Ridley Howard: Shorelines

Stylized scene paintings. Romantic, sometimes erotic, elegant portraits bringing Alex Katz to mind. Howard adds geometric details or backdrops perhaps to add a disruptive element to his otherwise decorative paitings. Published on the occasion of the artist's first solo-exhibition in France and focuses on Howard's recent works. From the publisher Ridley Howard experiments with how the elemental forces of painting, colour, shape and design coalesce into something with emotional resonance. His paintings display a cool yet personal relationship to both subject matter and image where simple depictions of people, architectural spaces and landscapes are infused with a specific painterly sensibility. The works incorporate the vernacular of vastly different genres of painting, among them high renaissance, pop art and abstraction. Subtle and deceptively straightforward, the paintings invoke a sense of monumentality while retaining a lingering intimacy and stillness. The title of the exhibition, Shorelines, emphasizes the formal aspects of painting and the geometry of compositions, referring to the idea of the line as a paring down of sorts. However, the title is also poetic, reflecting a series of works that are exclusively coastal. The coast or beach is in many ways a neutral space, potentially dreamlike and universally experienced as a place outside of normal life. One may imagine encounters, experiences and feelings of alienation being heightened there. The landscape is somewhat abstract – a horizon line and mere hints of land. Similar to the ambience of the films of Eric Rohmer, an inspiration to the artist, the sea is a site where sensuality, levity, and existential gravity co-exist. Ridley Howard, is an American painter born 1973 in Atlanta and who now lives and works between Athens, Georgia and Brooklyn, NY. He holds a singular position in American painting today, inspired by traditions as varied as Italian Renaissance, American Scene Painting, Modernist Abstraction, and Pop Art. Deceptively simple, his paintings combine an air of cinematic romanticism and a cool straightforward neutrality.