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Richard Sturm's paintings, deeply informed by their New York School roots as well as their optical innovations, take their place among the most important abstract painting being done today in North America. Sturm's work is in the collections of the National Library of Canada, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Kitchener/Waterloo Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T., the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo and the State University of New York.
Sturm's series of large-scale paintings from 1990-91 express both the emotional dynamism of action painting and the perceptual explorations of the Op-Art and Color Field movements. The artist is very concerned with how the careful application of small specks of paint can be used to reveal form and light. Although there are obvious parallels with the Pointillist movement of the late 19th century, Sturm always works on the surface of his canvases, as the Abstract-Expressionists did, avoiding any sense of background or foreground.
Sturm achieves an "all-over" effect, but also allows simplified forms to emerge from the pattern of painted dots. Thus, the artist combines the best of the most important innovations in painting of this century. His works celebrate beauty with conceptual sophistication.
Richard Sturm's varied and impressive background, as well as his appreciation of human perception, makes viewing his painting a process of continual discovery.
Elizabeth Licata
Castellani Art Museum
May 1998
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