Abbey Ryan
United States
Abbey Ryan, American (b. 1979), is a painter interested in the poetics of painting and classical painting as a meditative practice. She studied with David Leffel at The Art Students League of NY and did graduate work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She earned her M.F.A. in Painting from Hunter College, CUNY in 2007. In 2007, Abbey began making small daily paintings for her blog, Ryan Studio. Ryan’s work is in over 1500 private and museum collections on six continents. She has exhibited at venues such as Rockwell Museum, NY (awarded Distinguished Achievement in Still Life); Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Tucson Art Museum; John F. Peto Museum, NJ; Pratt Munson Williams Proctor Institute, NY; Georgetown Art Center, TX and others. Philadelphia venues include Fleisher Art Memorial; Mount Airy Contemporary; Painted Bride Art Center; and Wayne Art Center. Her work has been in O, The Oprah Magazine, Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensible?, FOX's Good Day Philadelphia, BoingBoing, Artists & Illustrators, Making It In the Art World, New Markets For Artists, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, and many others. She teaches painting workshops nationally and her work is represented by Gleason Fine Art in Portland, Maine, and Mason Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
“Philadelphia artist Abbey Ryan makes some of the most exquisite still life paintings you will ever see. Her background includes undergraduate and graduate degrees in both fine art and medicine, a combination that would have been understood and appreciated by such great Renaissance artists as Leonardo and Michelangelo.”
Subtle, Sensitive Oil Paintings
“An authentic oil painter… Ryan’s works are not purely representational, but reflect the natural movement of light and contain expressive gesture — a condition of her love for the medium of oil and an attempt to avoid the madness of hyper-realism… She treats her daily practice of painting as an opportunity to center and focus. She brings to her work a meditative perspective that translates through her hand. By bringing herself to that central point of mind, Ryan presents a kind of reality that is sensitive and sentimental… Ryan works diligently to capture the subjective moment of light, that feeling the second the light crosses your eyes. She works this magic into landscapes and still lifes… She is a monk of the moment, a student of the impossible and fleeting and a creator of beauty.” ~JAIMESON RILING, Olean Times Herald, May 2019
* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.
