Richmond Garrick is an awarded winning artist from Sierra Leone. Alongside his ingenious expertise, he has been an educator for 20 years, and an adjunct professor for 12 years, teaching both in Sierra Leone and the United States.
Richmond received his Higher Teachers Certificate from Milton Margai Teachers College in Sierra Leone and taught Art at St. Josephs Secondary School and the Annie Walsh Memorial School for eight years before leaving for the United States. Prior to his departure from Sierra Leone in 1991, he mounted one of the largest art exhibits that was graced by top dignitaries from the various embassies in Sierra Leone. The exhibit was formally opened by tenured American Ambassador Johnny Young.
When Richmond arrived in the United States his paintings were exhibited at the Sierra Leone
Embassy in Washington, DC under the Ambassador, Dr. Kargbo. While in the States, he pursued further studies in fine arts, computer graphics and multimedia receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers’ s Mason Gross School of the Arts, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Montclair States University and an Associate Degree in Advertising Graphics from Middlesex County College. Presently, he is an adjunct professor and also teaches graphic design at Williamstown High School in New Jersey.
Richmond Garrick works in all media. Some of his paintings are a testimony of aggression and conflict. He draws on personal history for subject matter, which tends to be emotional, psychological and sociological. Richmond is often revered as a social realist, even though he believes his painting style borders on realism and expressionism. Some of his paintings reflect the atrocities the innocent civilians endured during the ten years civil conflict in Sierra Leone. He considered them to be“ Expression of Oppression, A Metaphor for the Unthinkable“ Those paintings help to sensitize art lovers to the brutality and sadistic mutilations and killings of his people. They were very powerful testimonies painted on large-scale canvases with thick paint and didactic brush strokes that convey strong emotions.
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