Never Happier Than When I'm Creating With Paint

I am approaching my fifty-third birthday. I will be the big five / three in July. My professional art career began when I was twenty-two. From the time I was ten years old, to the present, the passion to paint has stayed with me like natural breathing. I've seen many ups and downs in the art business and one year (about 1984), things got so financially and emotionally stressful that I even said, "To hell with painting!" During this time in my life, I already had one foot in fine art and one foot in the sign business. Although I put art galleries aside for a while, my heart never was really in the sign business. Deep down inside, I knew I had to pick up painting again someday. While operating Ricks Sign Company and putting a little food on the table, I found I missed being at my easel, although I was angry inside that my art career wasn't going the direction I wanted at the time. Raising a family and making a living as an artist was hard. I loved art, but I also loved my children. I wanted to be a good Mormon dad and husband, but I also wanted to paint for a living. During that time in my life, I saw the two loves as a conflicting battle. I struggled with guilt with this conflict as I perceived it for some time. My first wife was not so supportive in the arts, but she was a very good mother and a good person. As I look back, I do not regret having seven wonderful children and being a father to them. Fatherhood is the highest and most noble responsibility for a man.

My children are almost all raised now. I remarried in 1999 and with my wife Karen's encouragement, I went back into the art business in the fall of 2001. During my years as a sign painter, I occasioned an opportunity here and there to paint a mural on a wall out doors. When I was sixteen, my high school art teacher put me in charge of painting a mural of a bobcat, the school mascot, on the gym wall. This was my first mural job and I enjoyed every minute of it. Years later, as a father, here I was in the sign business and had a little money coming in. Every once-in-a-while, I found myself painting a gigantic landscape on someone's wall. In Idaho, I never made much of a profit or sometimes went into the hole a little on mural projects, but I discovered I was happy each time I had a mural to paint. My heart longed for the day I could pick up a paintbrush and paint without guilt. I knew in my heart that I would be painting again in the future. Although I didn't make much money at it in the Idaho market, I later learned that my fine art training and my sign painting experience was good training for the mural work I do today. My ability to paint very large mural work was developed by adapting both these skills. Since 2001, I have painted murals for some important clients such as Novatek, International; Alcoa, Incorporated; building contractors, public schools; some private clients, etc, and my favorite and most public, a Cabelas store in East Hartford, Connecticut.

My murals today are not large commercial graphics. They're more like gargantuan fine art easel paintings in commercial or industrial settings and after seventeen years in the sign trade, I was so tired of sign painting and vowed to never let my murals look like a commercial sign job. Today, the situation is reversed. I know painting is what I was born to do and I am doing it. Now I say, "To hell with sign painting" and not feel a bit guilty about it!

Our mural product today, brings a little art culture into interior spaces. We specialize in creating a spiritually relaxing and visual feast. We go the extra mile and put our heart and soul into our mural work. We call our product, Ricks Fine Art Murals.