Richard Purdy
Richard Purdy was born in Chicago. He received his BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania and MFA in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York . His work has been shown at Art Resources Transfer, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Austin, Texas; Campo & Campo, Antwerp, Belgium and many other places nationally and internationally.During the '80s Purdy exhibited his magical realist paintings in the East Village. His work garnered some attention. In 1985 he stopped painting for almost ten years. Purdy says of this period in his life: what was required was a retooling of my thoughts on what visibilities I wanted to bring into being. During this decade he immersed himself in other pursuits: motorcycle racing, speed bicycle racing and an in-depth reading program on particle physics, quantum mechanics and cosmology. In 1990 Purdy realized how he could radically alter his technical approach and created what he calls: prototypes that were interesting enough for him to resume painting.Purdy writes about his concerns as manifest in the work as follows: The inspiration for my current work evolved from my introduction to fractal geometry in books by Benoit Mandelbrot and Manfred Schroeder, and from years of non-technical readings on quantum mechanics and cosmology. These considerations of things fundamentally non-visible, but made apparent by means of mathematical analysis, have provided me with models for creating imagery not dependent on actual observation. Confident in the soundness of their equations, physicists have been able to free their imaginations to contemplate the previously inconceivable. Rather than discovering the absolute truth about the physical world from measurement and examination, physicists invent methods to communicate within the limitations of their ability to observe, imagine and configure, guided by the concepts of symmetry lying at the core of cognition. What is left is a view of the world that is forever beyond our grasp, a strange meeting place of the objective with the subjective. Although my approach is often playful, it is based on a similar shift in the role intuition plays in confronting an unknown, where one may yield one set of options in order to amplify others. My work combines the use of computer-generated imagery with children's drawing implements like the spirograph. While inevitably coded, these images make themselves accessible to people of diverse backgrounds. Though not strictly painting, my work seeks to integrate and explore these ideas within painting's typical format. I have rejected traditional application processes in favor of a unique encaustic method. In it, images are incised into a field of smoothly tooled encaustic (in a fashion similar to veneer inlay technique). The resulting voids are then filled with hot encaustic and are shaved down to the surrounding level when cool. This deliberate process yields a range of visibilities not available from other media. Purdy's jewel-like wax encaustic paintings contain the magic of his early work raised to a different and higher plane, a realm in which the orbiting of the spheres occupies the artist's mind.
