Ralph Painting

Loren Dunlap’s innovative two-dimensional design program at John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis was an early influence that persists today in my approach to painting. It gave me a unique foundation – a specific point of view. After two years at Herron, I received a scholarship from Tulane University’s Sophie Newcomb in New Orleans. The Abstract Expressionists were all the rage in ‘the art world’ then; DeKooning and that crowd. (One of the most celebrated, Helen Frankenthaler, while only briefly my instructor at Newcomb, absolutely changed my way of thinking about the making of art.) From Tulane, I was selected to work on the Owenite restoration Project in New Harmony, Indiana and was an adviser and instructor for the Blaffer Foundation Art Project that followed. I came to Hawaii by chance in the summer of nineteen seventy-eight and began a long-lasting affiliation with Lynn Shue and her Village Gallery Contemporary in Lahaina. I have been a resident of Maui ever since. [Since the summer of 2014 I have also been spending part of each year in Arizona and working out of my studio there.]          ​