Art & Life with Ryan Hartley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Hartley.

Ryan, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
Some of my earliest artistic memories are of obsessively drawing sharks and dinosaurs or copying the logos of my favorite TV shows. It didn’t occur to me that I could “be an artist” until I took my first art class in middle school. I continued pursuing art all throughout high school, where I found that I really enjoyed drawing portraits. My classmates would ask me to draw their picture and I really enjoyed being good at something. I moved to Savannah immediately after graduating high school, where I attended SCAD.

But… I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up and I was wasting money trying to figure that out. So, I transferred schools a couple of times and finally landed at Kennesaw State University where I majored in Painting and Drawing. I am very appreciative of my professors at KSU. A huge turning point for me was when I decided to experiment with cutting paper silhouettes in a figure drawing class. Instead of being dismissed as not “figure drawing”, it was met with enthusiasm and encouragement. When I graduated in 2013 I had amassed a lot of these paper silhouettes without a clear idea of what to do with them.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
Having graduated with a painting degree, it’s only natural that I began making photographs instead. I create atmospheric photographs out of cut-paper silhouettes. Everything you see is either made of paper or manipulated by light. That kind of restriction helps to focus my creativity. My work has a great deal of personal meaning, but I want to create something that people can relate to as well. It makes me so happy to hear when someone is reminded of something from their past when they look at my art. I intentionally remove unnecessary visual information by using silhouettes. This encourages the imagination to fill in the blanks.

How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
If I’m ever asked what I do for a living and I can say “I’m an artist”, I would consider myself successful. But much more realistically, I’m happy creating art that is important to me. If it means something to other people as well, that’s even better. While I’m making something, I don’t think about how likely it will be to sell or if it’s even a financially responsible thing for me to be doing in the first place. Honestly, I make pictures because I have something to say and I’m bad with words. Without this as an outlet, I would be living a much less fulfilling life.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I don’t have any upcoming shows scheduled at the moment, so the only way to see my work is to visit my website, ryanhartleyart.com. If you follow my Instagram, @ryanhartleyart, you’ll see behind the scenes shots, as well as works in progress.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ryanhartleyart.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ryanhartleyart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.hartley.182

Image Credit:
Ryan Hartley

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