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Artist Statement:
Currently I'm making paintings
that rely on accident and flow
as much as intent.
...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Solo Exhibitions
2008 “Me Machine
Breakdown”,Nicholas
Gallery,Cincinnati,OH.
2007 “Ray’s Mundo”,Gruen
Galleries,Chicago,IL.
2005 “New
Paintings”,Christopher Martin
Gallery,Dallas,TX.
2004 “Meta Salon” Unit B
Gallery,Chicago,IL.
2002 “Solvitur
Ambulando”,gescheidle,Chicago,I
L.
2001 “Phosphene”, Lyonswier
Gallery,Chicago,IL.
1994 "Side Effects",in ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Bruce Riley Biography:
| Biographical information for Bruce Riley can be found below. The artist may choose what information to display. Sometimes the artist chooses not to display personal information to the general public. |
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Age
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54
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| Gender |
Male
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| Status |
Married
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| Children |
99
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| Religion |
none |
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| Education |
High School |
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| Hobbies / Interests |
Creating sound/noise, yoga, biking |
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| Favorite Artistic Medium |
Painting Other
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| Favorite Arthistory Movement |
not provided
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| Favorite Visual Artist |
not provided
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| Favorite Work of Art |
not provided
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| Biggest Artistic Inspiration |
My brother Brent Riley was my biggest artistic inspiration. Watching him make art and emulating his directions was most influential to my artistic development. |
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| Why Did You Become An Artist |
I never thought of becoming an artist, it just happened. |
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| Your Personal Biography |
This biography was written for a Gottlieb grant application requirement.
In 1975 after spending a couple of years working in factories I realized I couldn’t make art and be a full-time employee. The decision not to work full-time was extremely important for my development as an artist. I was accepted at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where I focused on studio courses, reading color theory and painting treatises, artist’s writings and biographies. The Art Academy was physically attached to the Cincinnati Art Museum and as a student I spent a lot of time in the museum and its library. It was the exposure to the museum’s collection and its library that I remember being more of an influence on my art than the actual school.
I wasn’t concerned with getting a degree, so when I couldn’t get funding I traveled around the United States, often hitchhiking without a destination, quietly moving through beautiful landscapes, working in small sketch books and meeting people. I spent 1975-1980 in a pattern of study and travel, ending up in Colorado where I worked at the St. Paul Ski Lodge.
The St. Paul Ski Lodge is an old gold mine located at 1,000 ft above Red Mountain Pass, putting the lodge at 11,000 ft. We had no electricity or running water. I had a lot of free time to paint, read, draw, hike and cross-country ski. This was an especially rich year for my development as an artist.
With the sudden death of my father in 1980 I returned to Cincinnati to be near my mother and to consciously start an art career. I was accepted in the fine arts program at the University of Cincinnati. While this pursuit did not yield a masters or even an undergraduate degree, it did introduce me to the Cambridge University Press’ Bollingen Series. While working in the art library I came across Eric Neumann’s “Art and the Creative Unconscious”. From Neumann, I went on to Jung, EstHer Harding, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell and much more. I can’t stress enough the importance of this find and its impact on my art and life. This body of work exposed me to a literature that explored the mysteries of the human condition, something that I felt I was looking into with my art. I’ve always known my work was about everything, all at once. This reading began to give me an intellectual tool to investigate what I knew and felt.
In the early 80's I began exhibiting my work around the Cincinnati area and receiving very positive feedback. By 1984 I was showing in Louisville, KY and Columbus, OH. I was getting small awards and I began making sales.
In 1983 I was spending the warmer months in West Virginia working as a white water raft guide. This continued a connection to wilderness, a space aside from human endeavor, that has been so important to my vision of mankind’s place in the universe. Raft guiding was freelance work which allowed me to paint as much as possible. My paintings were from life, small, and an end in and of themselves. I used my sketch books to work out easel paintings that were executed in Cincinnati during the winter. In Cincinnati I worked part-time at the New World Bookshop where I met Kelly McKaig, my future partner. In 1986-87 Kelly went to the University of Iowa in Iowa City to finish a degree in English. During the winter months I rented a small studio in Iowa City. I used the University’s art library for my studies and their branch of the Foundation Center to start researching and applying for grants.
My gallery representation and exhibiting grew even further. In Chicago the Contemporary Art Workshop took my work to the Chicago International Art Expo. I was in a show at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, represented by Neville/Sargent Gallery, and then Perimeter Gallery. I was in exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, the Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art, the Southern Ohio Museum, the Butler Institute of Art, the Miami University Art Museum and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. This public acknowledgment of my art undeniably helped strengthen my direction.
Around 1988 Kelly and I moved to Over-the-Rhine, a poor inner-city neighborhood in Cincinnati. I had just received my first grant from the Ludwig-Vogelstein Foundation and was in a four-person show at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. The CAC also gave me a generous stipend for my inclusion in the exhibition and part-time employment as an art preparator. We lived above my storefront studio and enjoyed the company of a small community of artists. I started experimenting with sound. I’ve done a few performances and one recording but for the most part my investigations into sound remain in the studio. Sound introduced me to the considerations of a time-based medium, which expands later into an interest in the moment. This exploration of the moment has become fundamental to my understanding of humanity.
In 1989-90 I received a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant; in 1991-92 an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist grant, A Cincinnati Arts Allocation Committee grant; and in 1992-93 an Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship Award. This run of grants, together with sales, funded a very rich period of artistic development.
In the late 80's I began to paint spontaneously on small pieces. At the end of the painting day I executed these small works with left over paint and the knife used to clean my palette. There was no plan, just playful action. This more immediate process took over the older process of planning out a painting. The spirit of this process is predominately the way I work up to this day.
In 1994 Kelly and I moved to Chicago where we rented a 2,000 sq ft loft. I continued my part-time work as a freelance art preparator in galleries and local museums, eventually doing preparator work for the Terra Museum in France. I loved intimately handling the work of other artists, but chose to stop preparator work in order to make more money for the time spent working. I started freelance set designing and building.
My spontaneous palette knife paintings were still ending up figurative. In 1995 my work lost the direct figurative association it had been holding on to. 1995-1997 my palette was muted and I worked with a knife and larger feathering brushes. After 1997 more colorful palettes started appearing. A one-person show titled “Phosphene” at Lyons-wier Gallery featured these new colorful works. I received good press but few sales.
In 1999 Kelly and I bought a small house on the south side of Chicago. I had just finished a commission which gave me enough money to build a studio in our backyard providing I do the work myself.
In this studio, in 2002, I switched to water-based mediums and started to work flat. I liked the consideration of gravity in my painting. My nonfiction reading at this time was primarily in the natural sciences moving into physics. I was intrigued by the seemingly counter-intuitive events occurring in quantum mechanics. I was particularly excited by the writings of David Bohm. He dared to look at the limitations of thinking. I’ve always harbored a suspicion that thought does have trouble in some aspects of its application. It was Bohm’s view of thought’s “domain of validity” being in technology that excited me.
Bohm’s conversations with J. Kishnamurti led me to read Krishnamurti’s lectures. At the age of nineteen or twenty I had become aware of how fundamental the moment was to my existence. This awareness of the moment, not as an abstraction but in a more direct manner, is what I’ve been working on ever since. Bohm and Krishnamurti have helped supply me with tools to further investigate the thought-based world we’ve created and live in.
by 2004 I had outgrown my studio at home and gave it to Kelly. After a couple of temporary spaces I rented my present studio across the street from my home. My life is structured around spending time in the studio
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