Bob Richardson
S P A C E D
SHORT BIO:
With degrees from Tufts University, The School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and The Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, Bob has had a long career as an educator in various New England independent schools and colleges. His representational silk screened prints have been shown widely along the New England coast. Moving to a small farm in Washington, Maine with his family in 1990, he also developed a reputation as a musician in the mid-coast area. His choral composition, Thule Suite, was performed at the Strom Auditorium in Camden, in February of 2008, and his original musical, Lighthouse, had its premier performance at the Waldo Theater in Waldoboro, in July 2008. Bob and his wife, Susan, “downsized” to a small house in Camden, Maine in 2013. The first thing he did was to build a studio in which to continue his artistic efforts.
He was twice Artist in Residence at The Robert M. MacNamara Artist Residency on Westport Island where he began the re-visitation of his early systemic concepts. Two large works on watercolor paper from the MacNamara stay were selected for the Center for Maine Contemporary Art Biennial Juried Exhibitionin 2008. Since then, his paintings, both on large canvases and on paper, have been shown several times at Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, Gibbs Gallery in Washington, River Arts Galleryin Damariscotta, Zoot Gallery in Camden, and the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, where he recently won the Juror’s Choice Award in the annual Juried Show, and The Granite Gallery in Tenants Harbor.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I am a “process” painter, and have been since I was first introduced to the idea of inventing a system that produces work without literal content some 50 years ago in graduate school. My paintings are always meant to be ego-less, that is to say, without any special personal, topical, or symbolic significance. After my show at The Granite Gallery in the summer of 2023 where my paintings were all white(or just off white) reflecting my feeling during “Covid”, I just had to get back to color. A friend saw a new“circle” painting and exclaimed “Hey, Blue Moon”. I’ve always known that people see what they are familiar within an abstract painting, so I understood. I decided to paint a series based on the obvious response to seeing a circle. It’s either the sun or the moon as has been since the cave painters started recording their lives. Included in the show are some interesting examples of earlier “process” work filling up the smaller wall spaces as the wonderful Granite Gallery.
