Ryan Ketchum is a self-taught painter who lives and works in
Brooklyn, New York. His paintings, which are produced through
a year-long process of sketching, repainting, covering and taping,
are precisely delineated landscapes inhabited by postmodern
Byzantine icons. Ketchum’s overt and vast visual references
often seem as though he’s raided the storehouses of art history,
and come up with one conclusion: painting is nothing if not a
pursuit of the sacred object. The result is a series of multilayered,
and often heavy, canvases that form a 21st century palimpsest,
whose palettes of intensely hued pastels and textured, dark
neutrals exist within structures that recall both medieval stained
glass and the elaborate storyboards of comic books.
His work has appeared at Diamonds and Oranges, Rabbit
Hole Studio, Jungle Space, ANC, Pochron Studios, and the Brooklyn
Artists Project Studio, among others.