Artist Bio

I was born in Rexburg, Idaho in 1961. The Rexburg area served me to develop a deep love of nature and a sense of who I was in relation to the world around me. I had time and space to roam, mostly alone, and to make discoveries in my own way and at my own pace.

I had the great fortune to be born into a family of fiercely independent creative people who nurtured and encouraged my creative side. My dad, Don Ricks, was as elf styled man who made a living painting signs and inventing things until he became a full-time artist and teacher in his mid-thirties. My mother, Iris Ricks, possesses a great singing talent. My brother, Doug, is a true artist poet who has fed me books, introducing me to all of my favorite artist's, Russell Chatham, Thomas Aquinas Daley, And George Innes to name a few. Brother Russ also continues to work as an artist.

My father's artistic mentor and life-long nemesis was the Russian artist Sergei Bongart. We all grew up working in and around the art business that the two of them established in the Rexburg area. Sergei, who was truly a master, has been a great force in the art world and the western US. In my career as frame maker I became acquainted with many great artists and some of them have had a profound impact on me, Ovanes and Sergei Berberian, some of Sergei's students, have influenced my aesthetic.

Art has always been at the center of my professional life but I had, with brief exception, actually avoided painting until one day I knew it was time. I have a friend who is a Native American Medicine Man. He often speaks of Grandfather Sky and Grandmother Earth. He told me that my late father was sending the painting vibe to me. I hope so. Sometimes when I paint a rising moon or quiet waters I am speaking to Grandfather Sky saying, I hope you see me and you are proud of what I am doing. Ill join you in my time and we will watch our sons together. I hope that your and my journey will intersect and that our lives will be blessed with enhanced ways of seeing. That my journey will nudge your journey and we will both be the better for out meeting here in my little corner of God's creation."