Curtis-Ripley

CURTIS RIPLEY HIGH FIDELITY

WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY

CURTIS RIPLEY In Ripley’s paintings, glimmers of paint flicker and flare across darkened grounds, activating the surface with a sense of movement and light. Gestural curls and swirls interact with lines and dashes that guide the viewer’s eye in a choreographed passage across the picture plane. These marks are not merely expressive—they are structural, establishing a sense of tempo and poetic cadence that gives each work its internal coherence.

Forms in Ripley’s work do not resolve immediately.

They hover, coalesce, and dissolve, shifting in and out of focus as the viewer’s attention lingers. Color behaves similarly: shapes emerge from the ground only to recede again, creating a continuous interplay between presence and disappearance. The result is a dynamic tension between flatness and depth that remains deliberately unsettled.

This instability gives rise to a pronounced sense of atmosphere. Gestural forms drift across layered fields of tone, while Ripley’s palette moves between moments of luminous intensity and expanses of saturated darkness. Subtle gradations of color produce fleeting effects—recalling distant light, reflective shimmer, or the charged stillness of a

HIGH FIDELITY landscape at dusk. The paintings unfold perceptually, revealing themselves over time rather than at a glance.

Ripley’s practice occupies a space between the gestural immediacy of Abstract Expressionism and the immersive chromatic sensibility of Color Field painting. His work synthesizes these traditions into a contemporary language grounded in process, layering, and revision. While resonant with historical explorations of light and atmosphere, his paintings remain distinctly present—open-ended, responsive, and experiential.

Presented concurrently with Unrepentant Beauty by Roland Reiss, High Fidelity offers a complementary approach to perception—one grounded not in constructed illusion, but in painterly sensation and temporal experience.

Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, Curtis Ripley has exhibited nationally and internationally, with an extensive record of solo exhibitions. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1949, he received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1975.

Blues of Evening, 2026, Oil on canvas, 60” x 72”

Here and Gone, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60” x 72”

A Summer Evening, 2026, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Mexican Night, 2026, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

The Gloaming, 2026, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Evening Symphony, 2024, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Mazatlán, 2026, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Universal Night, 2026, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Morning Light, 2026, Oil on canvas, 48” x 72”

Deep Forest Green, 2026, Oil on canvas, 60” x 48”

Valentine’s Day, 2026, Oil on canvas, 55” x 44”

Silver Springs, 2026, Oil on canvas, 60” x 48”

The Tropicana, 2026, Oil on canvas, 60” x 48”

Evening Symphony #2, 2025, Oil on canvas, 48“x 60“

This April, 2026, Oil on canvas, 48” x 60”

Two to Tango, 2026, Oil on canvas, 48“x 60“

November Blues, 2026, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48”

LA Nocturne, 2026, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48”

LA Nocturne #12, 2026, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”

Ipanema, 2025, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”

Dreaming In Color, 2026, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”

Traveling Star, 2026, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”

A June Evening, 2026, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”

Teach Me Tonight, 2026, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48”

Sonata #47, 2025, Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”

Sonata #46, 2025, Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”

CURTIS RIPLEY Curtis Ripley’s practice occupies a space between the gestural immediacy of Abstract Expressionism and the immersive chromatic sensibility of Color Field painting. Ripley’s work synthesizes these traditions into a contemporary language grounded in process, layering, and revision. Working over a base of black gesso, Ripley establishes a stark, absorptive ground against which his saturated hues assert themselves with heightened intensity. Splatters, drips, and veils of pigment remain visible, indexing the artist’s physical engagement and preserving the immediacy of each mark. Repeatedly layering and removing paint, Ripley composes complex, moody atmospheres, within which expressive marks and gestures appear to float lyrically at varying depths of field.

While resonant with historical explorations of light and atmosphere, Ripley’s paintings remain distinctly

present. They are open-ended, responsive, and experiential, often reading like tone poems and evocative abstract reveries to nature. The works’ titles reveal Ripley’s love of nature, music, and poetry as well, as he often titles his works as preludes, nocturnes, sonatas, and odes.

Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, Curtis Ripley has exhibited nationally and internationally, with an extensive record of solo exhibitions. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1949, he received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1975. Select public collections include Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Galerie Urs Meile Beijing and Lucerne, Beijing, China, Chemical Bank, New York, Hotel Monaco, San Francisco, Imperial Hotel, Osaka, Japan, The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles, J.P. Morgan Chase, New York, and HBO, New York.

CURTIS RIPLEY

HIGH FIDELITY

HIGH FIDELITY

WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY