Bruce Ricker
Mountain Meadows
2000

About the Item

Mountain Meadows is a serigraph on paper with an image size 35 x 29 inches, signed 'Ricker' lower right and annotated lower left. From the edition of 500, numbered 155/200 (there were also 50 Roman on paper, 200 Arabic on canvas and 50 AP on canvas). Framed in a contemporary silver-tone moulding. An alum of the Berkeley School of Architecture in the sixties, Bruce Ricker identifies with the natural geometry of a landscape, incorporating the rational order of architecture with the mysticism of nature. In Mountain Meadows, the long shadows of morning stretch their cool fingers across the hillside, while the delicate mist settles in the valley, escaping for the moment the approaching warmth that threatens its very existence. Dense, emerald juniper and eucalyptus, blazing magenta and silver, take refuge in a protective grove of columnar golden Monterey cypress, their own limbs ravaged by the wicked winds. The gods of wind and water have tested this fragile landscape, but its trials have only served to strengthen the countenance of this sacred garden. There is a precarious balance to this reality, a Darwinian drama for the ages. This epic struggle for survival and harmony amongst the elements is the foundation for Ricker’s creations. Martin Lawrence Galleries is an affiliate of Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, the original publisher of this print. This print is as new, with no prior ownership.

Creator:

Bruce Ricker (1945, American)

Creation Year:

2000

Dimensions:

Height: 49.5 in (125.73 cm)Width: 43.5 in (110.49 cm)

Medium:

Screen,Paper

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

21st Century

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Greenwich, CT

Reference Number:

Seller: 3891stDibs: LU2664213651052

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Bruce Ricker redefines landscape art. Using an epic visionary approach, he combines an educated understanding with a lucid imagination. The results are delightful, unexpected, satisfying, and unique. Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1945, he grew up in Carmel Valley, California in the 1950s, with almost no exposure to television or city life, instead, he spent his leisure time roaming the hills and redwood canyons of rural California. In the early 1960s, he joined the Navy and became a hospital corpsman in Vietnam at the age of 17. When he returned from his service, he studied art at San Francisco State University, however, he left after two years, dissatisfied with a program that seemed to be only an indoctrination in the “proper” ideas about art. Ricker later enrolled in the U.C. Berkeley School of Architecture. Although he benefited from this discipline, he thought he had “too many curves” in him to stick to the straight path of architecture as a career. In the mid-1970s, he began painting seriously and selling his artwork to an increasingly wide audience. “I’m trying,” says Bruce Ricker, “to do the same thing George Lucas does in his movies.” That would be to create a new universe, or at least a new way of seeing what is already here. In doing so, the artist, film director, writer and actor must chart new territory which, when you think about it, is what creative life is all about. “Someone like Lucas,” continues Ricker, “must ask himself, ‘How can I present a city unlike any ever seen before?’ I ask myself this same question before I paint. I am very aware of the standard way of looking at things – the cliché – any my work is all about not falling into that trap.” Over his thirty years as a professional artist, and even longer as a lover of the land, Bruce Ricker’s motifs have become notable for their sharp detail and articulate precision. He prefers to find uncharted territory that’s rich and beautiful… and unexpected, to “give people a view they haven’t seen before. In dreams and in life, nothing is impossible.” (Victor Forbes, Fine Art, 2002)