Charles Ritchie

Photograph of the artist at the window with his temporary painting table.

A Window on Philadelphia

The exhibition Prints by Gallery Artists is on view until 27 February at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and three of my prints are included in the venue: Night II, and Water Tower and my accordion fold book, April 2008.  I’ve just returned from seeing the exhibition and highly recommend it.  As well as stepping back and seeing a few of my prints in a fresh context, I enjoyed studying the works of 16 other excellent artists hung in a salon style presentation:  Astrid Bowlby, Emily Brown, Lynne Clibanoff, Christine Hiebert, Marilyn Holsing, Jeanne Jaffe, Mary Judge, Sharon Louden, Winifred Lutz, Rob Matthews, Linn Meyers, Kate Moran, Stephen Robin, Samantha Simpson, Mark Sheinkman, Martin Wilner.  The installation is connected with the city-wide, season-long focus on contemporary printmaking titled Philografika.

In order to make it to the Gallery Joe opening, my family and I drove on Friday from our home just north of Washington DC, ahead of a massive snowstorm.  The light snow started just as the reception began and certainly didn’t dampen the opening crowd; at times I could hardly find a place to stand as the big crowd ebbed and flowed.  Over the course of the evening I got to meet and talk to quite a number of artists and visitors (see below).  After dinner, we retired to our hotel room as the snow and wind grew stronger and the blizzard began to roar into town.  Originally we had intended to visit some of the Philadelphia museums and galleries over the weekend, hoping to see some of the other Philographika venues, but when we woke, it was clear, most everything was closed that day.  So, I pulled my chair and table up to the small window of our hotel room three stories up.  As I gazed across I-95 and the Delaware River, the second largest snowstorm in Philadelphia history moved through.  Sitting in my comfortable quarters I witnessed twenty eight inches of snowfall before it was over.

It was a pleasure just to sit and look.  I saw wave after wave of snow blowing nearly horizontally past the window, at times the view nearly went white.  Dark settled slowly and the lamps came on. As the snowstorm faded, I was sorry to see it go.  I made only one drawing in my journal (see below).  I took no notes;  I didn’t have any noteworthy dreams that evening.  But I have no doubt that the peace and beauty I experienced in front of that window will fortify me for a long time to come.  Sometimes journaling is just looking; looking deeply.

Warmest thanks to Becky and Gil Kerlin, Jenny, and Sam.(Above) Philadelphia Blizzard. Sketch made Saturday 6 February 2010, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page 4 x 6″.

(Below) The artist at Gallery Joe discussing with visitors his accordion fold print project, April 2008 on view in the display case.
Photographs by Samantha Ritchie.

Photograph of the artist’s journals, Book 123 through Book 132, 2004 - 2009.  The foreground journal is open to a study for Self-Portrait with Night: Pieced Panels I with the drawing in progress visible in the background.

New Work / New York

BravinLee programs, located in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, has opened an exhibition of my works on paper that includes twenty-three drawings, two prints, and eight journals.  Created within the last five years, this body of work in many ways summarizes ideas that have percolated through my recent oeuvre while endeavoring to push into new territories.

Fourteen drawings in the show relate to my Pages series, a project that emerged around 2002.  The images are executed on paper approximately the size my journal pages (4 x 6 inches) and are inscribed with notes that attend the drawing’s construction as well as dreams transposed from my journals (for an example, see Self-Portrait with Planets and Moon). Such texts spring from inner discourse that parallels my scrutiny of the visual world.  Multiple layers of writing may be erased and overwritten before the final inscriptions are inked.  Some observers might imagine these drawings are pages extracted from my notebooks and framed, however they are formed independently.  A sustained dialogue between these works and my sketchbooks is critical to their development and is evident in the journal sketches that are on view in the show’s display cases.

The Self-Portrait with Night series is represented with five works. These broad-format images are developed from a consistent viewpoint looking out of my studio window.  Set at night or twilight, refection and transparency are evoked to compositionally merge interior and exterior spaces. While my own visage haunts these works, it is often lost in shadow or swarms of overlapping detail.  In this exhibition, most of the Self-Portrait with Night works are bisected with a vertical crop or fold.  This gutter or fracture not only reiterates the grid underpinning my compositions but echoes the book form. Indeed, the format of these pictures is often identical to a spread of pages from my journal; for example see Folded Self-Portrait with Night I: Watercolor and Gouache.

