Richard Invites You to Look with Him

Elements of Artistic Purpose

“Eyes First” is Richard Tuck’s “coda” - not a limitation but a personal conclusion.  His art invites you to enter his visual world in the way that he initially encountered it himself. Eyes First states in words what he learned when looking back at his own journey in artmaking.

His childhood in rural eastern North Carolina and education at a former Rosenwald School brought opportunity and enriching rewards for his natural gifts. Woefully, a family move to the state capital planted him into an environment foreign to his early life that dented his confidence. Fortunately, he listened to the encouragement of an art teacher and discovered a new cultivated visual world, the North Carolina Museum of Art. He could not have surmised, at the time, that he would one day have his work shown at the museum. Fortunately, a strong family connection supported his youthful expansion and cemented his stability.

Some years later while studying art the sculptor Peter Agostini spurred Richard’s maturation and trust his own instincts - to appreciate the value of his visual and tactile senses. Painter, Gilbert (Bert) Carpenter urged him to bring the “act of painting” forward as he worked -allow the painting to speak. When does the work gain independence, when does it feel like it is finished?  He recalled that their influence affirmed his instinctive attraction to works by Franz Cline and Rembrandt school art works he’s seen as a teen at the NC Art Museum.

A review by critic Patricia Krebs and feedback from a discussion with New York gallery owner Peter Tatistcheff reinforced a core disposition, the relevance and power of visually observable subjects – realism.