A solo show will open on Thursday night 7 September, 6 to 8 pm at BravinLee programs, New York. Sixteen recently completed independent drawings by the artist will be featured, each approximately the size of a notebook page. The artist's related journals will also be on view. Below is a photograph of one of the drawings as it was being developed in the studio, summer 2017. The works to be included are now pictured on the BravinLee website also note their recent Storyline entry about the making of the exhibition. Below is the show announcement text.
Charles Ritchie: 16 Pages
Opening: Thursday September 7th, 6-8PM
BravinLee programs is very pleased to present Charles Ritchie 16 Pages, September 7th - October 14th. We are happy to say this is our fourth exhibition of work by Charles Ritchie.
Charles Ritchie’s small scaled works on paper are intensely exquisite, muscular and authoritative in translating the physics of light, space and human perception into an intense experience of aspects of everyday life.
Charles Ritchie writes:
The drawings in this exhibition are called pages because they look like leaves of my sketchbooks, however these sheets were created independently and have never been in books.
I have selected my compositions by circling the interior of my studio, often engaging the window, its reflections, and the view outside.
Thoughts and dreams are often transcribed on the page in a private note hand, a channeling of my subconscious that heightens my engagement with the process. This writing is essential to my journals, also on view.
In recent years, color has evolved as a means for cultivating luminosity. I balance broad washes against fine-point precision and lately I have mixed gum arabic into watercolor in order to build transparent glazes.
Reversals and negation are important. I often rediscover the white of the page or obliterate and reconfigure an image by dry erasing, wetting and scrubbing with fine bristle brushes, and occasionally scratching, scraping and sanding.
My essential tool is sustained observation. I have worked in this room with these subjects for thirty-three years. For me, the pages combine looking, memory, association, accident, improvisation, and imagination into extended meditations on self and world.
Charles Ritchie, August 2017
In 2014 Ritchie’s one person exhibition traveled to Houghton College, Houghton, NY and was on view at Georgetown University, Washington, DC in 2013. Earlier that year he spent two months in a residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle, Ireland. Recent group exhibitions include, “Time Well Spent: Art and Temporality” at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, “Introspective” at BravinLee programs, New York, NY, “Bye Bye, Old City, The Last Picture Show” at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA. The artist’s work is held in an extensive list of museum collection including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, The New York Public Library, New York, NY, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Westchester, NY and private collections including the Cartin Collection, Hartford, CT.
