Ralph Petty is an American figurative and landscape painter, musician, saxophonist, and singer living in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.
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Ralph Petty was born in Alamosa, Colorado in 1952 and received a BFA in painting from the University of California Davis in 1976, where he studied under Hassel Smith, who was to become a powerful influence. That same year he moved to Paris and studied etching with Sir Stanley William Hayter for two years at the Atelier 17 etching studio. Petty received the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship and an Italian government grant to study mosaic in Ravenna. He studied the art of stained glass for four years at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et Métiers d’Art de Paris, under the direction of Maître René Giroux. The four-year program covered creative painting on glass, the study of glass technique, and restoration from the twelfth century to the present. He lives in Montreuil, France, a suburb of Paris, with his wife, Lisa Davidson; they have two children.
Petty's art focuses on the human figure and landscape. He works both from life and imagination in drawing, painting and sculpture. He has used egg tempera, oil and acrylic, emphasizing color with each medium; he also often uses texture to create a rich surface and increase pictorial depth. His recent work has evolved into a vertical, elongated and quite narrow format with more daring compositions and a new vision of the landscape genre. These are more focused on lights and darks and resemble his drawings. The subject matter is landscape and the human figure. These recent works are part of a series inspired by the landscape and fauna of the Ardèche, in southern France, which is Petty's defacto open-air studio, while the figurative paintings are done from imagination or from a live model.
On the Japanese influence: Many have observed that the long format paintings have a Japanese “look” and it is true that he has been influenced by the history of Japanese art. The Tohaku Hasegawa exhibition in Tokyo in 2010 last year left a deep impression on him. It is not only the format of these paintings or the fact that many are vertical landscapes but also the spirit of Japanese painting that finds an echo in Petty’s work.
His primary medium in drawing is watercolor, using his own formula with which he pursues two primary themes: the nude or the erotique, and what he calls “Notes from the Underground.” His female nudes are expressive portraits of women, drawn directly from life. They are both a tribute to the beauty of women and an exploration of the variety of shapes and shadows that nature provides. On another level, the works are a quest for mastery, uniting brushwork and form. In this way, his work is linked to the Asian, particularly Japanese tradition of drawing and, to Goya and Rembrandt, two of his major influences.
Notes from the Underground is an ongoing series of drawings named as an homage to Dostoyevsky, a favorite writer (and first influence); these can be viewed as a 21st-century series inspired by Francisco Goya’s Los Capricios. The title, “Notes from the Underground,” also evokes their origins in the unconscious. These images arrive without premeditation similar to the approach found in improvisational jazz. It is no surprise that Petty is also a musician. The meaning of these dream-like images surfaces slowly, sometimes days after their completion and, often, they are disturbing messages from the deep.
This approach can also be seen in Démons Quotidiens a 350-page book published in 2011 with texts by Canadian-born novelist and essayist Nancy Huston, and 150 drawings by Petty. This book is a dialogue between a writer and a painter over a twelve-month period. Petty also works in sculpture and although he has worked with other materials, his usual medium is stone, especially granite. The works represent the human figure and animals. He rarely makes models before starting to sculpt, but rather works directly in the material, “improvising with the stone.” Many of the sculptures are integrated into buildings or landscapes.
In 2003, at the invitation of John Calder, Samuel Beckett’s English publisher and the publisher of numerous other major writers, Petty designed the set of Waiting for Godot for Calder's newly formed London theater group, the Godot Company. Petty also designed the set for the company’s production of Play in 2006 and he remains associated with the company.
Petty is a founding member and former president (2002–2007) of the Art Ephemérè Association which organizes an international competition for environmental sculpture created and installed near the village of Jaujac in the Ardèche, France and supported by the Conseil Municipal de Jaujac, Département de l’Ardèche, La Région de Rhônes-Alpes and The European Union.
Petty is a singer and composer, and plays saxophone, harmonica and guitar. He is a founding member of the Ralph Trio (voice, harmonica, lyricist and composer), playing with Jean-Pierre Dumontier (trombone & piano) and Jean-Pierre Détrez (guitar). The Ralph Trio's first CD was released in 2000, with the participation of Pablo Mendez. A second Ralph Trio CD came out in 2003. Petty released one earlier album with the Paris-based blues band, Loose Blues (voice, tenor sax, harmonica) and two with the Ralph Trio (voice, harmonica, lyricist and composer).
Petty is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts and is the University Curator at The American University of Paris (AUP). He previously lectured at the Institut d'études politiques (Paris) for three years and the Parsons Paris School of Art and Design for ten years. His pedagogical goal is to teach students a visual language with which they can explore the external world and themselves, and his teaching philosophy is that drawing, as a discipline, can add a unique element to academia as an inquiry into the world; one that is not word-based, but which is nonetheless as valid as writing. Petty's Fine Arts classes teach students to deconstruct and solve visual problems in alternative ways. His students learn to draw with confidence and become fluent with such basic visual concepts as composition and design, value and color contrasts, and the creation of form through the manipulation of materials and tools. Petty's belief is that creation can only be learned through practice and that mastery implies fluidity of expression and understanding of the world in relation to one’s self. The result of Petty's instruction is a freedom of spirit that strengthens the abilities of the student, regardless of his/her chosen field of study. Petty created the Fine Arts Gallery (previous known as the Combes Gallery) at The American University of Paris in March 2003, and has since curated 90 exhibitions including work by international professional artists from countries including Argentina, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russian, United States, Venezuela and Vietnam. In recent years, Petty has expanded the focus of the Fine Arts Gallery Gallery to include exhibitions of a humanitarian nature. These include the "Children's Drawings from Darfur" exhibition organized in conjunction with Human Rights Watch, the first exhibition of these drawings in Europe. "Les Defi des Enfants" is another exhibition organized by Petty with Eurochips where artwork from children of imprisoned parents in Europe and Africa were shown for the first time. In 2009 he collaborated with World Vision on an exhibition focusing on Ethiopian children impacted by AIDES entitled “Drawings of Daily Life.” Petty's goal for the Combes Gallery is to present art with deep roots in the diversity of human expression while bringing attention to the vital preservation of human rights.
Petty's work has been exhibited in the United States, France and will be exhibited in Japan in the coming months. Past exhibitions include:
(2011)