Interview with Marie Riccio – Portray Perceptions

Final October, I had the pleasure of assembly Marie Riccio at her solo exhibition, Nonetheless Echoes, at The Portray Heart and the Small Works Invitational at First Road Gallery. Riccio’s work drew my consideration for the sophistication of her compositions and delicate but highly effective use of shade as tone that brings an distinctive depth and nuance to her fashionable still-life setups of commonplace objects, remodeling them into topics of contemplation and aesthetic significance. This capability to raise the peculiar to one thing profound by means of the formal language of portray prompted me to ask her for an interview in order that we might study her creative methodology and background.

Riccio obtained her B.F.A from SUNY Buy and her MFA from the College of Pennsylvania, the place she studied with Neil Welliver. Her curatorial initiatives embrace nonetheless life group reveals at each The Washington Studio Faculty, DC and at VisArts Rockville, MD. She has exhibited throughout New York, Maryland, and the Washington DC space and is represented by First Road Gallery, NYC and TAG/The Artists Gallery, Frederick, MD.

Larry Groff:   How has your method to still-life portray advanced since your early days as an artist? Are there any pivotal moments or influences which have formed this evolution?

Marie Riccio:  Like most artists, I’ve all the time beloved drawing and spent a lot of my childhood drawing in my room. My love of shade has all the time been current, and I’ve recollections of colours and the way they made me really feel. Nevertheless, I didn’t begin to paint till after I left undergrad.

As an undergrad pupil at SUNY Buy, there have been two lessons that actually made an awesome impression on me. One was an artwork historical past class taught by artwork historian Irving Sandler, creator of The Triumph of American Portray, who every Wednesday took us into NYC to the galleries. He launched us to many gallery homeowners and artists and made visiting galleries much less intimidating. That have opened me as much as a world of artwork past what I noticed within the outsized e-book part of my native library. The opposite was a category primarily based on the e-book, Interplay of Colour, taught by Sewell Sillman, a pupil of Joseph Albers, that I took as an undergrad after which once more as a grad pupil. The category modified my understanding and consciousness of shade and began me on the trail I’m nonetheless on at the moment. Nevertheless, it was in graduate faculty on the College of Pennsylvania that I made the best change.

I arrived at Penn as an summary painter, and Neil Welliver inspired me to have a look at my environment and paint from life. I began with the objects in my studio. These had been my first still-life work. I might see colours that I couldn’t think about when portray abstractly. It was all very thrilling.

I additionally began portray landscapes throughout that point and proceed to take action, however the nonetheless life is the place I really feel I can discover shade in the best way that the majority pursuits me. I’ve continued to be an observational painter working in oil and generally gouache.

LG:  How has your early expertise as an summary painter influenced your present work?

Marie Riccio:  A number of years in the past, I began revisiting my summary work roots inside my still-life work. That curiosity has developed into evolving concepts about how gentle is described. My ideas about gentle will be described in two other ways; the sunshine inside flat shapes of shade that radiate gentle (from my summary roots) and the sunshine described by rendering worth (realism).

I’m impressed by painters who describe gentle in these other ways, particularly Antonio Lopez Garcia’s beautiful capability to create type and environment by means of worth, Hans Hofmann’s summary brush strokes and flat rectangles of shade that waffle out and in of house, and Vermeer’s fantastically rendered smooth, heat directional gentle. I additionally discovered inspiration in Joseph Albers’s Homage to the Sq., the place colours radiate the sunshine of various levels, and bouncing shade performs within the house, Fairfield Porter’s flat shade shapes describing gentle, Euan Uglow’s shade and shapes describing type, and Morandi’s beautiful, delicate shade and compositions. I’m fascinated by the potential for having each approaches coexisting in my work.

LG:   In your still-life work, you usually depict generally used still-life gadgets similar to brightly coloured backgrounds utilizing material and related supplies, pots, and vases, varied pure kinds, ribbons, and different objects that present construction and a foundation for shade harmonies. Are you able to stroll us by means of the method of choosing this stuff? Do you search for particular traits, or is it extra of an intuitive alternative?

Marie Riccio:   I often start my work with an intuitive method. I’ve still-life objects scattered round my studio and can search for one thing that catches my eye; a shade, a form, or the curve of a bowl. I place the thing on the desk and begin to add extra objects. Slowly I start to see a shade tone develop and can add further objects to assist emphasize that shade temper. I then begin to visualize the composition and the way I need the attention to maneuver inside the portray.