Photograph of drawings laid out in preparation for framing, June 2009.

In recent years, I find myself delving deeper into color.  While I continue to emphasize flux between warm and cool tonalities, I find myself more in need of a full palette when I am painting.   Hues can appear subtly in underwashes of yellows, blues, and reds, or flare occasionally in pure color as in Three Inch Suite VII: Lamplight and House.  Simultaneously, I have expanded my use of graphite as a predominant medium. Folded Self-Portrait with Night II, Spring Twilight, and Night with Orion have been built up in this dry, silvery-gray medium over extended periods.  I should also mention extensive inked inscriptions on the latter two works, an experiment in which transcriptions of dreams are synchronous with the image.

Most of the drawings in the show were executed in my primary studio, seated in only a few locations using subtle shifts in viewpoint to reexamine the space or peer into adjacent rooms. (Works executed elsewhere are Blossoming Star Magnolia and Folded Self-Portrait with Night III, both created in upstairs studio windows). I continue to cultivate astronomical themes by including star maps and astronomical charts in my settings, and in recent months I have reinforced the motif by replacing previous chandelier ornaments with models of the planets.  I have also begun to introduce lamps with a variety of different wattage and vary their locations in the room as a means of creating a different kind of luminosity and reflection in my works. This experimentation has produced the abrupt illumination that occurs in such works as Astronomical Chart, Bowl, and Candles and Interior with Shadows.  Another new variation has been to introduce mirrors into some of my settings; for example, Self-Portrait with Planets includes a mirror on my drawing table as well as one leaning on the wall behind me.

Another new direction includes expanding interest in daylight subjects as represented by such works as Bright Afternoon and Spring Twilight. I endeavor to contemplate light in an equally penetrating manner as darkness. Using random scraps of paper found in the studio as support is another new strategy for experimentation; an example can be seen in Fragment: Spring I.  I have also begun to explore and refine compositions by adding pieces of paper; Self-Portrait with Night: Pieced Panels I had a section of the support filled in after the drawing had already been begun.  There are two prints on view, both investigating new directions; an impression of Night II in which detail has been articulated by scratching and painting on the impression, and April 2008, the accordion fold book printed in intaglio that is based on a transcribed sequence of pages from one of my journals. Prints, as always, are published by Center Street Studio, Milton, Massachusetts.

A complete list of the works on view with images can be found in the exhibition catalogue online at the BravinLee programs site.  The Drawings section of my own website offers images as well.  Charles Ritchie: Books and Pages is on view at BravinLee programs at 526 West 26th Street, Suite 211, New York, New York and can be seen Tuesday through Saturday 10 am to 6 pm. The exhibition runs through 28 November 2009.

Deepest thanks to John Lee, Karin Bravin, Meredith Rosenberg, Jenny Ritchie, Samantha Ritchie, Becky Kerlin, James Stroud, Janine Wong, and Lauren van Haaften-Schick for their varied and essential support of this project.

Charles Ritchie at BravinLee programs, 24 October 2009.  Photograph by Samantha Ritchie.

Photograph of Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2008.

Thirty Years

Making art is difficult enough without expecting it to pay the bills. I was lucky and found a parallel art career as a curator that freed me to pursue my creative goals without pressure to produce.

In my early years I didn’t show my art because I didn’t need or want to. Alexander Pope’s advice to Dr. Arbuthnot seemed reasonable to me: create your work and put it away for nine years. If you still like it after that period, go ahead and share it. Recommendations like this, rarely taken in our age, may seem over the top. But the idea of distance providing clarity appeals to me and I was in no hurry. I just wanted to do the best work I could.

Early on I began to store my works in a box. I found it useful to hold onto the original drawings as references when I serially examined my subjects. Thus, for many years I didn’t want to sell my work because it was counterproductive to developing my art. The arrival of digital scanning and printing helped ease me away from this attitude. Being able to print out a good quality ink jet print may not be a perfect substitute for having the work itself, but it is far more effective than relying on color slides, a recording format I struggled with for many years but loathed.

