"Keep Calm and Carrion" Artwork

Ric Jordan is an American artist whose paintings explore the anxiety, beauty, and quiet moments of modern life through layered acrylic, oil, and mixed media.

He began creating art at a very early age and spent most of his childhood making art on any surface he could get his hands on. This continued into school, where he would spend the day drawing on all of his notebooks and worksheets.

Ric would go on to attend and then drop out of the art department at the not very prestigious University of South Alabama, but not before learning enough about art to put together a decent composition. He would go on from there to take a job teaching, and let his art making go dormant for many years.

A fellow teacher and mentor would later suggest that Ric get back into painting, and that suggestion would reawaken his desire to create. Now, later in life, he takes his practice seriously, creating lush, textured paintings and collages when he is not teaching art to high school students.

His shambolic, layered compositions explore the anxiety and confusion of navigating a life steeped in overstimulation and information overload while still searching for beauty and quiet moments. Alongside his studio practice, Ric writes about creativity, attention, failure, and the strange process of trying to make meaningful work in a distracted world.