Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A Southerner in Paris I

Thank God for Abbesses

Artist Richie Fine hails from the great state of Alabama from a peanut-farming family, and started working very young. He went to New York City and worked as an actor as a child, and found himself working in costume design in the theatre in Chicago. He has spent his summer on the rue des Abbesses here and has been working with artists Troy Henriksen, Gary Farrelly and journalist-turned artist Denis Robert at Eric Landau's Galerie W.

He has also been painting non-stop.

In broad, colorful parody of a Southern family, he has created "La Famille Risque-Tout" and from the titles of the paintings (which he supplied yesterday - the show goes up this Thursday) I can tell that Gothic-meets-the-French is the order of the day!

Painting and also assemblage: Richie's One Hundred Signatures a sublime piece comprised of old town records that he found on the street, it is part of "Thank God for Abbesses," his hommage to a creative summer here. He returns to the States at the end of the month where he will work on his MFA in Portland, Oregon.

Pictured here is "Le Grand Monsieur Kentucky Bourbon XI," to be auctioned this Friday evening chez Grace in a performance piece.

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