By 1970 I realized that what most profoundly affected me as a painter was space, light, color and their capacity, when properly combined, to be intellectually and emotionally moving, and even redemptive. To be able to achieve this through painting certainly represented a daunting task, but the only one in the troubled 70's that made sense to me.

I wanted the work to strike a kind of equilibrium between what I saw as "Human Nature" and "Landscape Nature". Hence, the use of rectilinear/architectonic form combined with color, light, and atmospheric effects. The works were inspired by my immediate surroundings in northern California, and by strong childhood memories of my grandparents' flower farm. The climate and color of the Santa Cruz coastline where I grew up also informed these paintings.

The work was not simply about an outwardly observed place, but also a mental, or intellectual territory. Likewise, the color was not imitative of a particular event, but allowed emotive influences from other stimuli. The paintings' surface qualities needed to be

kept at a minimum, i.e., flattened acrylic paint carefully and evenly applied to the stretched canvas, and contained by precise boundaries in order to focus attention on the effects of color, shape, and proportion. I wanted the paintings to reflect the equanimity, simplicity, and order, as well as, the strangely sensual characteristics found in greek architecture, zen gardens the paintings of Camille Corot, Agnes Martin, and both the furniture and architecture of Gerrit Rietveld.

During the 1980's and 90's, I became increasingly influenced by the evocative qualities of music (particularly Cadence), and literature. I have been preoccupied in my most recent work with measure; in other words, with the visual effects and importance of amount, area, degree, length, width, size, quantity, and number. All of these experiences have sustained peak interest in me over the years, to which I see no end.

Richard Wilson
Fall 2004