Jenny Christiansen & Mike "Ryno" Ryan
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Altitude Gallery proudly represents Jenny Christiansen & Mike "Ryno" Ryan from Springdale, Utah.
Read on to learn about the artist's inspiration and artistic journey.
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Artist Bio
Based in the Utah desert outside of Zion National Park, Jenny Christiansen and Mike "Ryno" Ryan travel together throughout the West, creating visual journals of their time spent in wild places. Their bright, colorful paintings utilize lush texture and vibrant color, while maintaining their own unique perspectives.
Jenny's work is up close and personal, putting viewers face to face with luscious blossoms and greenery. Working with oil pastel and acrylic paint on birch wood panels, Jenny lays down layers of thick and thin pigment, creating stylized bouquets of color that are exuberant and playful snapshots of nature's abundance.
In contrast, Ryno's work features larger landscapes and sweeping views, as if the eye had merely looked up and beyond Jenny's intimate florals. His dynamic paintings distill and enhance the most important elements of each scene he captures - loose, impressionistic renderings of unforgettable vistas. Fascinated by the surface quality of paint, Ryno applies oil to canvas, creating layers that convey depth and light with visible brushstrokes and rich texture. Viewers can almost feel the warm sun on their faces and the soft breeze at their backs as they lean into one of Ryno's paintings.
Jenny and Ryno’s work creates a conversation about perspective and our relationship with the environment around us. Their sunny and optimistic art shows us ways of seeing the beauty of nature in both the big and little things.