But the greatest advantage of retaining works is that my I had built up holdings before I began to exhibit. That is why a current exhibition at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia can present a thirty year career view. I am not certain what made me change my mind about showing, but after testing the waters in various competitions and group venues in the early 1990s, I began to look forward to the audience and potential feedback. I also liked seeing what I had created outside the studio context. With a few commercial galleries beginning to show interest, sales began to happen. However, none of the gallery relationships seemed to fit, and rather than present my works in a less than comfortable exhibition situation, I kept the work close.

Then, I found Gallery Joe. Or rather, Becky Kerlin, the gallery director, found me. In 2003, Becky saw a group show that I was in, liked the work, and communicated she would like to see more. We connected, and by 2005 I was in a group show called water colors: current views at Gallery Joe; and then in 2006, I had a whole room to myself at the gallery in a presentation titled Suites and Pages. The relationship blossomed; Becky is an artist’s dream to work with, she has a great eye for art, and I admire the artists she shows. Becky offered to let me fill the entire gallery, thus we have From the Inside Looking Out; a survey of new and old, drawn from fresh directions in my work and holdings from my little box.

Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: Charles Ritchie at Gallery Joe.

Other installation photographs and selected images of works on view can be found on the Gallery Joe web site. The show runs through 20 December 2008.

Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie at the Gregg Musuem of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Photograph by Matthew Gay.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Stepping into one’s solo exhibition can be revealing; especially if work that’s been out of mind for years is included. It’s strange enough seeing one’s art framed and under glass, or presented in display cases; a situation that denies the whole tactile experience of creating the work as well as displacing it from the studio in which it grew. The unfamiliar, freshly-painted white room, the rarefied lighting, and the uncluttered, surprising juxtaposition of works serves to make everything feel alien: what a great place for an artist to be.

As I spent time going through my exhibition in at North Carolina State University, several things struck me. I enjoyed reviewing some early drawings that haven’t been shown before. The group includes Window with Moon and Star and Worktable with Open Book, drawings from 1983. Both works feature the same subject, the table and window of an earlier studio. The tight pen drawing of the former was made by thinning inks and building up layers of line with a very fine point pen. This very precise drawing process took months. Compared with Worktable with Open Book, a much larger piece created using large brushes in loose watercolor wash on a watercolor block; this drawing was executed in probably a half hour. I’m fascinated that I was working with such variant methods at the same time. I think the tension of swinging between loose and tight approaches has been one of the elements that has kept painting interesting for me. I still vascillate between these poles when I work. I should also note that Window with Moon and Star seems to me to be a reflection on the 19th century British artists that I was vitally interested in the time, William Blake, Edward Calvert, and Samuel Palmer. All of whom became more familiar to me during the summer of 1984 on our honeymoon in England.

Another early work, The Bend, completed in the fall of 1984, (see my online journal entry for 17 August 2008), seemed to be a reflection on the period in which it was created. The year was a turning point of my life; I married, I began the move to my present studio, and my outside work shifted towards a curatorial career. Looking at the drawing, I felt as if the picture was a long jump; a leap across the dark space between the lights on the left and right of the composition. This kind of metaphor never occurs to me while I am working, but such associations emerge in hind sight. Perhaps I subconsciously scout such visual metaphors when I choose my subjects.

One of the discoveries I made looking at the show was that during the mid-to-late 1990s I was not drawing so much. There are few works from that period in this exhibition. During this period I began working with Jim Stroud at Center Street Studio making prints. Also at this time, I experimented with oil paint on gessoed board, an investigation that was never fully successful. During this diversion, I discovered that I like the versatility of working with paper and the quick drying time of watercolor.

Regarding the installation of the show; the journals seem particularly out of context when displayed in exhibitions. My books are utilitarian and when limited to a spread of two pages open in a display case they lose their functionality and serial richness. They are meant to be held in the hands and experienced as a sequence of pages. Of course, the alternative of giving up security within such a public setting seems far less palatable. I have found no better solution.

A final note; memories of the creation of the work can affect how one remembers it; such as remembering it bigger or smaller than it actually is. Ones hopes and dreams of what one wanted to achieve with with a work can also jade memory. Reacting to the inaccuracy of these mental images can often times spark the trajectory for a new journey when one steps back to contemplate in the setting of an exhibition.

Other installation photographs are below. Deepest thanks to the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, Raleigh for their beautiful presentation and particular thanks to Matthew Gay who documented the show with these images.