RICK LYDON

Rick discovered his artistic talents at an early age. He studied Art in college, graduating with a BFA from the University of Hartford Art School in Connecticut. This led to various jobs in the printing industry, including 20 years in financial printing, and eventually, a second career as a middle school educator. Throughout this journey, Rick has always nurtured his love of painting, exploring the boundaries between realism and abstraction.

For Rick, painting, just as life, is full of choices. Some choices turn out to be good ones, others not so much. Of course, each choice leads to more choices, and those in turn lead to yet more. And throughout this natural process of choosing, he continually tries to pause and reflect, celebrate successes, correct mistakes, and eventually, he finds acceptance and moves on. And so, each painting forms a concrete record of some of Rick’s individual and personal choices accumulated on canvas. His paintings therefore represent the ultimate outcome of the choices he has accepted and chosen to live with, and as such, each painting celebrates a life all its own.

Rick has chosen to invest some of his precious time on this earth capturing the “awe” of certain spaces and times that he has experienced either in person, or remotely. A relative newcomer to Colorado, his latest series includes many of the Natural Areas in and around Fort Collins and Northern Colorado. Rick feels that if he can use the universal language of acrylic paint to capture these moments on canvas and provide opportunities for the viewer to breathe, observe, and reflect before moving on to making their own next choice, then he has served a meaningful purpose. The important thing is that we all find the courage to make a choice, any choice, and then own the outcome.