The addition of ribbons, sticks, marbles, and so forth reinforces these compositional selections. I take into accounts which components will play the dominant function within the composition, the objects that I wish to steal the present. I additionally add patterned fabric or strong items of coloured paper to activate the house.

An alternate method for me is to start out from some inspiration that has shaped in my ideas. That may be a shade mixture I’ve been daydreaming about or the re-creation of a composition from a murals that impressed me. For instance, whereas observing Wayne Thiebaud’s San Francisco portray, Two Streets Down, I used to be intrigued by how he positioned the horizon line in the direction of the highest of the portray, how the realm above attracts you again into that house, and the way the realm beneath the horizon seems flat. This composition influenced my portray Touring Pink.

LG:   Are you primarily fascinated with a extra modernist formalist method to portray, versus an expressionistic one? In that case, why?

Marie Riccio:   I don’t often embrace objects in my work that might provide you with a way of a specific time. For instance, you in all probability received’t see a modern piece of clothes or references to popular culture. That’s to not say that they wouldn’t creep right into a portray at occasions, although they might be utilized in a extra modernist method; for his or her form, sample, or shade somewhat than to offer a direct narrative high quality.

I began out as an summary painter, and my curiosity in shapes of shade interacting with adjoining colours has carried over into my still-life work. After I start a portray, my contact is expressionistic and open as I draw and paint shade notes on the floor with my brush and seek for the location of the weather. This expressive search begins the method of connecting to what I’m taking a look at and finally turns into buried as I work my manner by means of the portray to a refinement of the principle pursuits I’m after.

LG:   You’ve talked about in your web site that your still-life work generally reveal private meanings from the method itself. Is there ever a beginning narrative, or does every little thing evolve extra organically together with the portray?

Marie Riccio:    Each bit begins with a proper method with none intent in the direction of a specific which means or narrative. The work modifications by means of the method. I add issues, take away objects, repaint an object somewhat to the left or to the best, making selections to reach at a portray that feels proper, balanced.

This evolving course of could be very meditative for me. I get misplaced in thought and really feel my manner by means of the portray course of. As I spend time with the portray, I develop a relationship with it, and the objects start to tackle private qualities. I see the objects interacting with one another, and their setting and characters announce their presence to me. This generally occurs by means of their proximity to one another, their interacting shade reflections, or how an object dominates its environment.

When I’ve a way of what the portray is about for me, I’m able to title the portray, and I do know I’m achieved. I don’t anticipate the viewer to know what that which means is, however I hope they get a way that one thing is occurring within the portray. For instance, in Amongst the Turmoil, after I began this portray, I used to be within the formal concept of enjoying with distinction: two very darkish objects that might join as one form and contrasted by translucent white tissue paper. Through the course of, the tissue paper was reshaped right into a curve that leads your eye to the darkish bottles. The curves of the patterned pink fabric had been moved to echo the alternative curve, a mirrored image of the tissue paper reinforcing the composition. A yellow ribbon was added to emphasise the curves within the portray, creating a way of chaos.

Through the time this portray was painted, our two youngsters had moved dwelling from faculty, and my husband was working at dwelling as a consequence of Covid shutdowns. None of us had been very comfortable being restricted to the home, and my husband and I needed to stick collectively and maintain down the fort throughout all of the emotional turmoil. For me, this situation is mirrored on this portray. A lot of my work have significant private tales related to them.

LG:   What are you able to say concerning the emotional qualities of your still-life work, and the way does this relate to your compositional selections? Are there explicit preparations of shapes that you just discover extra conducive to expression?

Marie Riccio:   The emotional qualities of my work are expressed by means of each shade and composition. Totally different colours and shade mixtures, delicate shade modifications, and laborious and smooth edges create the emotional high quality of the work.

The emotional content material of a composition additionally issues relationships, how patterns are repeated, how connections are made, and the way totally different kinds work together. A vase could contact its neighbor or seem alone and remoted from the others. A fabric could cuddle a bowl, comforting it from different unsettling components.

LG:   In your still-life work, you’ve described a steadiness between the solidity of objects and the ‘chaotic facet of life,’ like unraveling ribbons or crooked sticks. How do you resolve on the steadiness between these components in a composition? Is there a symbolic significance to this interaction in your work?

