Thanks for visiting my Gallery. If you are visual, click "Paire De Poires." This is an excerpt from a documentary film about my life as an artist and my creative process. More links to excerpts are at the end of this page.
I am a Swiss-American painter. Born in Bienne, Switzerland, I moved to the USA at 28. Always involved in the art world, first as a collage artist, a photographer, and later as a painter, my art continuously evolves as I explore new media and technologies. Still, my love and main body of work is oil paintings. I was involved in the arts scene in Upstate NY and New York City, but since 2015, I have shared my time between New York and Florida. I learned from wonderful artist friends back in Switzerland but pursued studies in other fields. Later, I studied painting at the State University in Albany, NY. I started showing my work regionally in 1989, then joined galleries in New York City, where Phoenix Gallery was my home for many years before it closed its doors. I have shown my work extensively in galleries, museums, and universities in the Northeast of the USA and Florida. My first post-covid solo show took place in January 2024 at the Arts Advocates Gallery in Sarasota, FL. My paintings are part of corporate and private collections in the USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.
My painting style is contemporary realism. My favorite medium is oil on canvas, but you will find some acrylic works here and there too. I also love working on paper with gouache paints. In the recent past, I added digital paintings to my portfolio. They allow me to stay creative when I travel and don't have access to my studios.
Throughout my childhood, I greatly admired the works of Ferdinand Hodler, a well-known symbolistic Swiss painter of the 19th century. Symbolism always attracted me, as I love telling stories with my paintings. Arnold Böcklin, Gauguin, and Balthus are three other painters who played a significant role in the development of my imagery. The pear, the female figure, and the coneflower became wonderful subjects for my paintings. Their shapes are so expressive that they keep appearing in my work.
So far, I have created three books about special paintings, drawings, and photographic projects: "A Pear A Day—One Year of Drawings and Paintings of My Blog," "Trees—A Photo Essay," and "The Queens Project about My Women Friends."
"Paire de Poires" by George Ryon is a documentary about my creative process. Here are links to parts of it: the introduction, Backgrounds and Sketches, Mixing and Blocking, The Pear, Painting, and Finishing a Painting.
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