"Richard Stickler - A British Contemporary Abstract Artist and Musician"
2004-08-01 until 2004-08-31
Cobden Club
London, , UK United Kingdom

The Cobden Club a private members club in West London presents works by Richard Strickler. Stickler was born in 1970 and grew up in the small village of Warsash near Southampton, where he still lives and works as a freelance illustrator/musician. Having the ability to work with watercolours - which is the medium he uses for the majority of his illustrative commissions - Stickler produces paintings with intricate detail. The artist graduated from the Institute of Higher Education of Southampton in 1991, and have a National Diploma in Scientific Illustration and a Higher National Diploma in Design - Graphic Design.

Digital Abstract Photography

A series of Signed Limited Edition photographs is exhibited at Cobden Club London. They are the result of the study of artificial light, and the interaction with its surroundings. Based on the discovery on how new techniques, of movement and placement of the lens of the camera, in relation to a light source can affect the outcome of the photo, by doing so create an abstract image of colour, reflection and texture. The end results could be construde as optical phenomena, much like rainbows in the natural world.

Stickelr also tries to evoke the imagination by playing with ideas of nostalgia and rejuvenation through his abstract paintings. He uses sand within the paintings applying techniques that date back to the early Native Americans. As with their use of sand, in the Sharmas ritual paintings, it too creates texture to his work but is this case the sand is permanent. Sand gives Stickler a raw organic feel that helps to produce an excitement in the painting, and like the music he composes, each painting is an expression of intricate depth and mood. Stickler looks upon his paintings as if they were like individual music solos of the art world.

Richard states: My love for colour and tone is very apparent in my abstract compositions. Using sand and oil paint, I builds up the colours keeping light evident. The effects I achieves from blending the colours sometimes are unexpected. Abstract expressionists have had a detrimental part to play in my art, inspired and heavily influenced by paintings from this movement especially ones executed by Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning and Motherwell.

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