About

Rick Reynolds is a lifelong California artist living in Los Angeles. For decades Reynolds has created a dynamic and exciting spectrum of contemporary figure and expressionistic abstracts. He was tutored privately by a modern master in figure drawing, perspective, and alla prima techniques of the Old Masters while simultaneously engaged as a Hollywood studio executive collaborating with award-winning filmmakers. Many of his private collectors work in the film industry.

“My intention with painting is to distill the mess and chaos of my life experiences and my imagination into a beautiful visual essence, noise free; to unpeel the civilizing effect of modernity, to rut around, to play, and create and stumble upon unfamiliar forms that look great and make sense. With the oversize works I make grand, bold gestures and compositions that are abstract and sensual, sometimes compressing visual mashups. It’s a language I don’t fully understand and find thrilling especially scaled up.”

“I prefer oils for their buttery feel and wet-into-wet process. Unlike works of tight realism and human figures, the abstracts lead me on journeys that can seem a little daunting facing a blank canvas, a personal challenge. Quickly the thinking mind relaxes to give way to process and intuition. Some abstracts I find near perfect each step of the way so it’s finally a question of taste when I consider a work fully cooked and ready to serve up. Then again, it’s tempting to keep picking away and fine tune. I once read artists never really finish works — they abandon them. That’s funny, too, and not entirely wrong.

Rick Reynolds 2024