b. 1936

American
Born: Albany, N.Y., U.S.

 

Richard Huntington is a writer, printmaker, and painter who lives in Buffalo, N.Y. and San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. Born in Albany, N.Y., Huntington received a BFA from Syracuse University in 1959 and an MFA in 1963 from the University at Buffalo, where he studied under Seymour Drumlevitch. He taught studio and art history courses at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.; lived and worked in New York City, where he showed at the Fulton Street Gallery and other venues; was an art critic for the Buffalo Courier Express, and beginning in 1982 served as visual arts director at Artpark. In 1985 he became art (and later theater) critic for the Buffalo News, a position he held until 2007; his reviews, interviews, columns, and essays form a veritable history of the arts (including media and performance in addition to visual art and theater) in Western New York and beyond during the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s. Throughout out his career he has also written a number of catalog essays for artists including Drumlevitch and Tyrone Georgiou and has contributed reviews and articles to such publications as ArtNews, Art New England, and High Performance. [1]

After retiring from the newspaper, Huntington devoted more of his time to his own painting, which is rich with tongue-in-cheek references to art history, pop culture, and other iconic visual imagery. His work has been shown in Sweden, Mexico, and several galleries throughout New York state. In 2010, he was featured in the multi-site Beyond/In Western New York "Alternating Currents" exhibition, and his paintings are in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. In the Beyond/In print catalog, curator Heather Pesanti writes:

“Huntington’s paintings are beautiful and his practice innovative, yet there exists in his work another layer functioning as an improvisational evaluation of the canon using art-historical sources as a form of critique. … The artist has written that he wants ‘to make a kind of painting in which things almost jell in the old ‘good picture’ sense, but never quite do … the mix is meant to be a kind of brittle tragicomedy, pathetic one moment, sentimentally authentic the next.’ Humor is also woven through his practice, present in the at-times devilishly absurd subject matter of the pictures, where a passionate brushstroke reveals a sly wink beneath it.” [2]

For more information on Richard Huntington's art, visit www.richardhuntington.com.

[1] Biographical material for this profile adapted from Richard Huntington, biographical statement accompanying the exhibition Studio Secrets Revealed: Work by Bruce Adams and Richard Huntington, at the Carnegie Art Center, Tonawanda, N.Y., 11/01-12/13/2008. http://www.adams-studio.com/some%20reviews/studio%20secrets%20revealed.html (Accessed 08/20/2013)

[2] Heather Pesanti, “Albright-Knox Art Gallery,” in Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents(Buffalo, N.Y.: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2010).