“ The Long View.”
Although his paintings sell well and the list of prizes in juried exhibitions is impressive( numerous merit and purchase awards in Hoosier Salon and Richmond Art Museum annual exhibits), Rick continues to work as a self-employed draftsman, producing architectural blueprints at Miller Architects in Nashville. He learned CAD( computer aided design) during his career at Kawneer.
Rick’ s current day job and former musical associations aren’ t his only Brown County affiliations. While still in high school he lived with the Harden family during the summer, working with their dad at Associated Engineering.“ So, I guess I’ m an honorary Brown Countian,” he ventured.
His training and ability to
visualize in 3-D is no doubt helpful with his rendering of realistic structures as well as land and seascapes. Though Rick enjoys the challenges of painting crashing waves, the rocky coast, and small fishing villages in Maine, he has explored all the back roads in Brown County looking for ideal scenes.“ Indiana is my home,” he declared.“ And I love all the geographical regions here. There’ s a never-ending array of things to paint.”
Rick considers his works tonalist in style, emphasizing mood and softness of form. Tonalism is derived from the French Barbizon school.“ My paintings are a little tighter [ than a lot of current landscape artists’],” he said.“ The Barbizon school was a precursor to Impressionism.
They loved painting from life, replicating light bouncing off objects. Coming from an academic world, their works were tighter, concerned with brushstrokes and learning about landscape in the early-to-mid-1800s. Barbizon paintings are the ones I seek out when I go to a museum. I drool over them until a guard warns me away,” he laughed.“ I don’ t want to copy them but capture that mood.” To achieve this, he uses umber colors in his underpainting, which affects the hues of the final image. Compared with bright impressionistic colors, Rick’ s landscapes appear more muted.
“ I love to plein air paint( on location) and be outdoors,” Rick said.“ But I don’ t use my plein air pieces for reference when doing
Continued on 28
March / April 2023 • Our Brown County 27