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