottom of the composition in its mixture with French ultramarine and Prussian blue

Routines and Rituals to be Your Best Self
I had excellent discussions in both my sculpture and painting classes last week about the routines and rituals in our lives. It's been 8 weeks since the semester began and I thought the students and I would be able to discuss the parts of our schedules that help us do our work since, by now, routines and rituals may be established that are different from last semester and can serve as a way of comparing what is working now or what might need to be changed moving forward into the remaining 8 weeks of the semester.

The impetus was the result of parallels I drew from John Seymour's The Self-Sufficient Gardener, specifically his list of the 6 Laws of Organic Farming, and the connection to cultivating a complete self in and out of class. The Laws include

1. The gardener must work with nature and not against it
2. Nature is diverse and therefore the gardener must practice diversity
3. The gardener must husband other forms of life - animal or vegetable - in environments as close as possible to those for which they evolved
4. The gardener must return to the soil as much, or nearly as much, as he takes from it
5. The gardener must feed the soil and not the plant
6. The gardener must study nature as a whole and never any part of it in isolation

Because no student raised their hand when asked if he or she gardens, it was easy to use the list metaphorically for cultivating a responsible self. Specifically, it was at Number 5 that I gave pause and consider the connection to be direct to the self: we must work from the inside out.

This is a great exercise to identify what nourishes you. It's an exercise you can try, follow along to see what you can say about yourself.  For me, I discovered there are four - among hundreds - of primary things that nourish me. They include Art, Food, Nature, and Exercise. Family and connections with friends are important, too, and often are the thread that ties these four together. But this is just me, and the exercise is all about you.

I preface this exercise the same way I prefaced the exercise in class: 
There is no recipe to knowing how to be your best self. What is successful for you cannot be the same for someone else. So, in a group setting it was helpful to hear what routines and rituals are established only because they served as examples to illustrate the concept, but their relevance to you is minimal. For this reason I will only include a few examples, but taking the few minutes to complete this exercise is going to be more meaningful if you reflect on these things independent of others.  I'm a firm believer that the challenge is working on these things ourselves. This is a sentiment shared by many, and the following quotes are culled from texts by authors writing decades apart but saying more or less the same thing about it.

"...the essential struggle is private and bears no relation to anyone else's. It is of necessity a solitary and lonely endeavor to explore one's own sensibility, to discover how it works and to implement honestly its manifestations." Anne Truitt, Daybook

"The individual recipe any artist finds for proceeding belongs to that artist alone." 

Bayles and Orland Art & Fear

"However well intentioned, books cannot give recipes for how to be happy. Because optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in consciousness moment by moment, each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow

There are two parts to the exercise, first...
List the routines that are a part of your day, your week, your month

• These are activities that have become established parts of your day, week, or month
• These are different from habits or roots of distraction or causes of procrastination 

"The purpose of routines is to impose order in consciousness through the performance of patterned action. These are the microflow activities that help us negotiate the doldrums of the day"
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and author of among many texts Flow, pp 52 referenced here

Examples may include how your day begins (with breakfast, a commute to work, etc.) or days you assign as laundry days, or a time each month when you get a haircut or even take a pet for their furcut, etc.

List the rituals that you include in your day, your week, your month

• Rituals are routines with intentions, these are special, more meaningful activities. They may be things that are completed when you are doing a routine

For example, when you get a haircut is a trip to the café included as a special treat? Or do you cook dinner with friends once a week, as a student described was a significant part to her otherwise routine eating schedule, or is your day begun with a visit to a favorite website before you get out of bed, or do you have to listen to your audiobook on the way to work?

The Subjects that Draw Us In
From the lists, identify the subjects that draw you in. Identify the patterns that may be obvious, or that are a result of this reflection. What patterns do you respond to?

"The arc to any individual life is uniform over long periods of time. Subjects that draw us in will continue to draw us in. Patterns we respond to we will continue to respond to." Bayles and Orland

Patterns in Your Life
A pattern in design is repetition in a regular and ordered sequence. It could be a routine or ritual or part of these that has repeated regularly for a long enough time that you can acknowledge its significance.

From the patterns you identify, are there any that have persisted for years? Or are some new because of your current living/working/school/professional circumstances? You may or may not be surprised if there are things that persist, especially as we take this look from afar at our routines and important activities.

