Artist Talk with Ron Throop

May 7, 2015 - 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Prolific, self-effacing and sarcastic, Ron Throop will speak at the gallery about his current exhibition, Capillary Reaction: Hydrofracking and Irrevocable Loss on exhibit at ArtRage until May 23rd.

After graduating in 1990 from SUNY Oswego with a degree in History, Ron began painting as a way towards enlightenment. He became a father just out of college (1990) and after working many jobs, made the raising of his children a number one priority. He considers himself a culinary artist, avid gardener, man of letters, ranting philosopher, and prolific painter. He has been painting regularly for over twenty years, and has exhibited in just short of 40 exhibitions sine 2008. He has also published articles and 11 books.

In his words: “I am a determined man. Unlike Henry Miller who arrived in Paris at the age of forty suspecting that he was an artist but needing six months of stimulation-by-poverty to prove it, I have known all my life that I am another one in a long line, both ignored and distinguished, to have the (mis)fortune of that mysterious element “X” inside me. I am forty-eight years old, a dutiful husband and father, and dedicated practitioner of acrylic painting and writing.

I live in a cedar shake cottage along the shore of Lake Ontario.

All days I wake up with a charged exuberance and hope that begins to wane with the rising sun. By mid-afternoon I accept failure as a routine chore of this modern day art business. This is good. It keeps me upright through supper and doing the dishes. At dusk, after a long day of wonder and work in the studio, I take dreamy walks with my wife down to the lake. I am so lucky to have life and love even if career success is a crapshoot each year I come closer to the big sleep. Oh well. I paint. I write. There is always posterity to think about. Then night and gentle sleep and another day of sublime torture.

I cannot get enough of paint. I am the art crazy old man at mid-life.”