Janet Rickus

Above and Below

You can’t take a bite out of Janet Rickus’s artworks, although you may want to. A true virtuoso of still life paintings, Rickus creates impeccable Photorealistic depictions of fruits, vegetables and tableware staged on linen-draped tables that would leave even the world’s greatest chefs jealous of her expertise with the art of presentation.

For Rickus, capturing the lifelike qualities of each food requires an incredible amount of concentration, precision and patience. It did not, however, require formal training. The artist is mostly self-taught and has worked to grow her skills for over three decades dating back to her inaugural exhibitions in the early 1990s.

Rickus has had solo and group exhibitions at Hoorn-Ashby Gallery in New York City and has shown her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, which is near her hometown of Chicopee, Massachusetts. Rickus was a recipient of an artist grant from the Mass Cultural Council in 2006.

Evident in her meticulous arrangements of colors and shapes, Rickus knows what she likes to paint and how she likes to paint it — she uses only natural light and everything is painted its actual size. Despite her parents owning a grocery store when she was a child, Rickus’s choice of subject has everything to do with textures and stability. Produce is the ultimate portrait subject — unique and completely unmoving so that she gets every delicious detail just right.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Janet Rickus paintings.