Ryan Sandy is an Cleveland, Ohio based oil painter of surreal landscapes. Inspired by the Hudson River Painters, Ryan juxtaposes pieces from many fragments of the world together to create cinematic, colorful environments overrun by everything from garbage to monumental architecture. He has taken part in numerous regional exhibitions including The Akron Art Prize, The GAR Foundation’s 7th Annual Art Exhibition, and most recently a solo show entitled “What Are We Celebrating”. He has been the recipient of several awards including an Honors Scholarship for the Arts from Kent State University and the Folk Charitable Foundation Venice Biennale International Travel and Study of Art Scholarship from The University of Akron. Ryan graduated from Myers School of Art at The University of Akron, earning a BFA with a focus in painting and drawing.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My current series of paintings, entitled What Are We Celebrating, describes environments constructed from fragments of existing spaces. These fragments represent the defining components of an environment, a concept which varies from person to person and is affected by innumerable other factors. I am extremely interested in the unassuming bits of the world that visually impact us in such a way that we associate their qualities with the spaces we inhabit. These objects, structures, and general atmospheres often invade our perceptions so fleetingly that we scarcely notice their impact. Though the spaces within my paintings are built using collaged elements from many places and times, the final environments exist as singular moments to reflect the immediacy of raw sensation. They are explorations into the way a person systematically interprets the world around them through the intake of sensory information and the means by which the brain decodes vast amounts of sensory impulses. They are exploring what it means to have a sense of place. I am interested in the factors through which our perceptions are filtered, most notably the roles played by relativity, context, and attention. Each of these has the power to completely alter the way we see, feel, and behave. I am also fascinated by the brain’s capacity to fill the gaps of our perceptions to account for peripheral spaces using little more than our prior associations. In order to combine these ideas in a visual format, I have juxtaposed different elements of the world, from fully realized structures to simple textures. The act of painting has allowed me to explore these concepts both visually and kinetically while I negotiate the relationships between the objects within a painting. I use different stylistic choices to enhance the characteristics of surfaces or entire objects, reducing some down to color or texture and juxtaposing those with more realistically rendered areas. These paintings intend to confront the viewer in a way that forces them to reconsider what elements of their environments actually form their perceptions. Through this consideration, we can better understand what to celebrate as the defining characteristics of our surroundings.