Richard Trumbull
After a PhD in clinical psychology and a career as a clinical psychologist, Richard Trumbull began to paint. In Southern California, due to serendipity, he met Lela Harty, from the Chicago Art Institute and a Master Teacher, and, as Trumbull describes, “More than showing me how to paint, she taught me how to see. A surprising and wonderful gift.”
The impressionistic and abstract paintings of Richard Trumbull have been exhibited in Mexico and in California in a wide variety of exhibitions and solo shows and are in private collections from Paris to San Francisco, from Toronto to Mexico City.
His paintings have been featured on the poster art of the San Miguel Chamber Music Festival, San Miguel Jazz and Blues Festival, and the renown San Miguel’s Annual Writer’s Conference.
Trumbull is one of the featured artists in two publications of the excellent series “Art in San Miguel” and is one of the featured artists in the highly respected Mexico City publication, “Compendo de Creadores Mexicanos.”
He currently exhibits at, and is represented by, the prestigious Zoho Gallery in San Miguel de Allende. For sales inquiries contact www.zohogallery.com
The impressionistic and abstract paintings of Richard Trumbull have been exhibited in Mexico and in California in a wide variety of exhibitions and solo shows and are in private collections from Paris to San Francisco, from Toronto to Mexico City.
His paintings have been featured on the poster art of the San Miguel Chamber Music Festival, San Miguel Jazz and Blues Festival, and the renown San Miguel’s Annual Writer’s Conference.
Trumbull is one of the featured artists in two publications of the excellent series “Art in San Miguel” and is one of the featured artists in the highly respected Mexico City publication, “Compendo de Creadores Mexicanos.”
He currently exhibits at, and is represented by, the prestigious Zoho Gallery in San Miguel de Allende. For sales inquiries contact www.zohogallery.com
"Between Realism and the Abstract"
Hope Palmer
Blazing down at the receiver from the walls at Berlin are the new abstracted landscapes of Richard Trumbull. It is hard to escape the jeweled passages of color of places where you have all traveled recently or in recaptured memory. The space presented in his window of the world is reductive. Usually we take the imaginative journey along roads and fields that direct and focus our attention on indistinct villages and towns in the distance, but what is at play here is not the exact interpolation of reality but the artist’s manipulation of color and space and the ensuring energy of the artist’s brush strokes. In these paintings with their viscosity of paint we see an on going dialog with abstraction. We are enveloped completely by the bravura handling of paint in a way that brings the mystery of creation to the forefront while we marvel at the manner of seduction so brash yet tender that his images induce. What is a new addition to our visual journey is the manner in which Trumbull obscures some of his passages with drips from the passing of his brush over known parts that give traditional meaning to landscapes. Unfettered falling lines of color mixed with layers of previous strokes create a rich melange of texture and color that skirt an immediate reading of a known place. The mystery of what is presented to the viewer intrigues us and captures our imagination and asks us to participate in his art. Because Trumbull’s painting is just abstract enough, his vision is universally allying itself to no particular city or country. The canvases, windows to a luxurious world filled with compressed, saturated color and tactile surfaces, seduce us and open up our world to myriad, unknown interpretation. All we can ask of a painting is its subject matter, whether based in reality or an abstraction of such, invites us time and again to bask in a fleeting moment of wonder, lost in contemplation, only to return to our world invigorated by new relationships to known discourse.
"Landscape Abstracted"
Hope Palmer
As we step into the natural world a set of expectations begins to take shape. The sky, trees, rollings fields, plants both known and a bit mysterious begin to impinge on our consciousness. Richard Trumbull's paintings visually assault the viewer in the most magnetic of ways. At once familiar because of tonal values and shapes we only secondarily become aware of something richer and deeper. In this new body of work the represented landscape begins to break down. He is less and less interested in local representation and more interested in abstraction to express the essence of the experience. He paints in a suggestive rather than a descriptive mode. We are the ones who complete the image. Purely figurative landscapes rely on a specific sense of place but here blasts of color worked quickly wet into wet provide visual brilliance and a quickening of the senses. The texture of the paint is something that must be viscerally felt. Layer upon layer slowly reveals counter secrets not easily grasped upon a single viewing. A private dialogue ensues which gives an intimacy to a very solitary viewing. The paintings don't rely on local color but they have a spectral light all their own. These are the kind of paintings that don't release everything upon a first visitation but insist upon active participation from the viewer. The luxuriant color, not often found in conventional representation lingers long after our encounter. The deftness of the strokes and a willingness to play as Trumbull makes use of each corner of his canvases is truly refreshing.
This group of paintings redefines a world sorely in need of excoriating cliches. As a group, this new journey taken over somewhat familiar territory only leaves us wanting more of his painterly poetry. The viewer only has recently joined a new society where imagination and daring are the bywords of the day and each jewel of a painting resides in memory long after the lights are turned down low.
“Between realism and the abstract is an opportunity to make the invisible visible.”
This group of paintings redefines a world sorely in need of excoriating cliches. As a group, this new journey taken over somewhat familiar territory only leaves us wanting more of his painterly poetry. The viewer only has recently joined a new society where imagination and daring are the bywords of the day and each jewel of a painting resides in memory long after the lights are turned down low.
“Between realism and the abstract is an opportunity to make the invisible visible.”
Collector's View on Richard Trumbull's Artwork
J. Kress - Le Bar-sur-Loup, France
My first encounter with a painting by Richard Trumbull, an artist whom I had never met nor even heard of, was one of recognition. It had something of the feel of another artist whose work I equally admire: Nicolas de Stael. Gradually, I became acquainted with more of Trumbull's creation and, again, the same reaction. Here there was a touch of Cezanne, there a hint of Monet. In several paintings, the paradoxically luminous use of the color black reminded me of Soulages. Others achieved the "glow-from-beneath" effect that one associates with Mark Rothko and Rufino Tamayo.
One specific canvas, "The Midmorning Air," I consider to be on the same level and reminiscent of "Rain, Steam, and Speed," by J. M. W. Turner. I mentioned to him that if he had done it in 1844, as did Turner, it would have met with initial incomprehension, then respect, finally enthusiasm for its exceptional daring and originality.
Does this all suggest that I don't find Trumbull to be terribly original? To the contrary. Richard Trumbull demonstrates with skill and mastery, harmony, rigor and finesse, that drawing inspiration from the greats is not imitation but a good way to becoming and being oneself.
One specific canvas, "The Midmorning Air," I consider to be on the same level and reminiscent of "Rain, Steam, and Speed," by J. M. W. Turner. I mentioned to him that if he had done it in 1844, as did Turner, it would have met with initial incomprehension, then respect, finally enthusiasm for its exceptional daring and originality.
Does this all suggest that I don't find Trumbull to be terribly original? To the contrary. Richard Trumbull demonstrates with skill and mastery, harmony, rigor and finesse, that drawing inspiration from the greats is not imitation but a good way to becoming and being oneself.