About
Richard Goldberg

About
Richard Goldberg

BIO

Richard Goldberg is a visual artist who was born in New York and has been living and working in San Francisco since 1979. His undergraduate work included a year of study in Florence Italy, extensive travel to Europe’s great museums and participation in Joseph Beuys’ Free International University at Documenta 6 in Kassel Germany. His MFA in Painting was received from The San Francisco Art Institute. Drawing, painting and work on paper has been a major focus in the last 30 years. Most recently he has been making 3 dimensional works. He has exhibited in San Francisco Bay Area and had a one person exhibit in Florence Italy.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Over the last 35 years I have been making paintings and drawings, and more recently 3 dimensional works. I have created my work in sequential groups, each exploring a particular image. A constant in my work has been a search for images and ideas that captivate me and compel me to make them into something that is tangible, and utilize whatever medium I use in a way that respects and savors their qualities as a substance. My mission has been to create objects that are a rich and satisfying visual experience, that imply questions and resists being known. I want the work to be an evocative visual poetry that resonates and lingers within the viewer.

QUOTE

Humorous, vulgar, poetic, violent and serene –the art of Richard Goldberg is a psychological and visceral journey on a dark road to the end of the night. Upon discovering the work of Goldberg one is transported to a prism of both shock and unconstrained wonder. His subject matter, from catatonic and bulbous poodles to cavemen clubbing themselves to death, tell a historical tale of man and beast – primal urges of lust for murder –a wonderland of perturbed and psychedelic fauna. Goldberg learned at a young age the power of art and that to understand his world he must paint it, draw it, and sculpt it: “I have a strong memory of making a papier-mâché puppet at school when I was 6 years old. It was ugly and I gave it a rude name. It felt subversive. I was delighted and amused with my small gesture of independent expression.” Goldberg uses a variety of media to complete his drawings but he has also explored the use of carpet and in his recent work has used walnut shells, photographs, and wood to create three dimensional works. If you look back at the nearly three decades of Goldberg’s oeuvre you will notice a deeply spiritual and creative artist who through the use of metaphor and symbolism – with a soupçon of tongue and cheek – has created a twisted and romantic landscape of the human experience. Life, death, love, and sex all wash up along the shore of Goldberg’s paintings and sculptures like precious and remarkable artifacts, objects, and talismans that we can use to further elucidate the hidden meanings and quiet desires of not only the collective unconscious, but our personal unconscious, our anima and animus, and also our universe.

Oliver Maxwell Kupper, editor-in-chief

ONLINE ARTICLES

Over the last 35 years I have been making paintings and drawings, and more recently 3 dimensional works. I have created my work in sequential groups, each exploring a particular image. A constant in my work has been a search for images and ideas that captivate me and compel me to make them into something that is tangible, and utilize whatever medium I use in a way that respects and savors their qualities as a substance. My mission has been to create objects that are a rich and satisfying visual experience, that imply questions and resists being known. I want the work to be an evocative visual poetry that resonates and lingers within the viewer.