Richard Stine was a young boy in rural California where most of his friends had horses. He wanted one as well, but his family couldn’t afford it so he fashioned a stick horse which he painted in vivid colors. Later a family friend offered him an actual horse, but when he went to pick it out he was disappointed that none of the real ones were colorful enough. That story captures the essence of this man: an artist who shapes his reality with his own hands, altering and intensifying the colors and forms that nature doesn’t make quite as interesting as he’d like.
In his extensive body of drawings, prints, paintings, collages and books, Richard has never reached a plateau, never coasted. He has re-explored his vision and reinvented his techniques with every new work. He has called himself a “guy with a pencil,“ but he is also a guy with a hammer, a welding gun, a paintbrush, a saw, a computer.
He is also the most generous of artists, willing to share his experimental techniques and technologies with anyone who is interested. He is a source, a wellspring. Like his series of fireman images, heads with flames shooting out of the eyes, creativity burns in him and he can’t help but give back warmth and light.