By: Carmen Gass

On display May 29 – July 28, 2018, in the HUB Gallery

A→CHROMATIC represents a comprehensive overview of painter J. Harlan Ritchey’s artistic development and coincides with the 5-year anniversary of his introduction to the gallery world.

The subject matter of A→CHROMATIC can be divided into four broad genres: landscape, still life, floral, and abstract. Within each of these genres Ritchey works to explore specific themes and emphasize the elements that he considers to be most conducive to those themes. In the landscape genre, those themes are a connection to perspective and place while the floral genre
explores a connection to rhythm and color; the still life genre emphasizes a connection to composition and form, and the abstract genre’s theme focuses on a connection to pattern and theory. Each image carries a range of art-historical, cultural, and biographical influences but invites the viewer to arrive at their own aesthetic or critical judgements.

J. Harlan Ritchey is an Information Resources and Services Support Specialist in the Engineering Library. He received his BA in Filmmaking from Penn State in 1999, with Honors in Visual Arts. He is a self-taught artist and has for the past several years done fine art and illustration commissions for a range of local and national clients. Ritchey’s first public exhibition was in 2013, and in 2015 he began teaching art classes. He currently lives and works in State College, PA.