Recent paintings and drawings by Charles Ryder

In the studio April-May 2023

After a fruitful campaign in the studio this Spring I’ve decided to add this page to amphibology. Immeasurable ages have passed since I shared my paintings publicly, so this is a big step.

I’m not a fan of artist’s statements. The work should largely speak for itself. However, I do believe that the metadata — the information about the information — is relevant, so this presentation of recent paintings and related studio work includes reference notes and occasional editorial forays.

Pressed to make a statement I would say that my pictures are about painting and the painters that I admire. I’ve curated this web page accordingly.

Works in progress April-May 2023.

On the wall, three versions of Inter Artes et Naturam; Rilke, Balthus and Baladine Klossowska in the Forest; and Seated Woman.

On the table, left to right: Puvis de Chavannes in the Studio, from a rare photograph; Waiting for the Poets; and Dream of Yport original version.

The work aspires to a kind of Balzacian universe with several distinct centres of gravity.

Arcadias are pictures of green and pleasant lands. Poetical Pictures are magical realist landscapes. The Narratives Pictures are journalistic.

Arcadia

Paintings influenced by the classical tradition, including painters from Giotto to Seurat.

The Puvis de Chavanne mural Inter Artes et Naturam at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Rouen is the basis for my Arcadian series bearing the same title.

Versions 2 and 3 incorporate Camille Corot’s Woman in a Toque with a Mandolin circa 1850-circa 1855. The digital study below also includes Gauguin’s Les Seins aux Fleurs Rouge, 1899.

Poetical pictures

Mythical landscapes with vaguely allegorical figures in formal and ecstatic poses, often echoed in floating metaphorical shapes.

Dream of Yport is a premonitory picture shown here in its current state, having becoming increasingly pointillist since its inception thirty years ago, long before I found Yport.

The large version is an arcadian poetical narrative in the grisaille series.

Narrative pictures

Historical, journalistic and editorial pictures usually based on found images and reportage.

Often in grisaille, for example this portrait of the Poet Rainer Maria Rilke and his friends in a Swiss forest.

A more radically interpretive approach is represented by After the Funeral of Giovanni Falcone. the second of two versions based on a black and white newspaper photograph.