Landscape & People
Thomas Ritter often spends time in the countryside, as the retreat to nature gives him strength and challenges him to ponder. The impressions, colors, shapes and moods let him reflect upon his own feelings and how he expresses them in his paintings. The compositions of Ritter’s paintings have many layers; with fast drying acrylic colors and filler compound, the artist builds a base, a framework on the canvas. Over and over again, by blurring and by painting over, these structures are changed. “I put great value on these preparations, before the actual layering of colors even begins”, the artist explained. “I have to react quickly because acrylic colors dry fast. If I want to change something, I have to act immediately.” These layers and structures create a base that gives the paintings a strong spatial effect. The canvas thus prepared will then be worked step by step with slow drying oil colors.
Now the artist can take his time in applying colors. The various layers are clearly visible. The numerous nuances in color, the blurring and painting over, the working of color with a spatula – all are displayed before our eyes without having the effect of looking “constructed”. For example, an aggressive color like red blends into the painting’s composition without overwhelming it. When one looks closely, the entire spectrum of forms and shapes can be seen and analyzed. Again and again, the abstract works created reveal surprising discoveries. The references to nature can be interred, yet a whole new image has been created. Mondrian described the relationship between nature and abstraction as: “The more abstract nature is depicted, the more perceptible is the connection”.
This connection between nature and its transformation into a painting can be clearly felt in the works of Thomas Ritter. However, as if these abstract emotional connections were not sufficient, his paintings often include outlines of figures – sometimes well defined, sometimes blurred. For Ritter, man is at the center of nature. With the inclusion of these human figures, the artist softens the depiction of nature in purely abstract shapes. Thomas Ritter injects his own style without losing the connection to reality.
A painter must understand his surroundings; artistic creation is always an immediate reaction and a direct response to one’s surroundings. Ritter doesn’t want to lose the contact to his models in nature and in his surroundings, that’s why man appears again and again as an essential building block. In the works of Thomas Ritter there is a close connection between nature and its artistic transformation. His works are a testimony to his personal challenge, similar to what Max Beckmann demanded in a 1948 letter to a lady painter: “Again and again, each depiction of an impression of nature has to become an expression of your own joy or your own sorrow. That’s why the composition has to include the changes which then create art, the true abstraction.”
