Richard Rutner

I am a painter and printmaker currently living and working in Austin, Texas. As an art student, I discovered the Surrealists, and adopted many of their techniques including automatic drawing, decalcomania, and frottage to produce a vocabulary of forms in my paintings and drawings. My travels to Asia, Europe, Mexico, Canada, and across the U.S., in particular the American South and Southwest, have inspired several bodies of work including mask images and surreal landscapes. I am fascinated with shape, negative space and organic patterns, and I use translucent and opaque colors to distinguish forms. I have exhibited in galleries and museums in the US and abroad, including Vorpal Gallery, N.Y., Gallery Varisella, Germany, Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts, N.Y. and Marfa Open Arts, TX. My work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions also, including East and West Austin Studio Tours, Guadalupe Arts Center/Austin, Contemporary Art Museum of Houston/Members Gallery, and several National Drawing Association “Selected Works” touring exhibitions. I attended the School of Visual Arts, NYC and received my MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome, Italy.