ROB RYAN (AUTHOR), JEB LOY NICHOLS
Rob Ryans artdelicate, colorful, playful, and evocativebrings sophisticated layers of emotion to simple vignettes with universal appeal.
In this, the first book of his collected artwork, Rob Ryan combines a childlike enthusiasm for color and craft with a romantics compulsion to explore love, desire, fantasy, and melancholy. Working principally in papercuts and stencils, and often mixing startling artistry with a raconteurs turn of phrase, he is able to craft an entire world within his artworkfrom the slender and telling movement of characters in his narratives to the gentle complexity of fantastical flora and fauna in his irreverent silhouettes. Each workwhether its a stand-alone screen print, a single papercut from one of his intoxicating childrens stories, or design objects from egg cups to Victorianstyle porcelain dog figurinesis a fairy tale in itself.
Bright and engaging, and edited in close collaboration with the artist, this beautiful monograph brings together work from every facet of Ryans career to date, andthrough an accompanying text written specially for the bookexplores the themes, styles, palettes, and preoccupations present throughout. Playing on familiar oppositions of isolation and creativity, alienation and warmth, even innocence and experience, Ryans work strikes the perfect balance between humor and vulnerability, wit and wisdom.