Marie Riccio:   When my life feels chaotic, I search consolation in work with a way of stillness. They assist floor me, and I discover the quiet stillness of a portray to be calming. I’m drawn to the grounded construction of issues. Typically, when I’m portray, I really feel objects from the within out, as if I’m inside them pushing outwards and dealing at understanding how a lot house they’re occupying, how shut they’re to their neighbors, and that their toes are strong on the bottom.

These grounded objects are made up of ovals and straight strains. Ribbons, crooked sticks, and flowing material usually are not as simple to grasp. They’ve the capability to vary and are unsettling. They’re the spontaneity of life, the unpredictability, the enjoyable, and I want stability to get pleasure from that unpredictability.

I usually begin by inserting the secure objects first, and after I really feel snug with their placement, I add extra fluid objects to assist add life to the composition and hold the picture energetic. In my portray Loopy Instances, the three centered objects had been organized first. I took care of their proximity to one another. As soon as established, the vines, ribbons, and flowers had been added to precise the whirlwind of craziness I used to be feeling from what was occurring on this planet on the time.

LG:   Colour and composition play important roles in your work. Are you able to talk about how you employ these components to reinforce the interplay between objects in your still-life setups? How do you resolve on the colour palette for a specific piece?

Marie Riccio:   As I carry objects collectively, I start to push the colour temper in a route so a dominate shade household begins to emerge. To ensure that a powerful shade hue to have life I discover it must be positioned in an setting of greys or neutrals that I name “no-name colours” or “bending colours” as a result of they’ve extra altering energy. They alter their shade relying on what they’re subsequent to. I discover these colours thrilling to color since they contain numerous shade mixing and fine-tuning, add environment to the setting, and improve the stronger shade hues. Typically, they’re impartial shade objects, ribbons, or material. They can be current in shadows or inside the altering values of a component.

I often prefer to have an object or two that stands out from the gang and the general shade tone. For me, these are the objects whose shade “sings” within the portray. This will generally be a shade that’s complimentary to the general shade tone or that stands out by means of its worth, placement, or measurement. For instance, within the portray The Valley the orange vase in the direction of the center sings amongst the various no-name colours.

With composition, I’m delicate to how the objects group collectively, the areas between them, and the way they create connecting strains. I begin to discover repeating angles, strains, and round rhythms. I may fit to emphasise elements of the evolving construction by tweaking the composition to carry it to a stronger decision.

LG:   You’ve described your method to nonetheless life as a technique of discovery, whereas panorama portray is extra reductive. Are you able to elaborate on the variations in your artistic course of between these two sorts of work?

Marie Riccio:    I method a nonetheless life as a clear slate. I get to decide on the objects, the colours, the composition. I direct the method from begin to end which could be very difficult however matches my persona since I get pleasure from downside fixing.

I are likely to favor a tabletop which acts as a stage for my nonetheless life. As I organize objects, I take into consideration how they may join with one another in addition to the house round them. I orchestrate what leads the attention into the image airplane from the wings, starting when all of the actors are on the stage. Typically the characters transfer round and are available and go till the portray is full.

After I go outdoors to color the panorama, I usually see chaos in entrance of me that I wish to relax. So, I begin by decreasing what I’m taking a look at. I group areas of worth and remove what shouldn’t be wanted to create the portray I’m after. This can be a reductive course of. In a manner, I discover it very releasing as a result of the setup is there earlier than me. This apply additionally helps to maintain me open to new prospects within the studio.

Each of those approaches are useful to my portray apply.

LG:   Discovering the random and surprising in nature–by means of a perceptual course of–can carry new life to a portray. Please share an instance of a second in your portray that unexpectedly introduced new realization and energy to a portray. 

Marie Riccio:   After I arrange the nonetheless life for the portray Orange You Nice, my preliminary intention was to play with the 2 colours of orange tissue paper within the background. What I didn’t anticipate was what the impact could be on the opposite components within the portray. I noticed orange in all places. On the blue-green bottle, the tabletop, the brown ribbon. The nonetheless life was bathed in a smooth orange gentle introduced out much more by the blue/grey subject beneath the desk.

It’s the technique of portray that excites me; noticing the unseen, downside fixing, all coupled with internal emotions. Visible language is woven into my life, and I work at portray the work that join the making of artwork to life with the hope that the consequence will join with others.