Developing a historical imagination and fondness for drawing stories, Gregory Rick’s cathartic mark-making process collapses history while confronting personal trauma. His works reflect episodes of individual experience while in dialogue with the wider world, touching deeply on the political nature of oppressive systems. Inspired by a youth fascination with graffiti, Rick’s blatant narratives convey symbolism and cryptic language that capture the recklessness and hysteria of present-day America. He paints on a shaky historical line cemented in humility and conviction, and populates his pictures with “characters who serve as archetypes,” in conjunction with memory and self-exploration.
Gregory Rick
Gregory Rick
An SFMoMA 2022 SECA Art Award Recipient
“I used to read comic books and graphic novels, and I would copy military illustrations. My dad had a couple of encyclopedias on World War II. I would try, try, try to copy this tank or that airplane. I would put them in my own narratives on that perforated copy paper. And I did graffiti from the time I was eleven or twelve. A really beautiful part of graffiti is its economy of space and what can last on a wall when left to change organically.” Gregory Rick in conversation with Binta Ayofemi
"The lines separating art and life and imagined wars from (very) real ones are more intertwined for Rick than most. In hearing his stories it often feels like real life spilled into his art as much as out of it. We strive to be authors of our own lives but we also play roles in stories over which we have far less control." Alex Nicholson on Gregory Rick for Juxtapoz Magazine
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Gregory Rick Artist Walkthrough at Johansson Projects
You had spent time in the Bay Area on your early graffiti trips, but how did you end up back here?
“I came back to Oakland around 2012. I was still borderline strung out. I was painting graffiti and staying in squats and just… broke. One day I was flying a sign and had made enough to get a bag. I gave it to the van and they told me to wait. It was obvious they were going to steal my money, so I thought, “Fuck that,” and jumped through the window. He’s driving down the street picking up speed and I’m hanging out fighting over ten or twenty bucks. Finally, I let go. I just sat there. It was raining and I was fucking broke. I was sick. I knew I needed to make some kind of change. It was this seminal point in my life, a kind of crossroads moment. The next day I went to the VA and started going to groups, got some housing, and slowly started to regain my life. I started going to this group where they actually did art.” Alex Nicholson in conversation with Gregory Rick for Juxtapoz Magazine
About the Artist
Gregory Rick @ Johansson Projects | April 16, 2023 by Renny Pritikin for SquareCylinder
“Gregory Rick at Johansson Projects: Tales of war and urban strife mark the paintings of an emerging star…Apartment towers fill the horizon while humans in the foreground enact dramas in tangled knots. In some of his pictures, a small figure appears in an upstairs window. I asked if it represented the artist. Rick laughed and said he thought it was me. Meaning, the viewer observing history unfolding, chronicling it…This nearly invisible eyewitness is one of several recurring themes. Others include simple star shapes, a holdover from his days as a graffiti artist…” LINK
Gregory Rick War and Peace | Spring 2023 by Alex Nicholson for Juxtapoz
“Art might not be some magical place where all the world’s problems disappear but maybe it can be a safe place to exist with them. And perhaps that’s what we feel when we take notice of a piece of art: a shared sense of existence. It’s as Rick describes, ‘a certain…rhythm.’ ” LINK
5 SECA artists at SFMOMA show the vivid present and promising future of Bay Area art | March 8, 2023 by Tony Bravo for SF Datebook
“I wanted to have each one of these paintings or narratives be a chapter. I had it starting out with thinking about my life as my autobiography, and in what ways does that connect to larger themes? That was the guiding force. I feel like they gave me the space for the rhythm of the paintings to work and to be able to step into the paintings. In my work, I tell stories.” LINK
Gregory Rick Highlights SFMOMA’s 2022 SECA Art Award Exhibition | December 13, 2022 by Evan Pricco for Juxtapoz
“The 2022 winners, Binta Ayofemi, Maria Guzmán Capron, Cathy Lu, Marcel Pardo Ariza (a Juxtapoz alum), and Gregory Rick are each on their own, fascinating creatives, with Rick being one of the most exciting painters our editors have seen come from the Bay in recent years.” LINK
Gregory Rick’s “Party at Megiddo” @ BEYOND THE STREETS, Los Angeles | November 4, 2022 Juxtapoz
“I’m painting on a shaky historical line cemented in humility and conviction. I occupy my pictures with characters who serve as archetypes in conjunction with memory and self-exploration reflecting on the absurdness and monumentality of history,” Rick shares. LINK
LIFE ACCORDING TO ARTIST GREGORY WILLIAM RICK | 2022 by Luis Ruano |
“There’s a stillness that happens when I’m making something that I’m addicted to, when everything else just falls away,” LINK
Gregory Rick: From the Rat Hole to Grey Skull | November 1, 2022 by Mark Taylor for SF/Arts
“SECA Award-winner (2022) Gregory Rick’s solo show features a wide variety of works on paper, including “Long Summer,” a fold-out artist book that becomes a mini-mural of multicolored creatures sprawling across a crowded landscape.” LINK
3 Bay Area visual artists win 2022 Artadia Awards: ‘I’m honored and a little bit in shock’ | July 6, 2022 by Joshua Kosman for SF Chronicle Datebook
Rick’s vividly representational collages, paintings and sculpture draw on his turbulent personal history, including his stint fighting in the Iraq War. LINK
5 Bay Area artists named 2022 winer for prestigious SECA Award | May 3, 2022 by Aidin Vaziri
“The winners are multidisciplinary artist Binta Ayofemi, visual artists Maria Guzmán Capron and Marcel Pardo Ariza, ceramics-based artist Cathy Lu, and painter Gregory Rick. An exhibition of their work is scheduled at the museum from Dec. 17 to May 29, 2023. It will be organized by Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, SFMOMA’s assistant curator of media arts, and Jovanna Venegas, assistant curator of contemporary art.” LINK
Gregory Rick’s “Forgiveness” | January 26, 2022 by Eric Minh Swenson for EMS Legacy Films
Film series covering artists and exhibitions, featuring Rick’s driving force for creation of his recent works and the connections between trauma, chaos and explanation of natural disasters through the personal and collective experience. LINK
Gregory Rick was born in 1981 and grew up in South Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his BFA from California College of the Arts in 2019 and graduated from Stanford University with an MFA in Art Practice in 2022. Developing a historical imagination and fondness for drawing stories, Rick collapses history while confronting personal trauma. His works exist as reflections of his personal experience, while in dialogue with the wider world. Rick was the recipient of the Combat Infantry Badge, the Yamaguchi printmaking award, the Nathan Oliviera fellowship, the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award (2021), the Artadia Award (2022), the Stanford Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture (2022), and most recently the SFMOMA SECA Award (2022). He has attended residencies at The Headlands Center for the Arts and Kala Institute. He has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States including Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN (2021), Beyond The Streets Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2022), Hair and Nails Gallery in Minneapolis, MN (2021), Truman State University in (2022), Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL (2023), SFMOMA in San Francisco, CA (2023), and Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA (2023). Rick lives with his wife and daughters in Oakland, California.