About
The Creative Process
For me the creative process is not simply a linear one but more like a web; akin to the Internet where everything is connected yet discovering these links is a journey of tangled, interrelated threads and revelations.
My creative journey is one of self-expression, discovery, and the development of important ideas and understandings.
My creative process requires there be the inherent risk, of not knowing the outcome when you begin yet having full access to all my past work, ideas and evolving understanding.
Richard Gins has lived and worked in Red Hook, Brooklyn since 1983, when he made his home and studio in a historic firehouse on the waterfront. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico, and his drawings, paintings, monotypes, photographs and videos have been shown in New York, Vienna, New Orleans, St. Tropez and Costa Rica.
In his words: “Drawing has been my most important medium, where I explore ideas, people, places and things. I like working directly from the landscape, as it requires me to be present in the moment, seeing, drawing and painting.”
A lifelong interest in philosophy, esoteric knowledge and physics runs through the work: windows and masks as metaphors for inner and outer experience, the light and dark he calls Chiarobscuro, and the altered space and time of his SPIME photographs, each made in a single shot, in-camera.
Selected solo exhibitions include Quantum at Salomon Arts, Tribeca (2011); Subway Riders at Kentler International Drawing Center, Red Hook (1995); Galerie Seghaier, Vienna (1992 to 1994); Penson Gallery, Soho (1989); and Hugh Piney Gallery, Soho (1985 and 1986). His work is part of the Kentler Flat Files and many private collections.
Read The Art of Seeing, an interview with Richard Gins by Kirpal Gordon.
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After graduating with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico, I established a store-front art studio and continued my visual arts and music pursuits, but also began interacting with the community. As part of an effort to develop artist live/work spaces in downtown Albuquerque, I worked with the Mayor and spear-headed the development of a city-wide art center, the Albuquerque United Artist (AUA). Also I was one of 6 artists who occupied the first fully developed live/work space in the downtown area. Later I spear-headed and directed a not-for-profit performing arts center, The Broadway Jazz Club. Beside running the club with it's local and visiting musicians and poets, I also produced two major concerts, one featuring Sonny Rollins, and another featuring John Mclaughlin.
In 1983 I moved to New York City, settling in Red Hook Brooklyn, on the New York City waterfront. I found an empty historic firehouse and made it my home. During my 32 years in Red Hook I have been studying the creative process; producing drawings, paintings, monotypes, photographs; writing songs and music; screenplays, proposals; and exhibiting my work domestically and abroad. I've taught drawing and painting classes; creatively consulted on a number of new new businesses; co-directed a Soho gallery; and conceived, curated and particpated in a successful exhibition that received a positive review in ArtNews magazine. I appreciate all the amazing international talent found in New York City which has been very inspirational and influential. I directed a Chelsea gallery for four years and I continue to explore all my many parallel and complementary media.
After three years of intense focus and work, I finished a new book about the Creative Process as an inner transformative process. Watch for news of its release.
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I have been working as an artist in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for the past 40 years. Drawing has been my most important medium, where I explore ideas, people, places and things. I like working directly from the landscape (En Plein Air), as it requires me to be present in the moment, seeing, drawing and painting. I like the "process of discovery", when working from life as well as when I invent images from my imagination. Both of these activities require my ability "to see".
My life-long interest in philosophy, esoteric knowledge, and the advances in physics have provided many powerful ideas to ponder about the nature of reality. This has generated much content in my art. I use metaphors like windows and masks to help me describe and express an inner and outer self-experience. Over the years, the content in my art has evolved reflecting my evolving understanding of creation, creativity and transformation. Focusing on this, there is one body of work I call, "Esoteric Realism" which includes the series: Obstructions; Inner Figures; and Cut-Outs; plus other life content including: thoughts, emotions, birth, death, sexuality, relationships, creativity, human consciousness, and transformation.
For me the creative process is not simply a linear one but more like a web; akin to the Internet where everything is connected yet discovering these links is a journey of tangled, interrelated threads and revelations. Certain themes and ideas have been evolving over many years, where I keep cycling back to them. These evolving ideas are not sequential in their creation, so they come and go all entangled in my time-line. My ideas flow into my work, often uninvited and in their own time. Understanding this, I must be patient and receptive, but also be decisive and ready to act in a fleeting moment.
In some of my work I consider myself a Post Abstract Expressionist, because I am also interested in mixing figuration with gestural abstraction, and creating spatial tension and contradictions.
I like images with a strong inner/outer relationship where I can push, pull, and contradict space.
I work with light and dark to define and obscure the form.
I like to play with space in a Neo-Cubistic way, challenging the logic of visual perception and conventional perspectives.
My creative journey is one of self-expression, discovery, and the development of important ideas and understandings. The creative process requires there be the inherent risk, of not knowing the outcome when you begin. Accepting this insecurity has taught me the meaning of "faith" in pursuit of my art.
Striving for consistency is not an end in itself, and celebrating the variety and unpredictable nature of life can bring in many new influences. When people ask about style, I tell them it is not an end in itself and will be understood by historians who will create their theories long after I am gone and my catalogue complete.
The work presented here represents years of cross-pollinating my many different mediums, experiences, understandings and themes. In most of my images, there is a deeper esoteric content expressing the complexity of human emotions; and ideas about the purpose of creativity and its relationship with the transformation of consciousness (Level of Being).