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| ARTIST STATEMENT: Nantucket, August 2004
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 The cultivation of the space within a painting is not unlike the cultivation of a garden. I work the canvas as one would till the soil, encouraging the brighter moments until new and unexpected forms and colors emerge in the surface of paint and wax. Painting becomes then a means of discovery begun without preconceptions, ideas or pictures in mind. If I am careful not to force the issue, a painting will form and have a resonance beyond its color, light, and movement.
My work is most simply a search for those quieter moments when one is most aware od where it is they are standing and that space that surrounds them in an instant of spontaneous meditation. It seems that my earliest interests in the landscapes that I grew up in have never left me. The paintings, though abstract in their outward appearances, are the direct representations of passages made, not with feet on the earth but in the mind. In the end, these abstractions are remembrances of the familiar and favorite territory of moors, harbors, inlets, gardens, and more remote stretches of sand.
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Michael Rich, graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, (BFA 1991) and The Savannah College of Art and Design, (MFA 1997) is currently a Professor of Art at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island. Time spent around the waters of Nantucket Island and the hills of Cortona, Italy helped to shape a love and interest in landscape and natural rhythms of color that remain very much a focal point in his work today.
A dedicated practitioner of yoga, Rich is influenced greatly by Eastern philosophy and art in an approach to nature and landscape as a wellspring for spiritual investigation and meditation.
Michael Rich exhibits regularly internationally and throughout the United States through Sotheby's auction series, International Young Art, and regular gallery exhibits. He is the 1996 recipient of the Basil H. Alkazzi Award (USA) and his work is featured in private and public collections nationally including, The Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Michael is represented by the George Billis Gallery, New York.
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• Setting Sail, oil and wax on canvas, 84 x 96", 2007
• Clearing, oil and wax on canvas, 38 x 40", 2006
• Swept Away, oil and wax on canvas, 60 x 72", 2006
• Spring Sky, oil and wax on canvas, 64 x 72", 2005
• View from Above, oil and wax on canvas, 72 x 64", 2005
• Taking Flight, oil and wax on canvas, 84 x 96", 2007
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• Nor' easter, oil and wax on canvas, 38 x 34", 2005
• Moon Day, oil and wax on canvas, 44 x 40", 2004
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