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Richard’s background in graffiti, while stylistically nearly irrelevant in terms of his art, is the kind of background that changes one’s perceptions of what is permanent and precious. Graffiti has every right to embrace vulnerability. Paint outdoors and you know full well your art will die, maybe before you can catch a photo in daylight, maybe in a few months, and definitely within a decade or two. Stylistically, though, graffiti is all cocksure attitude, bristling edges, and menace – strange for a medium so utterly fragile. Anyone with hundreds of graffiti paintings under their belt knows the strange feeling when they shift to fine art: it just feels weird knowing the work isn’t destined to die. Richard’s artwork isn’t going anywhere, with its nice archival paper and glass, but he’s imbued it with that vulnerability of impermanence.
In 1998, Richard left the D.C. area for Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, earning his degree in 2002. While learning the techniques that art schools like to force upon their students, he developed an appreciation for Renaissance-style portraiture as well as his fellow students. “I still look up to the people that I was around and working with in art school as huge influences,” he remembers.
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