$975.00
b.1958
Greg grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He studied architecture at Arizona State University, received his BFA from Art Center College of Design and his MFA from the University of Utah. After spending six years in Los Angeles and seven years in New York City, Greg moved to Park City, Utah, and then settled in southern Utah.
Greg’s Color Field paintings are freeze frame glimpses of nature’s creatures in abstracted color compositions.He experiences nature by watching the flight of birds moving through the sky, listening to leaves moved by the wind and the songs of birds. With time spent in the outdoors watching the clouds and listening to the wind, it is nature that has fueled a never ending passion of color and movement.
This series of paintings is a contemporary take on a typically traditional subject matter. The detailed rendering is cast into the minimal abstract composition of the highly developed complex surfaces. They are abstracted, voyeuristic portals to nature’s amazing visual gifts. These works bring nature indoors and give the viewer the opportunity to get lost in the calming simplicity and the seductiveness of nature.
“I experience nature by watching the flight of birds moving through the sky, listen to leaves moved by the wind and the songs of birds.”
Greg has shown in numerous galleries throughout the US and also in Bristol and London, UK. He has shown at the Sundance Film Festival and has done several public painting and sculpture commissions for the Park City Aquatic Center, Park City, UT and Salt Lake City, UT.
DIMENSIONAL LAYERS
Dimensional Layers is an evolution of my Parallel Layers paintings. They are both painting and sculpture, they reveal and build at the same time. They animate walls with dimension, texture, color, and shadow and the free standing towers bring life-sized energy to a room. My comfort zone is painting, my passion is sculpture. Thinking three-dimensionally and the physical aspect of making sculpture fulfills my ever insatiable desire to work with my hands to create something new and original. Life builds on itself. It has been more than 20 years since I last showed 3d work in galleries. That work evolved into public art sculptures that are now in permanent collections in cities nation wide. As a young child artist I assembled old and new discarded items into an objects worth keeping. Dimensional Layers builds on that concept by using old discarded wood from dilapidated barns and buildings, weathered by sun and wind, unearthed from the sands of southern Utah. That aged material mixed with the right amount of new generates a metamorphosis of materials each complementing the other into a concise sculpture.
PARALLEL LAYERS
These paintings are non-verbal thoughts of my environmental experiences from cities, mountains, and deserts. The places I have lived influence my work. From the soaring skyscrapers in New York City to the expansive groves of aspen trees in the mountains of Colorado to the dynamic red rock cliffs in the deserts of southern Utah. There is an aesthetically pleasing fractal pattern that unites these environmental locations as well as this body of work. The power of the repeating chaotic vertical patterns in nature share a similarity with controlled architecture elements of buildings reaching to the sky in cities. This series of paintings does two things simultaneously. First, they draw on the infinite complex fractal patterns to make a visually stimulating painting. At the same time, the various degrees of self-similarity is aesthetically pleasing, calming, and possess a stress-reducing effect on the viewer.
Greg Ragland Painting, Acrylic on Panel 12 X 12 (Interest categories: Acrylic on Panel, Modern, Flying, Painting, Contemporary Art, Fine Art, Art Gallery, Greg Ragland Artist)
1. Clay – Chavant Le Beau Touche. Get the regular clay, not HM (high melt).
2. Clay warming devices, a metal bucket with a clamp on heat lamp or 100 W bulb works great.
3. Tie wire.
4. Aluminum foil.
5. Scissors.
6. Favorite sculpture tools.
7. Plank of wood (pine) approximately 8″ x 8″ x 2″.
Bring as many planks as you wish…the wood is used as the base for your sculpture.
8. Plumber’s pipe, 1/2″ threaded: Bring several different lengths…up to 10″…not PVC pipe.
Plumber’s pipe T joint.
Plumber’s pipe couplers.
Plumber’s pipe flange.
9. Screws and screwdriver to secure the flange to wood…this may be done before you arrive. (Place flange in the center of plank)
10. Wire cutters
11. Needle nose pliers
12. Rubber mallet.
13. Spatula
14. Measuring devices such as rulers, measuring tape, dividers, and calipers.
15. Because we concentrate on BIRDS IN FLIGHT, live models in the classroom are more distracting than useful. I will demonstrate the technique of constructing a cantilevered bird armature that can be used for many different bird species and will show you how to assemble shapes to capture the “gist” of the specific bird.
16. Bird field guides such as Peterson, Stokes, Golden, or Sibley. Sibley’s Guide to Birds (not Sibley’s Guide to Bird Life and Behavior) is best if bringing only one field guide. This popular book can usually be purchased at any bookstore.
17. Bring your laptop to the class if possible.
18. Bring your sketchbook.
1 Lake Circle Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906
broadmoorgalleries.com