"Inside is constant, you'll carry the same burdens tomorrow and next year. We simply exist. Watch from an imaginary point somewhere behind your eyes. The scenes change constantly, but the clarity you're able to see yourself allows you to exist the way you want." Bayles and Orland

I've begun to really live the way I want. I believe strongly in our becoming our best self from reflection and living in the present moment - what is referred to in Flow as 'present awareness' - and the list you create is a step along the path to your being your best. Continuing to the take the time to identify what subjects draw us and prioritize them into our day or week or month will keep us on the path to living a good life together. 

The one about routines and rituals, Part I

"Effort is the habit of a lifetime" - Anne Truitt, Daybook

Sunset IV March 11, 2014 Oil on canvas

Last night's painting from the sunset. Tonight I'm heading out to keep the effort up, channeling Truitt and her aphorism.

The one about the colors in the clouds

Sunset I South, March 8, 2014,  4 x 4 inches, oil on canvas

Clouds of Color
I've been completing a painting at sunset each day for the past 4 days and plan to continue to over the remaining evenings during spring break from Northern Virginia Community College where I teach.

I tell my students to identify the colors in the clouds, like Colin Firth in "The Girl with A Pearl Earing" and I have realized that I am interested in seeing the colors rendered in paint. Seeing it visualized by my students will be interesting, but I am obviously very interested in this since it is a prompt I keep assigning to students I have this semester in painting and drawing.

My wife Helén and I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland on a property with a fantastic view west that affords us spectacular sunsets just about every day. I have been moved by these and the urge to photograph them is nothing like the urge I have to translate what is seen into paint.    

A photo I took that captures the colors in the clouds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like how it's blurred to emphasize how colors change within each cloud and also in the sky from overhead toward the horizon. But I present this for illustration purposes only, I don't work from photographs for this exercise, I work from observation at a french easel I carry to and from the studio.

The Gap
Authors David Bayles and Ted Orland write in their inspiring text Art and Fear,
"making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do and what you did.”

In painting a sunset a day, not only am I faced with a challenge to work quickly to render what is a fleeting effect of light on the sky and clouds, but I am having to meet my desire to see the idea actualized. I have the aspiration to render the sky - or what I rather consider clouds of color - and the achievement is thrilling because there is no gap in this exercise. I have a goal and I meet it daily. The paintings are each approximately 4 x 4 inches. And I complete them in about 10 minutes.

Sunset I West March 8, 2014 Oil on canvas

Sunset II West March 9, 2014 Oil on canvas

Sunset III West, with aircraft contrails March 10, 2014 Oil on canvas

Stay Tuned

Sunset IV was completed earlier tonight and will be posted tomorrow. What are you working on? #GetInTheGap

The one about the functions of art: art as a tool

The farther you walk into the woods of creativity the clearer the path becomes Oil on canvas 2013 16 x 50 inches

Art as a Tool

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF ART? Adapted from Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong and Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach by Margaret Lazzari and Dona Schlesier

 

From Art as Therapy, the authors write, “A tool is an extension of the body that allows a wish to be carried out, and that is required because of a drawback in our physical make-up.

A knife is a response to our need, yet inability, to cut.

A bottle is a response to our need, yet inability, to carry water.

To discover the purpose of art, we must ask what kinds of things we need to do with our minds and emotions but have trouble with?”

The material choices in artmaking are the same as the knife and bottle: the need to do something is facilitated by the materials at your command.

 Detail of The farther you walk... Oil on canvas 2013

I like thinking about the materials I use to communicate what can’t be said through verbal or written language as analogous to our sticks, clubs, and racquets used in lacrosse, baseball, tennis, etc. The instruments in music also apply here, but as an athlete who played sports that used sticks it’s the sports analogy I am going with for now – though in class I address the instrument-experience of my students.

And this has led me to construct the analogy: Tools in sports are to an athlete what materials in art are to an artist: each enables you to do something that our faculties can’t do on their own

Where the club, the stick, or racquet you control can optimize your performance, the control of materials enables you to say something profoundly and with an economy that words alone can’t.

