I came to painting relatively late. Twenty years of three dimensional work and perhaps the arrival of mid life left me longing for a change of subject, medium, interpretive style----- all of it. Though I attended RISD in the late sixties and early seventies, as a painter I am primarily self taught. I began with pastel and then moved on to oil, did a lot of reading and scrutinized the masters of still life. Most of my heroes are not still life painters per se. Martin Johnson Head and Johannes Vermeer top my list, but I am drawn to and influenced by the Spanish painters Juan Sanchez Cotan and Francisco de Zurburan, the American John Peto and the French master of fruit and flowers Henri Fantin-Latour. Contemporary inspiration comes from the likes of Claudio Bravo and Stone Roberts.

My technique is painstaking and incremental in nature. I work from life, and most often with natural light. The most successful paintings are more about light than the items described. My goal is a simple one but not easily attained. I hope, through careful arrangement and the closest and truest observation I can manage, to produce for the viewer an emotional response to the common objects that surround us all.

In addition to stil life, I've begun painting some narrative pieces. The larger of these are arranged and painted from life while the smaller ones are invented and combine the humor evident in my former three dimensional work with the careful technique of my paintings.

Kay Ritter

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