I want to treat still life as imagery, but also I want it to be symbolic of things.”įinch has also found inspiration in the human form, frequently using family members as models for his work. ‘Here are my things, here’s what I have, don’t you want to be me?’ But that eventually evolved into other still life painters who decided to go beyond that. They looked at still life as a way to, at first, illustrate what a patron's life was like. So, the artists had to come up with something. “I looked at a lot of 17th century Dutch still life painters who went to still life, as I recall, during the Reformation when artists were no longer getting commissions from churches. Working with still life connected Finch with many of the artists from whom he drew inspiration, particularly the Dutch masters, such as Vermeer. So, they’re stand-ins for the figure and things that I can ultimately control completely.” “For me, the objects represent vessels, much as human beings are vessels. It was based on a figure, not just to represent the figure, but hopefully to evoke other feelings, other thoughts from the viewers.”įinch is fascinated with still life, seeing items such as books and vessels as stand-ins for the human figure. So that’s what this is, based on the figure, double exposures overlapping, quite a bit of abstraction. My goal was printmaking, drawing and painting. Not fine art photography, but as a means to create images. “At the time I was working in photography. WGLT The human figure is a frequent subject for Richard Finch.Īlthough the work is abstract, it’s based on a figure. There’s something about that subject that engaged me.” My first drawing class in college was a figure drawing class. I found it in my archives, and I thought it was a pertinent piece. It clearly would have been in my last year of graduate school. “I tried to figure out how far back do I want to go,” Finch said.Īt first, he had no intention to include any work created during his days in graduate school. Then he was faced with the task of sorting through decades worth of work to select the right pieces for the exhibition. When approached by the MCAC about a retrospective of his work, Finch was excited and leapt at the opportunity. In addition to his studio work and teaching, Finch served as director of Normal Editions Workshop, the University’s print research facility. 18 and features prints, drawings and paintings from the retired Illinois State University professor of art. “A Retrospective” is currently up through Oct. A new show at the McLean County Arts Center in Bloomington looks back on a lifetime of work from local artist and educator Richard Finch.
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