It doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies to hear about talented people moving away from Richmond, but there’s not really anything warm and fuzzy about the art of Ryan Mclennan for his relocation to corrupt. His work is a morose contemplation of human abstractions explored in the context of anthropomorphized animals, personified flora. The result is a desolate reexamination of consciousness, both of mortality and the unknowable nature of existence. The effect is one that leads to not only the reconsideration of the fruitlessness of nihilistic perspective, but the needless absurdity of grasping for definitive answers to the question of what it means to be alive. It prompts a quiet investigation of the depression related to sacrificing existential exuberance for a practical philosophy of meaninglessness, an effect amplified by the starkness of the images presented on an empty white background, stripped of their natural context. There is a relatable quality in this, a subtle suggestion that the depicted quandaries are inherent to a detachment from the natural environment, and the unrelenting sterility of artificial surroundings.
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A Richmond native now pursuing his art career in New York, I was first introduced to Ryan’s creative prowess by his reluctant involvement in the profoundly influential local acoustic act Homemade Knives, both as a bassist and album cover artist. He’s one of the few artists that has succeeded in redefining their image from that of a musician to that of a visual artist, a phenomenon that can be easily ascribed to his identifiably signature style, impeccable compositions, and discernibly Richmond-influenced color schemes.
His process is one of relentlessly developed vision, precise forethought, and meticulous rendering, and conjures images of ancient sculptors meditating on an unshaped block of stone before setting about its carving.
I work on paper. Overall, the work is very deliberate because I can’t afford many mistakes. I’ll stare at a painting for hours before I am 100% sure what to do next. If I place something in the wrong position it could potentially cost me the whole piece. Lighter strokes can be sanded off, but if I overwork something it can be impossible to get rid of. I use source material all the time. I use what I find in books, magazines, the Internet and whatever photos I can take on my own, though I am not much of a photographer and animals don’t care to be photographed.
It would be reasonable to assume that a painter with such a demonstrable grasp on craft and technical skill would contend with little resistance in art school. Apparently, however, drawing animals didn’t exactly appeal to the high-brow, professorial sensibilities of university thought, a dilemma that forced Ryan, albeit briefly, from his subject matter of choice, but that ultimately contributed to his artistic evolution.
Drawing dinosaurs and animals when I was in elementary school was the beginning. Universities do not like dinosaurs and animals. Going to college was good because it gave me a chance to prove that I don’t like what I thought I didn’t like. After school I got back on track.
With an established aesthetic of exactness that rests comfortably somewhere between the stylized and photo-real, and a distinct symbolic voice that speaks all at once to the primal and evolutionary consciousness, Ryan is setting about an artistic exploration of less concrete imagery and scientific execution.
Hopefully [my work will become] less precise and more painterly, which is not too subtle of a transition. I’m working on it.
And it’s an interesting transition. The illustrative qualities of his work demonstrate the human capacity for literal observation, and though his subjects are represented as grappling with human abstraction, the process itself doesn’t particularly exemplify the confusion depicted. There’s a certain level of palpable detachment in this, not from the pieces themselves, but from the individual entities contained therein, a sense that the god of the piece is a distant creator, who has left his creations to sort out their existence on their own.
Most of the interactions are influenced by human dilemma. The animals are beginning to question their existence. Some are possibly finding faith, some despising it. Some are not only surviving, but they truly fear death. Some don’t want to be alive anymore.
There is a dystopian quality to these ecological networks, a sense of the inescapably tragic, of re-contextualized pessimism, a quality due in part to the color schemes of the pieces, which, Ryan says, are largely influenced by his time in Richmond.
I have grown to really appreciate old things. Old buildings. I like the architecture in Richmond and many places on the east coast. New buildings and renovations make me feel uncomfortable, they bore me. I like drab earthy colors (obviously, my paintings are all brown) and I think of Richmond as a fairly drab place. Not flashy. When I think of Richmond I think brown. I hate bright colors. If I wore a shirt that was orange or yellow it might kill me.
An artist moving to New York generally indicates forward momentum, building success, or at least a dream and the requisite gonads. Ryan speaks modestly of the move, avoiding elaboration on the trajectory of his career.
I don’t know what [moving to New York] will mean, maybe nothing. I lived in and around Richmond my whole life. It was time to go. I have good friends in New York. There is a lot of art to see. Most everything is new to me here. I love it.
As a musician playing bass for Homemade Knives, Ryan also designed the cover to their last album, No One Doubts The Darkness, but apparently this is the closest the two creative outlets come to overlapping.
I try to keep one as far from the other as possible. I don’t enjoy playing in bands. I do love my musician friends though so I play with them when I am able to. It’s a good time. They know I hate it, and I know [I] really don’t HATE it. It’s kind of a joke. They let me leave as soon as I know a song.
With an ever-transforming style and burgeoning career, it’s no stretch to wonder what it is about these paintings that attract people living in our society today, and what that attraction says about our society. Is it indicative of an evolutionary shift in human consciousness, a symptom of our desire to return to the unfettered acceptance of existence once held by pre-civilized man? Is it simply a way to reevaluate our perceptions of life, death, and the problems we face between, made palatable by the detachment of anthropomorphizing animals rather than depicting human beings? Or is it just that it causes us to ask ourselves what it is we like about these scenes of despair, quiet hope, and awareness of survival?
It’s also no great leap of forethought to consider how living in the permeating intensity of New York will effect Ryan’s vision, or to contemplate the potential of his return to Richmond. When asked if he had any plans to return, his answer was no more overworked than his paintings, and considerably less revealing: Let me move away first.