Ralph Painting

       Two years at John Herron Art Institute, where I had the good fortune to work with Loren Dunlap and Bill Crutchfield, resulted in 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. (Abstract expressionist, Helen Frankenthaler, was one of my instructors at Tulane.)  My work became more painterly and less representational over the next few years under these influences.        After Tulane I was selected to assist Loren Dunlap 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 the Hawaiian Island of Maui by chance in the summer of nineteen seventy eight. Among my earliest projects was a series of large imaginary landscapes in oil on canvas loosely based on island locations. The start of what would become a long affiliation with Lynn Shue and her Village Gallery was instrumental in convincing me my chances of success as a working artist were as promising on Maui as any other place and  the island has remained home to this day. Since the summer of 2014 I have also been living in Arizona, devoting most of my studio time to two series of large expressionistic paintings in oil - one series featuring the Northern Arizona canyons and Southwest landscape and the other the beach walkers and sunseekers that populate the beaches of Maui.     (It's not relevant here, but from 1980 to 1990 I owned The Maui Outrigger Restaurant, a favorite gathering place on the beach at Keawakapu, and also, until 2015,  a popular dive bar in Kihei called Kahale Beach Club  where I occasionally took refreshment in the company of an assortment of my favorite bar flies or hobnobbed with the rich and famous or just watched the whales play.) *** FYI - My new surreal fantasy novel, 'Einstein in Flamingoland' has received a five star Writer's Digest recommendation and a Book Viral Millennium Book Award as well as excellent reviews. It is now available on Amazon as well as signed copies on my website. www.brinnerart.com          ​