Young, Richard

April 10, 2014. Firnew Artist Portraits

Using oils-on-canvas, I carefully craft each scene, each specific place, each season, each time-of-day. I strive to capture the drama, the mood, the details unique to the places I visit and have lived. Roads, rivers, and fences are both barriers and avenues, leading the eye to travel through each scene. Although I sometimes work plein air, I usually refer to photos to finish works in the studio. Clean edges, details, heightened contrasts, often layers of tonal glazes, all work together to complete each finished piece. The intention is that each completed work will provide a pleasing sense of identity and connection.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, I grew up in the hills of West Virginia. I have lived the intervening years in the Alleghenies of Bath County and the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. So the hills and hollows, with their changing seasons, have always been close by. Following a career as a school art teacher, I am now painting each day, depicting the beautiful natural world around me.

I am greatly influenced by time-honored landscapists such as Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, and the Hudson River School of artists. Their abilities to depict distance and drama, light and shadow, the real and the mysterious, continue to inspire. I attend weekly critiques and annual exhibits with the Firnew Farm Artists Circle, a distinguished group of Central Virginia artists.

Richard’s painting, “Arroyo Hondo, NM – July” (Shown below) was recently featured in the Daily Progress Newspaper. To read, please click this link Daily Progress Article .