Rick's work is inspired by mythology, cryptozoology, horror films, and pop culture. He is currently developing three bodies of work: "Bestiarum vocabulum," "Alone in the Dark," and "Tsukumogami."

"Beastiarum vocabulum," or "Book of the Beasts," is Rick's personal bestiary - a collection of creatures spawned from mythology of various cultures, urban legends, and the dark recesses of his own mind. As Rick "just likes to paint monsters," these creations come from someplace deep, raw, and primal, his own personal expression of the edgier sanctums of raw emotion, sexuality, dark humor, and death. As these darker subjects are sometimes difficult to bring to light in casual conversation, we tend to try our hand at humor as a vehicle to soften the blow. In the same manner, Rick infuses his beasts with often humorous backstories and comical descriptions, complicating our view of these beings of the dark as purely "evil" or "scary."

"Alone in the Dark" is Rick's exploration of the idea of fear and the horror genre. Often, the most disturbing and horrific thoughts and images come from our own head - what we imagine that happens off the movie screen or between the panels of comics is personal and terrible. Rick believes that good stories are always going to be the most terrifying (as opposed to film or images). By allowing the viewer to look into these portraits of people alone in the dark, it is up to the viewer to imagine exactly what the person in the painting is fearful of.

"Tsukumogami" is the general name for handcrafted Japanese items that have gained a soul after 100 years of existence. Just as Japanese mythology breathes life into ancient artifacts, Rick gives everyday inanimate objects a life of their own. He provides a humorous, often brutally honest look into everyday life using colloquialisms, puns, innuendos, and plays of the English language. Just as the descriptions of his beasts soften the blow, by removing the human element and replacing it with inanimate objects, Rick leaves the viewer with an objective phrase that immediately becomes subjective in the viewer's own mind.

Dreaming of the seaside and horses. 
I grew up at Muir Beach just North of the Golden Gate and in the Napa Valley where impressions of Northern California and my continued passion for riding are the inspiration for my paintings.
I studied fine art at CCSF and graphic design at Platt College in San Francisco and became a furniture designer for a family furniture business.
My furniture designs have been featured on HGTV and Extreme Makeover and my showroom has been shopped by Sherwin Williams to determine current color forecasts.
Now a full time artist, my art is has been purchased by HGTV Secrets of a Stylist's show, the editors of Better Home and Gardens Magazine and is sold through Galleries, Designer Showrooms, Furniture Stores and The Atlanta and High Point Furniture Markets. 
Founder of COCA the Coalition of California Artists, a group marketing to the home furnishing industry.President Petaluma Arts Association 2013, 2014Thank you for your interest.

Music is the main source of inspiration for my paintings. Music, forged by the composer from air and sound, has motion and shape, and incredible emotional substance. I listen over and over to grasp the essence of each work of orchestra music. I try to understand its particular beauty, its emotion, its unique character as well as architecture and form—then try to put that into paint on canvas.

My curiosity and fascination with humanity has taken me all over the globe. These experiences are an integral part of who I am now the creative work that I produce. My paintings are a response to the state of the world, the manipulation of news we receive and our own interpretations of this information. My art reflects the world around me – the people I come in contact with, the relationships that I build and the state of the world as a whole. I am interested in the places where lives overlap, how people perceive and react to one another as human beings, and the different paths our lives take. Having chosen many different courses throughout my life I am always curious where the next road will lead me, both as an individual and as a global citizen living during this interesting historical moment. I am continuously amazed by the twists and turns of life, as well as the interesting people that I come in contact with. I use my art to help me interpret these experiences and grow from them.

For nearly 20 years I worked with professional artists devising marketing campaigns and helping companies launch new products. The truth is, I loved being a marketing consultant. I enjoyed the challenges and the rewards of the business world. But I especially enjoyed working with those talented and creative artists. As my career progressed, I secretly and increasingly imagined a life where I could spend my time creating art that wasn’t subject to unanimous team approval or validated by the number of units moved. I just wanted to create my own art. In the summer of 2007, when the urge to be a full-time artist was too strong, I took the leap and enrolled in the Academy of Art University’s graduate program for fine art painting. For me that was an exhilarating change. One of many moments in my life where I've been in the midst of making an important life decision and felt like I was on the edge of a steep cliff with my only choices being jump, fall, or dive. These critical times of life, whether it's leaving home for the first time, starting or ending a relationship, having a baby, or beginning and ending a job, contain a universal feeling of loss of control, time moving forward, and hurtling through space. My current series explores moments when we willingly and unwillingly dive into the next phase of our lives. I paint on a variety of surfaces and enjoy the process of finding the right support for my concept. My current surfaces are layered acrylic panels.  I love the transparent qualities and find it helps me to express movement  and emotional release. The concept and panels support one another, and the multiple layers offer this body of work many exciting future possibilities.

Hiking, photographing and sketching from the Rockies West is the best of nature and adventure visuals--texture, shape, sun, shadow, color. The endless geologic and natural images capture me. No recreated image approximates the scale and intricacies of rock, erosion, water, or weather in light and shadow. My effort in the studio to is to recapture a portion of that infinite magic. Additional paintings and photographs are visible on my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/et-highway/sets/

Each person experiences the world in their own way, making truth subjective. My artwork is a visual representation of my truth, through my eyes and experiences. The pieces all start off with an initial idea but always grow into whatever they were meant to be. I don't attempt to depict the world as we see it. My work is about letting my little intrigues tempt you into my world of lies.

I began painting my sense of an inner light shortly after my step-grandson, Michael, died at the age of 9.  Standing at his bedside, I watched this child take a breath that was not followed by another.  With that last exhalation, something slipped away, something more than a heartbeat, something more than a lungful of air, and during the weeks, the months that followed Michael's death, I found myself, in essence, trying to paint the light, the spark that ignites each of us.  Stripping away the physical, I began painting landscapes within small pieces of wood, which were inhabited by singular orbs of light, though occasionally more than one inhabitant appeared.  The idea of the body as husk arrived in the work at some point, but the orb continued as an underlying theme.  Orb became object (orb-ject) and then the object became luminescent again.

As one who believes there is no light without dark, I am drawn to creating low-lit spaces.  Light seeps into my images, paintings and photographs, pouring through doorways, falling from the sky, defining, illuminating, showing up indirectly as reflections or as the absence of, as in shadows or silhouettes.

Years later, light still draws my attention.   I find myself once again exploring the variations of light, as seen in this on-going body of work, Emanations, Reflections and Diffusions.

Andréa D. Guerra

All of my work is one of a kind and emerges from my original photographs, taken close to home or during my travels around the world. The mix media process I use takes the photograph printed on paper as a basis over which I use collage assembly on canvas or wood as a means to bring to the fore one aspect: The feeling I had when I took it. The special detail that made me focus on the object. The beauty beneath. And most importantly the shapes and lines within each other that created that stoppable moment for me. Once the collage is complete I paint in and over objects to either enhance the subject of my focus or subdue and manipulate other surrounding images. It takes getting really close to my work to see all the details that go into creating one piece.