Lorna Ritz tries, tries again

By Nancy Sheehan, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF, - August 5, 2006

Quinsigamond Community College Art Gallery, Worcester, MA

Artist Lorna Ritz kicked off a recent gallery talk with a quote from a famed Swiss sculptor. "Giacometti said, "I want to get it right, which is why I keep doing it,'" she told an opening night gathering at ARTSWorcester's gallery at Quinsigamond Community College. ""But I can never get it right, which is why I do it again and then again.' So he would start each day's work by destroying the previous day's work."

This is something she does as well.

The result is a collection of abstract paintings evocative of the seasonal changes of light on landscape. At first glance, they appear as if they were done quickly, but sustained periods of fierce concentration were required.

"My paintings are the result of intense looking and making and remaking," she said. "In the beginning stages of development, everyday I ruin it, but by the end of the day it comes back better." Later stages build upon that painstaking foundation until an inner luminosity is revealed, which she likens to the glow that lingers just after the sun has set. The layered application gives the work a natural dimensionality, similar to that of the walls of an ancient city, beaten by rain, wind and sun.

She has done a stunning series landscape drawings using Cray-pas oil crayon - all of the same view of an apple orchard at the foot of a mountain. The drawings reflect not only how the view changes over time but the natural roots of her paintings as well. No part of a drawing was ever static, even though the drawer, inevitably, was.

"One day I went up with my easel looking for a different spot," Ms. Ritz said. "I must have walked all around for five miles but I ended up in front of the same mountain."

“The Artful Mind”

Great Barrington, MA. March 2004 written by Nanci Race

interview excerpts:

NR: “Do you think that the titles of your paintings are instrumental in guiding the viewer’s interpretation of the work?”

LR: “The titles are mere guides, but not necessary to feel the energy of the paintings. Titling is my way of distinguishing paintings from each other, but I don’t want the viewer to look for objects by bringing his own reference to the titles, such as searching for ‘a tree’ or ‘a moon’ that clearly is not there. The titles come from what I was feeling when I painted them. I go through a search process and then I name it.”

NR: “Do you care if viewers don’t “get it” when they look at your work?”

LR: “I admit that my paintings take effort to ‘see;” if people don’t want to do any fraction of the work I put into each painting, I understand and accept that. It is always a nice surprise when people get absorbed in the paintings, often not even knowing why, but being willing to be on unsafe territory. That takes alot of courage. Rather than trying to understand, they accept the mystery just as I do when I go through the process of search. I expect nothing but hope for everything. I am a mystery to even my own self. People who only try ‘to understand,’ miss it, and me.”

NR: “Do you hope that your paintings will evoke strong emotions, thoughts, ideas, or memories to the viewer?”

LR: “The paintings should not have been painted unless I myself have gone through an evolution, any vestige of which I would hope viewers would experience. Not one brushwork comes out of anything less than me at my highest self, me at a place of intent and meaning.”

NR: “What would you say is the most satisfying part of your work?”

LR: "Looking forward to the painting I have not yet painted.”

“The Daily Hampshire Gazette”

Northampton, MA. April 6, 1998 excerpt written by Phoebe Mitchell

solo show: University Gallery, Fine Arts Center
University of Massachusetts

“”The color combinations in Ritz’s landscape drawings serve as a jumping off point for the ten abstract oil paintings in the show. She evokes the visceral feelings which a landscape or a season or a certain time of day inspire. Abstract painting is not for the faint of heart. Clearly, Ritz is not afraid of taking on the challenge, and she has the vision to meet it.”

“The Amherst Bulletin”

Amherst, MA. March 25, 1994 excerpt written by Christine Benvenuto

"Hillyer Gallery, Smith College, brings together the work of two abstract expressionist painters, who have known each other for 30 years., James Gahagan of Woodbury, Vermont, and Amherst resident Lorna Ritz started out as teacher and student in the 1960’s at New York’s Pratt Institute. “I don’t paint what I see,” she insists. The colors in the landscape glow from within because the colors create the light.”

The feel of paint under one's skin

excerpt written by Larry Parnass, ARTS ALMANAC
Northampton, MA. - November 22, 2004

one-artist show, The Oxbow Gallery
Northampton, MA

Ritz's painting has changed over decades , but I doubt the intense feeling that this talented child felt for her art has ebbed. Today, Ritz continues to live and breathe painting. The passion that took root in the child traveled through realism and found flower, in the adult, in abstract expressionism. That post-World War II art movement set painters in search of subconscious desires and truths. Artists with this inclination maneuvered paint in front of them, but looked within to assess it. And so it is for Ritz. She uses color to find shape. And she employs shape to express the beauty that comes to Earth in the play of light through color. The artist spends six to eight weeks working a canvas, applying and removing paint to find where it must lie, in order to reverberate. While the landscape around her home helps start paintings like ''Root of a Mournful Cry,'' the work continues in the artist's imagination. ''I need to look out at nature for these to happen. I need to look out,'' she said, ''in order to go in.'' Ritz is clearly reveling, in these exuberant works, in her discovery she no longer needs to fit her sense of beauty into recognizable objects. ''It was so exciting to see that I could move space with color rather than form,'' she said. ''I'm trusting that more, the older I get,'' she said. ''It does move me emotionally and I feel it in my body.''

Abstract Art Online “The Big Abstract Show”

The Painting Center
52 Greene Street, New York City

This massive show, curated by Denise Gale, includes 26 artists - all non-members of the Painting Center who have submitted their work for exhibition there.  Some of the names may be familiar to readers of these pages such as Lorna Ritz whose work was profiled in our May 2001 issue.   Ritz’s painting matches Aitchtson’s free-spirited treatment but does so with larger more solid forms bumping up against each other. Lines are defined here by where the forms meet each other. You get a strong sense of close-up, lyrical, landscape without it being explicitly stated. The color reinforces the sense of motion and is as important to the forms as the paint handling.  Baer gets the same push and pull out of the space as Ritz.

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