PRESS RELEASE
A highly regarded mid-career painter, Rick Stich is well known for his abstract impressions of reflections on water. This exhibition, entitled Water Mirrors, is drawn from these illusionist forms and patterns seen both below and above the water. The artist has studied these movements and reflections of light on liquid for over 30 years.
Because of his longstanding interest in the interplay of light, water, and landscape, Stich uses paint to explore mankind's relationship with the elements. With vivid color, he investigates the symbolic, fluid, and reflective nature of water with large-format abstract paintings.
In depicting the surface of water, the artist also explores the surfaces of a painting. The likenesses between the surface of the painting and the surface of the water are similar, and the two work off one another in his pieces.
Rick Stiches paintings can appear entirely abstract. With swirling, gestural brushstrokes, the artist's technique recounts the Abstract Expressionist painters. Ultimately, color is the method by which Stich expresses the intermingling of light, reflection, and the atmospheric effects of the sea. Still, the artist remains decidedly interested in the subject as much as the technique. His paintings are influenced by the poetry of water. He is interested in conveying the relationship, interaction, and ultimate inner- connectedness between humans and the natural world.
Water Mirrors is Rick Stiches first exhibition with ECAA, and it draws upon the artist's 30-year career of exhibiting professionally in Southern California. He has had solo exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, L.A. Louver Gallery, and Ruth Shaffner Gallery. Concurrent with Water Mirrors, his work will also be featured in a group show entitled, Surf Inspired, at the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard from June 7th though August 24, 2008. His paintings are held in numerous private and corporate collections including Bank of America, Eli Broad Foundation, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
