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Marcia Rickard

Memento Mori
Oil on canvas
36x27
2018
$600.00 Unframed

Email museum@westmont.edu for purchasing inquiries

Artist Statement
"Time and Memory" seems especially apt while sheltering in place. The noise of contemporary living is quieted, time stands still, contemplation is unavoidable. This work evokes the spiritual art of a Carthusian monk brought to the present. Juan Sanchez Cotan was a 17th-century Spanish monk whose acute observation of still life objects gave shape and meaning to the transitoriness of life. It is a memento mori, a painting to remind us about how quickly life can pass.

Artist Bio
I lived in the Midwest for most of my life. I had every intention of becoming an artist only to discover art history my freshman year of college. I went on to graduate school on the East Coast to study medieval art, and returned to the Midwest to teach art history for 34 years at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. But I never relinquished my desire to be a creative artist. I was the perpetual student who never wanted to graduate, and kept taking studio courses all while teaching or when on sabbatical. When offered early retirement, I decided it was time to go back to the original plan of becoming an artist. So here I am in Santa Barbara, with a new/old direction in a new place.