Woods Oil on canvas 2013 9 x 12 inches

FUNCTIONS OF ART from Exploring Art: A Global Thematic Approach

·       Art glorifies the power of the state/rulers

·       Art celebrates war and conquest, and sometimes peace

·       Promotes cohesion within a social group

·       Records likenesses of an individual and their environment

·       Art entertains

·       Art assists in rituals that promotes our spiritual or physical well-being

·       Art reflects customs related to food, shelter, and human reproduction

·       Art communicates thoughts, ideas, emotions

·       Creates pictures of deities or what one may be

·       Serves to commemorate the dead

What do you see are the functions of your art? Does it differ for you from your audience?

The one about portraits in different media

Portraits I have done in oil paint, charcoal, and colored pencil. Dimensions are 18 x 24 inches

Glazing oil over titanium white, Payne's gray, and yellow ochre

Charcoal on paper, 18 x 24 inches

Colored pencil over graphite on 18 x 24 inch paper. From "Anthropologie"

Student work samples in charcoal and graphite on paper

Student self-portraits in oil on canvas

The one about art making and exercise

As a former competitive high school and college athlete the authority I have to speak about exercise is now limited to the ritual of my personal workouts - my Monday night winter pick-up ice hockey notwithstanding – but I have been thinking more and more about how exercise helps strength, skill, and vision improve over time the same way confidence and clarity improves over time in art making.

So the working theory I have is art making is exercise...

It’s the discipline to want to see results

It’s the commitment to improve, grow stronger, more sure in my abilities, and show the resolve to improve weaknesses

It’s the personal responsibility to do the work because it has to get done and I’m the only one to do it for myself

In my art classes, I’ve called my assignments exercises for the same reason that my personal go-to’s like jump rope, weight training, running and yoga are called exercises: they create the circumstances for personal achievement to occur. They aren’t an end, they are a means.   

In my studio I have artwork that’s been started and it can only be completed by me. The work, an appropriate name for art, albeit too close a link to economics than the humanities, it implies the process of completion and satisfaction one feels from a job well done, and the 'work' it may be worked on over time. And the results may lead to a clearer understanding of the direction I can go in the next artwork. The discipline, the commitment, the personal responsibility that are easy in exercise are the hardest things for me to face in regards to doing the work in my studio. I can show up to the yoga mat, to the weights, to the road, to my jump rope, if only every day I could show up to my artwork the same way.  The cliché phrase that life is a journey, not a destination comes to mind and I write it reluctantly, but applying my theory I consider that my art will not lead me to an end, instead my making art, like exercise, is a means of living well, achievement, and growth.

There are many issues here to be addressed in upcoming posts: the gap that exists in art making that is significantly smaller than that which occurs with fitness; integrating art making into life like exercise; art making as a form of nourishment; not making art and its effect, like not working out and how I become an awful person to those close to me; rituals and their difference from routines; and many more. 

Jump rope, weights, running, and yoga are my go-to’s, often outdoors regardless of the weather. Follow me on Twitter to see what I mean, @ricky_sears

R

The one about teaching

To be a teacher means sharing the knowledge you have while sharing the knowledge you gain because I'm still an active learner myself. It's my five-years full-time teaching experience that tells me that if I expect my students to learn I am reminded to do the same. Teachers aren't born, we're made - often the good ones succeed by being perpetual students. And students who succeed seem to be those who don't just do what they're told to do.

So there are two rules if I follow my teaching:
1. Don't tell students what to think or do
2. Ask the questions* that you want students to have the answers to
* : know the questions to ask.

When learning occurs (which could be argued is always) it's important to lead students to find the answers for themselves (see Rule 1) but it's equally important to ask the questions directly and in the right way. For instance, when it's been observed how progress is made on an idea or during a project by following steps that include preparation (of sketches, of materials, etc.), exploration (of materials, or limits, of goals, etc.), and execution (of ideas from sketches or materials toward goals within limits) it's important to use the prior success or area to improve as an example. I don't see telling he or she what one did right or wrong as helpful; instead, ask about their experience and how it worked out, allow each student to identify successful processes or things that could be improved, and let it be told to me so their voice is heard and their effort is empowered moving forward.
This leads to a corollary of Rule 2.

Rule 2A. Expect the answers to be different from yours
Rule 2B. The students can teach you something so keep your ears open