2024-2025 Paintings/Mixed-media works

Artist's Statement: meadow crow, crow meadow

Almost all of my work for the past 4 years is outdoor painting, in the meadows and woods of Southeastern PA. Before painting, I just sit for a while, enjoying the breeze, the color, the movement, and sounds and smells of the meadow. Perhaps I’m waiting for something. After a time, that something appears, and I begin a quick compositional drawing then on to painting. I use gouache because it is less hazardous, and allows for the kind of rhythmic brushstrokes that feel good, as well as being very easy to overpaint and adjust forms and color. I want to deepen my relationship with nature, and consider spending time there to be primary. Many places call me back over and over, and I record changes and creative observations of these meadows as spring becomes summer and fall, through painting and writing. My hope is that these works will inspire viewers to go further into nature and work for its protection and preservation.

I grew up near these areas and because I have a history, familiarity and knowledge of these places, it makes more sense to me to work in these Southeastern Pennsylvania meadows and woods. I consider that my study of these places expands me, and I hope in someway that these natural areas of getting to know me as well. This is not to negate the history of the lands, stolen from the Lenape Indians, worked as agriculture, sites of battles in the revolutionary war, part of landed estates and finally purchased by public entities for preservation in Southeastern Pennsylvania. As a way of reciprocal thanks, I have worked for the last 35 years protecting natural areas.

Crows and Ravens are serious birds, with loud harsh calls, and imposing black shapes, which contrast the colors of the land. They are the most important birds in Native American cultures and written extensively in western culture from the Greeks to present day. I had a relationship with the local murder of crows for 25 years, when I lived just outside the city. Each morning, they would come to the tall tree across the street and make a racket, knowing this was my signal; to come out and feed them peanuts.My readings and observations of crows and ravens point to their intelligence, individuality, and their complex social relationships. I am convinced that crows and ravens have unique thoughts, make creative and calculated actions based on past experiences, and have a complex social bonding and hierarchies. Heinrich Bernd, the biologist and ornithologist who has written several books on crows and ravens, has concluded that to understand them, one must understand their relationship to their environment. My work seek to portray that interconnectedness.

Richard Metz
2025

Artist's Statement: A Meadow of Crows

The intention of these works is to investigate a particular place over time, to record my study and development as I spend time there. I want to deepen my relationship with nature, and consider spending time there to be a first task. I use crows as the active participants of the story. Their omnipresence here, and their intelligence and social nature make them beautiful and maligned subjects.
Before painting, I sit for a while, enjoying the breeze, the color, the movement; the sounds and smells of the meadow. I also recorded the changes in the meadow as summer became autumn. Painting is a way of being with these warm meadows and protected areas.
I grew up near these areas and consider them part of me, as I am part of them. This is not to negate the history of the lands, stolen from the Lenape Indians, worked as agriculture, sites of battles in the revolutionary wars, part of landed estates and finally purchased by public entities for preservation in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
My hope is that these works will inspire viewers to go further into nature and work for its preservation.

Richard Metz
2025

2023-2024 Paintings/Mixed-media works

Paintings/Mixed-media works

2022 Paintings/Mixed-media works

2021 Mixed-media works

2019-2020 Mixed-media works

Artist Statement: A Murder of Crows, an Unkindness of Ravens

Darker times lie ahead. Our unsustainable society is failing and falling. We can grieve, prepare, appreciate what we have, or we can ignore it, and fritter away the beauty at an ever increasing rate.

These new works are a somber reflection of the serious danger that the natural world and mankind face as we move further into the 21st century. They are painted sculptural forms, suggesting images that lift off from the flat surface, pushing into our real space, bothering us a bit more. They are like relics, like a remembrance of creatures that used to live here. Their low color saturation is meant to convey a world with little color, perhaps decimated, perhaps in a long winter. There is little hope of reprieve in these works.

The paint is mostly gouache, with a base of ashes and soil. These earth pigments are meant to suggest a world where colors are in short supply and people must use what is around them. There is an ideology- one of sustainability- to these pigments, as they are available for free to all of us and will not harm the environment. The ash and soil are mixed with gum arabic and vegetable glycerin to become paint.

The works are created first as relief sculptures in oil clay. They are coated with vegetable oil and then layers of plaster impregnated gauze are applied. This plaster gauze layer is then removed and coated with shellac and milk paint to further harden it. The irregular shapes of the background are intended to suggest a natural rock-like formation that cold be the substrate.

The challenge of creating and painting works in three dimensions reminds me of duck decoys and painted crafts. It is new and slightly humorous to be working on the hidden side of an image for a painting. It is also intentional that these images hang freely without a frame, as to be less like traditional paintings- with their history of entertainment, and more like fragments from some darker place.

Richard Metz 2020

Earlier Mixed-media works

Artist statement: About the leaf paintings