 Rick was born in 1950. From early on he was a natural at art and had won two art awards by the time He was 13. When he discovered girls and sports, however, he did nothing in art until the last semester of his senior year in high school. At that point he realized he needed to make a plan for post high school. He had always known he could excel in art, so he walked into the high school art class and showed more talent than his teacher on the first day.
He graduated with a degree in art from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA. in 1975. Rick had a powerful drive to provide for his family which consisted of a wife and 2 children when he greaduated from college at age 25. He did not know how to earn a living producing art so he got a minor in education. He got a job as a high school art teacher thinking that he could pursue his art ambitions in his off time. He taught high school art for 7 years, but he hated it. He also was not able to earn enough as a teacher to provide for his family as he had planned, and had to use all of his off time doing other jobs instead of doing art work. He finally quit and went into business in 1982. His wife, Nancy, cried all the way to the school to deliver the resignation letter because she feared the struggle that would follow.
However, Rick is very goal oriented. His goal to be an artist was so powerful that when he finally came face to face with the fact that he was not going to be an artist, he took almost all of his art work that he had created up to that point and burned it in the back yard to the surprise of his children and wife. It was the only way that he could put that part of his life behind him and free himself to pursue a new goal. He felt that he had to do something irreversible to keep from being drawn in 2 directions. He never regretted it because he could not have moved ahead with that huge contradiction staring him in the face. There were several times after that decision that he flat out wept bitterly for hours because of the dream that he had to give up.
Free from that commitment, Rick hit it hard in business. His businesses became his sculptures and paintings. They were his creative outlet. He worked for 25 years in various businesses either as an owner/manager or a manager for someone else with unbelievable, unending struggles, which comes with the territory he declares. Eventually he succeeded in the establishment of a mortgage company that expanded nationwide and had 250 branch offices, three thousand employees including part timers and did 1.4 billion in loans a year at its peak. The highlight of his company's success was 2 years on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies. It would have been many more years had his banker referred him sooner. Eventually, Rick earned the triumph of selling his business, and after a life of struggle he was surprised to once again be given the opportunity to pursue his lifelong dream of being an artist.
One day his daughter commented that most of his paintings depicted some kind of struggle. He was surprised. He had never noticed that. After some time of thought on the subject he was able to identify certain life struggles that coincided with each painting that he did. He concluded that if his personal struggles were finding their way subconsciously into his paintings why fight it. Why not work with it and do what comes naturally. So, he accepted that his art was the art of struggle. He liked that because all through his life he found that everyone struggled and that struggle had resulted in him finding great personal treasures of understanding, insight and appreciation. Struggle had refined his senses to find and appreciate beauty in pain and suffering. And, given his long history of struggle, who would be better qualified to do art that celebrated struggle?
© Rick Ardmore 2007, All Rights Reserved
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