Realism is a constant in art. It seldom gets much attention, but it proceeds alongside the latest fashions, quietly making its points.
Michael Ryan considers himself a realist. The drawings that are his primary expression are fairly well known in the city. However, they seem distant from realism because the artist has created them out of an approach both unusual and complex.
At 36, Ryan has worked in Chicago for more than a decade. His exhibition at the Roger Ramsay Gallery surveys about five years and is essential viewing for anyone interested in contemporary drawings that are keenly observed, deeply felt and wonderfully fresh.
“I have always considered myself a realist,” Ryan says. “But I also knew that I wanted to look at objects around me in a different way and portray them differently, in the sense of going through a process to get to an image.
“I wanted to come up with an image that was based on what I call reality, based on objects in that reality, but objects indirectly observed. So I would set up a systematic approach and try to be loose within it, trying to accommodate whatever happened and just go with the flow.
“I always was very conscious about points of view and how a lot of decisions about what we say is real is based on a particular point of view. I liked the fact that if you stare at something for a long time, you can see it in a different way and, like magic, it can become something else to you.”
All this-observation, system, points of view-came together in drawings made from projected slides of objects that Ryan had lighted and photographed from each of the cardinal points of the compass.
The light seemed to change the object depending on its direction, and this reminded Ryan of the passage of time as measured by sundials, which in turn, raised ideas about all sorts of natural cycles.
“Projection meant a lot to me,” Ryan says, “because I felt like I used it as my own little magic lantern. I used it to get the scale of the object but did not feel like I had to adhere to all the particular information.
“I drew into the projection, so it was a combination of tracing and interpretation. I decided what would be light and what would be dark, and in the process of making those decisions there were lots of plain gut reactions to the image and how I related to it.”
Ryan’s drawings initially may give the impression of images that are extremely cool and distant. Some viewers have even thought they were computer generated. But, ideally, this perception will soon evaporate as the tension and meticulousness of the work communicates the artist’s intensity.
Some of his images, for example, were worked out at the time of the death of a mentor and the breakup of Ryan’s first marriage. So while the drawings are never overt about personal events, they nonetheless embody them in, as it were, an undercurrent of electricity.
One of Ryan’s recurring images is of a human hand rendered life-size in great detail. The hand is his own, and again, unavoidably, it is charged with personal feeling.
“I kept thinking that I wanted to do something that I could consider a self-portrait,” Ryan says, “so I started experimenting with my hand, and it seemed to tie in with what I had done in the past. And that was important to me. You know, the whorl lines are similar to the lines in wood or lines made by time.”
One day, Ryan would like to enlarge the hand images and make them as reliefs on 5-by-7-foot panels, for while he feels little need to paint, he has hoped for some time that he might create sculpture.
For the moment, however, he continues to draw, at home on his dining-room table, often late at night when his two young children and wife are sleeping. During the day, Ryan functions as primary care-giver to the children, as his wife, Susan Sameck, is associate curator of costumes at the Chicago Historical Society.
“I really like what I do at home,” he says. “It has a big impact on my work. One reason a lot of the pieces are small is because during the day I may not have had a lot of time, or the time that I did have was broken up into, say, two-hour segments.
“But the way I approach the work is fairly meditative, trying to adjust it to my daily rhythms. You know, in the process of taking care of the kids or whatever, I try to make it all a part of my life.”
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“Michael Ryan: Selected Drawings, 1988-1993” continues through Saturday at the Roger Ramsay Gallery, 325 W. Huron St.
