Back to Martin Ricks Gallery

I was born in Rexburg, Idaho in 1961.  Rexburg was situated in what then seemed to me to be the end of the earth.  As it turned out, the place I grew up served me well, planting in my heart a deep love of nature and a sense of who I was in relation to the world around me.  I had time and space to roam, mostly alone, and to make discoveries in my own way and at my own pace.

Growing up I fancied myself as Tom Sawyer, spending hours exploring the river bottoms around my home, hunting and fishing.  The hunting and fishing were simply the excuse, or the metaphor, necessary to motivate me to get out and discover “the moment” which I aspire to translate through my work.

I was born into a family of fiercely independent creative people who nurtured and encouraged my creative side.  My dad, Don Ricks, was a self-styled man who made a living as a sign painter and inventor until he became a full time artist and teacher in his mid-thirties.  Dad’s artistic mentor and life-long nemesis was the Russian artist Sergei Bongart.  We all grew up working in and around the art business that the two of them established in the Rexburg area.  Sergei was a master and has been a great force in the art world in the western U.S. 

Art has always been at the center of my professional life but I had, with brief exceptions, avoided actually painting.  I knew that I would paint one day. The practical side of me said it would happen when I was successful and retired - maybe.  I have experienced the joys of art and appreciate its impact on our world.  I feel that anything which uplifts or ennobles the human spirit is of immense value and should be pursued and supported.  We each have a secret place inside where we long to be understood, appreciated and even loved.  Art at its highest level communicates inner feelings which need expression.

During my career as a frame maker, I have worked with many artists, some of whom have had great impact on me. Ovanes and Galust Berberian, some of Sergei’s students, have influenced me aesthetically. They live and paint in my native Idaho and after drinking in their works, I found that I could see it in an enhanced way.  Colors in nature began to come alive to me.

I have a great friend who is a Native American medicine man.  Our paths crossed in northern California ten years ago.  He often speaks of Grandfather Sky and Grandmother Earth.  On a visit last summer, he told me that my dad, who passed away a few years ago, was sending this painting thing to me.  I hope so. Sometimes when I paint a rising moon or quiet water, I am speaking to Grandfather Sky saying, “I hope you see me and you are proud of what I am doing.  I’ll join you in my time and we will watch our sons together”.  I hope that our journeys will intersect and that we will both be the better for our meeting here in this little corner of God’s creation.