By Colleen Cullison
Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
A new exhibit titled, “Perceptions of Landscape — Reality and Remembrance,” by local artist Richard Muller, opens at the Leep Art Gallery on July 5 at the Postma Center on the Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services campus in Grand Rapids.
Richard Muller has been an artist for much of his life, specializing in landscapes. He studied oil painting for nine years at the Vincent Trotta School of Art in Flushing, New York. His academic degrees are from Queens College, City University of New York, bachelor of arts; Union Theological Seminary, N. Y., master of divinity; and Duke University, postgraduate doctoral degree. Since moving to Lowell in 2006, he has been a member of the Lowell Area Arts Council, serving on the Gallery Committee.
“My artistic efforts have been directed, particularly in the last several decades, toward the development of a classical style with a view to the insights of the landscape traditions of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. I learn from the past by painting my own versions of classic works’” says Muller.
“My original paintings are typically done on the basis of sketches or impressions of places where I have traveled and been moved either by the natural force of the scene or by a striking feature of the landscape, whether a result of nature or of human activity. My intention is to more evoke a mood or a feeling than simply to represent — to call forth a sense of life and force in the natural order and our human connection with it. I prefer traditional pigments, especially the natural earths. I aim at a feeling of life and depth, a sense of the unity of the whole.”
Muller has exhibited works in the West Michigan Regional Competition, Celebration of the Arts, the Mid-Michigan Art Guild Annual Exhibition, ArtPrize, the Grand Rapids Art Peers Festival, the Fallasburg Festival, and in four solo exhibits since 2010. He is a member of the National Oil and Acrylic Painter’s Society.
The Pine Rest Leep Art Gallery exhibit will be on display at the Postma Center located at 300 68th Street, SE, Grand Rapids, Mich., from July 5 until October 2, 2018. The Leep Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. and is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 616.222.4530 or go to www.pinerest.org/leep-art-gallery .
