For the months of May and June, Canton Public Library’s Gallery features the paintings and photographs of Thomas Rickis in a show titled “Since March
31st . . .” The exhibit explores the theme: “Do my photographs look like paintings, or do my paintings look like photographs?”
Following a career in the insurance industry, Thomas Rickis retired to devote himself full-time to a career as an artist. His earliest passion was painting, and he has worked in oils, acrylics, and watercolors. More recently he has added photography. Currently as a painter he favors watercolors and has begun experimenting with watercolor/collagraph (a form of intaglio print making). He has also begun working with watercolor collage and oil collage as a way to move from a traditional two-dimensional form into a three dimensional one.
The subject of his paintings is most often traditional landscapes, such as barns set in snow scenes, and still lifes. He has lately begun to expand into contemporary abstracts and impressionist landscapes. His works tend to be clean and spare since, as Rickis says, “I do not like to overload my paintings with excessive details since my objective is to present the viewer with just enough content to capture a mood or emotion.”
As an artist who both paints and photographs, Rickis finds himself asking, “Do my photographs look like paintings, or do my paintings look like photographs?” Although he originally used a photograph as a precursor to a painting, he now creates photographs in their own right. He finds that photography has “opened up my eyes and mind to additional artistic expressions.”
Rickis has exhibited widely in galleries, corporation headquarters, retail businesses, and educational facilities in Connecticut, and his paintings and photographs are in private collections throughout the United States. He is currently a member of the Connecticut Watercolor Society, Canton Artists’ Guild, West Hartford Art League, Lyme Art Association, and Simsbury Camera Club. He attended the University of Connecticut, the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, and Central Connecticut State University. He has lived in the Farmington Valley for more than three decades.
Library patrons are invited to see for themselves whether Thomas Rickis’ photographs look like paintings or whether his paintings look like photographs. Canton Public Library hours are Monday-Thursday 10:00-8:00, Friday and Saturday 10:00-5:00. For information: (860) 693-5800.
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